''RobotWar'' is a

programming game A programming game is a video game that incorporates elements of computer programming, enabling the player to direct otherwise autonomous units within the game to follow commands in a domain-specific programming language, often represented as a v ...

written by Silas Warner. This game, along with the companion program ''RobotWrite'', was originally developed in the

TUTOR TUTOR, also known as PLATO Author Language, is a programming language developed for use on the PLATO system at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign beginning in roughly 1965. TUTOR was initially designed by Paul Tenczar for use in co ...

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

on the

PLATO system Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

in the 1970s. Later the game was commercialized and adapted for the

Apple II series The Apple II series (trademarked with square brackets as "Apple ] ''" and rendered on later models as "Apple //") is a family of home computers, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primaril ...

of computers and published by

Muse Software Micro Users Software Exchange, Inc., doing business as Muse Software, was an American video game developer based in Baltimore, Maryland, focusing on the development of games for the first generation of home computers. The company began with dev ...

in 1981. The premise is that in the distant future of 2002, war was declared hazardous to human health, and now countries settled their differences in a battle arena full of combat

robot A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be c ...

s. As the manual states, "The task set before you is: to program a robot, that no other robot can destroy!" The main activity of the game is to write a

computer program A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. A computer program ...

that operates a (simulated) robot. The player selects multiple robots which do battle in an arena until only one is left standing. The robots do not have direct knowledge of the location or velocity of any of the other robots; they only use radar pulses to deduce distance, and perhaps use clever programming techniques to deduce velocity. There is no way for the player to actually take part in the battle.

Robot programming

The robots' language is similar to

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

. There are 34 registers that can be used as variables or for the robots' I/O functions. An example program from the game manual is: SCAN AIM + 5 TO AIM ; MOVE GUN AIM TO RADAR ; SEND RADAR PULSE LOOP IF RADAR < 0 GOSUB FIRE ; TEST RADAR GOTO SCAN FIRE 0 - RADAR TO SHOT ; FIRE THE GUN ENDSUB The robot with this program sweeps its radar in a circle, firing off radar pulses, and when it detects another robot, fires a projectile set to explode at the correct distance as estimated by the radar pulse. This particular robot stands still throughout the entire battle, as it never assigns any number to its movement registers.

Reception

Harry White reviewed ''RobotWar'' in ''

The Space Gamer ''The Space Gamer'' was a magazine dedicated to the subject of science fiction and fantasy board games and tabletop role-playing games. It quickly grew in importance and was an important and influential magazine in its subject matter from the la ...

'' No. 45. White commented that "''RobotWar'' is worth ..the price. And if you don't have an Apple, but do own some other brand of personal computer, just wait - there'll be a similar game for you soon. It has to happen." In its first issue ''

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...

'' praised ''RobotWar''s language as easy to learn, and for several years hosted contests for robot programs. In 1996, the magazine named it the 85th best game ever. ''

BYTE The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...

'' also praised Battle Language and its potential for teaching programming, as well as the sophisticated editor and debugger, but noted that the language's slow performance caused robots to sometimes behave in unexpected ways. In a 2020 interview,

Stewart Cheifet Stewart Cheifet (; born September 24, 1938) is an American television presenter, best known for his work presenting and producing ''Computer Chronicles'' and '' Net Cafe''. He has also worked in other reporting positions for PBS and ABC, and othe ...

, the host and producer of ''

Computer Chronicles ''(The) Computer Chronicles'' is an American half-hour television series, which was broadcast from 1983 to 2002 on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) public television and which documented various issues from the rise of the personal computer fro ...

'' told ZDNET that RobotWar was one of his favorite games, telling them "you didn't fight and shoot, you programmed your robot, it was a battle between the software, the robot you designed, and the robot the other guy designed,...it was brilliant."

References

* https://books.google.com/books?id=0o5qBAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA358

External links

RobotWar: a brief history
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Robotwar 1981 video games Apple II games Apple II-only games Programming games Video games set in 2002 Video games developed in the United States Video games about robots Muse Software games

Robot programming

Reception

See also

References

External links