A contest in 'C'...

[Ross Greenberg]

while (TRUE){ puts("*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE ***");}


There is a game making the rounds on some of the MS-DOS BBS's called
CROBOTS.  An interesting game that can allow those that respond to
determine just how good their 'C' programming is.

In this game, you program your "robot" to seek out and destroy other
robots that have been programmed by someone else.  Each robot has the
capability of movement, sensor detection of other robots, and the
ability to fire a cannon at a given direction and range.

Typical robots might use programs that allow the robot to scan the 
playfield, locate any one of four opponents, fire a cannon at that
opponent, and start zig-zagging towards that opponent while firing
a cannon.

If you are interested in determining how *your* robot stands up
to other robots, then here are the contest rules:

1)	Get a copy of the program from a local MS-DOS machine.
	There may be a UNIX version out, but I'm not aware of
	it

2)	Create a robot that will (2 out of 3 times), destroy
	the preconfigured robots that come in the .ARC package.

3)	Document your robot's code and send it off to me at the
	below address.  Entries accepted until March 1, 1986.

4)	You may enter no more than two robots.

The way I'll run the contest should work, although comments are
welcomed:

For every four robots that come in, I'll send them off to battle.
I'll run the simulation twice for each four, or until a have a
clear consensus of which two out of the robots make it to the next
round.

This process will be repeated until there are finally only four
top robots.  They'll slug it out until I can determine which are
the top two.  From that, of course, I can determine which is the
robot that deserves the applause.

The top four robots will be posted to the net.  Each losing robot
will be returned to its designer, along with the code for the
robots which destroyed it.

Consider this first contest the beginning round.  The next round
will be in about three months.


Good Luck!

Ross

-- 
------
ross m. greenberg
ihnp4!allegra!phri!sysdes!greenber

[phri rarely makes a guest-account user a spokesperson. Especially not me.]