How does robocode work?

Question

For my University course we have been given the code for the programming game robocode and we need to add features to the game to change how it is played.

To do this I need to know more about how robocode works. So what code runs first and what it does and what other code it calls and so on. However I cannot find any good pages on the internet that really go into much detail about the different areas of the robocode game. It's all about how to build your own robot.

I would like to know exactly what each package in robocode does. And what order they are called in, who calls them and who they call. As well as anything else that will give me a better understanding of robocode and how it works.

If anyone could help me with this it would be greatly appreciated :).

I have but it is quite a lot of code and I don't know where it all starts. — Yep_It's_Me, Aug 21 '12 at 05:46
@isbadawi One shouldn't read the code to understand how to use it. That information should be in the documentation and API. — Fredrik, Aug 21 '12 at 08:13

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 21 '12 at 06:10

Assuming you're a student I'll let myself give you a couple of tips that can appear useful.

First of all, you don't really need to know all the internals of this program in order to understand how to use it. All you need is to understand what is an exposed API. Usually an API + getting started tutorial will be enough for beginning.

The getting started tutorial is kind-of here (I admit I've never used this application) The Java API is covered here (there is a .NET as well, but I assume you're more interested in Java API)

Read the getting started and then (even before you delve into APIs) try to run your first robot. Like described here

You'll realize the you drive your robot as a series of commands you send to it. Once you've successfully run your robot, you can study the API and get to know other stuff you can do with your robot.

I know this answer is vague, but frankly speaking their site is pretty good and as far as I understand provides all the information you need, I just wanted to help you to "arrange it a little", and share how I used to study new projects

Hope this helps, Good luck!

How does robocode work?

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