RoboCode in Dolphin Smalltalk?

Hi,

does anybody here have to the intention to initialize a Smalltalk
RoboCode project?

Günther

Guenther Schmidt schrieb:
> Hi,
>
> does anybody here have to the intention to initialize a Smalltalk
> RoboCode project?
>
> Günther

Hello Günther,

sounds interesting. Do you want to create a RoboCode-Clone or something
which is similar to RoboCode?

cu, Yogi

Marc Michael wrote:
Hi Marc (Yogi?),

I myself am quite unable to create either (yet). I just thought it was a
most interessting aproach for teaching (and learning) java.

Well ok, as for me not interessting enough to learn java. But I browsed
through it and thought it would help getting started with Dolphin in a
quite interessting way.

It's a pitty that you have been the only one replying sofar, I thought
it was a rather good idea.

Regards

Günther

Guenther Schmidt wrote:

> It's a pitty that you have been the only one replying sofar, I thought
> it was a rather good idea.

Perhaps because not many people know what RoboCode is ?   I haven't heard it
mentioned outside the Java community (and not often there); in fact I only
remembered at all when you mentioned Java.

But creating a Smalltalk version looks like quite a fun project to learn from,
though it might be a bit ambitious.

    -- chris

Guenther Schmidt schrieb:
Yes, it reminds me to my first experience with Dolphin. I've created a
class Warrior, created to instances and leted them fight against. In a
FlipperInpector I was able to look how the lifeenergy decreases. This
was very funny to me, because it looked like Diablo or Command&Conquer
to me. And it shows me nice things about Dolphin: I was able to look
inside the objects without to write debugcode; I've extended my class
Warrior with the attribute strength, and my two instances simply use it.
This was an amazing observation to me.

>
> It's a pitty that you have been the only one replying sofar, I thought
> it was a rather good idea.

But I don't know if it's easy to create a game such RoboCode in
Smalltalk, because of the advantage of Smalltalk: Every object is able
to explore the system and search e.g. for the position of the enemy.

I think, a good solution is a client/server based system. At the start
of the development, the World and the Bot can be set in the same image,
connected through a special ConnectionObject. If the framework is
stabilisized, the World can be pulled out into a seperate image and the
special ConnectionObject will be extended to establish a connection to
another ConnectionObject through a socket, for example.

But, as Chris has written, after I've looked through the web, it's not
realy an easy project. But it's worth to think about it.

cu, Yogi

>
> Regards
>
> Günther

Marc Michael wrote:

> Yes, it reminds me to my first experience with Dolphin. I've created a
> class Warrior, created to instances and leted them fight against. In a
> FlipperInpector I was able to look how the lifeenergy decreases. This
> was very funny to me, because it looked like Diablo or Command&Conquer
> to me. And it shows me nice things about Dolphin: I was able to look
> inside the objects without to write debugcode; I've extended my class
> Warrior with the attribute strength, and my two instances simply use it.
> This was an amazing observation to me.

This is /exactly/ what I think is so wonderful about Smalltalk IDEs (and not
just for beginners either).  The objects are real, they are alive, and you can
interact with them right from the start.  There's nothing to beat that.


> I think, a good solution is a client/server based system. [...]

Myself, I'd approach it the other way around.  Start with everything in one
image (world and robots) controlling them from a workspace.  If that worked to
your liking, then you could create a GUI for controlling the world.  You might
even get into rendering the robot world as graphics.  Later on (maybe much
later on) you could think about networking and creating some sort of shared
server.  (One reason for that ordering is that its nice to be able to /see/
your robots -- much more satisfying than messing around with networking code)

    -- chris

Chris Uppal wrote:
Yes, this is the way I would go. The difference in my idea is, that the
robots and the world doesn't talk directly to each other, but through a
connector. This connector simply moves the messages to the receiver. The
advantages on this is, that you later change the connector to move this
messages through a socket.

If there's no connector, the internals of the robots and worlds must be
changed to move the messages through a socket, I think.

I've tested it: I've started two images and send an object from one
image to the other through a socket connection. Dolphin provides methods
in the classes ServerSocket and Socket to simply send objects through a
socket. Not only strings. Nice, nice.

But for now, I've created a class Robot. The public methods are:

speed:
speed
bodyDirection:
bodyDirection
position

No WorldClass yet. The speed is given in units/serconds, bodyDirection
in degrees and position in units. All is calculated in realtime. The
position will be only calculated as needed: if the speed changes, if the
bodyDirection changes or if the position is requested.

The problem which arises is: collision detection. If I have 2 robots,
the world could poll their position every second and compare their
position. But this doesn't work, because, if one robots drive fast, like
100 units/sercond, he simply drives through the other robot. So, how is
this done in games like Command&Conquer? I think there's the same
problem. The tanks are driving automaticaly. They are driving around
obstacles or react to enemy tanks.

Just in this moment I have a flash in my head: no realtime! The time is
measured in ticks. The world gives the speed of the time. At every tick,
which is a message from the world to the robots, the robots recalculate
their states. The fastest possible speed of a robot is less than 1
unit/tick. If the world doesn't send ticks, the game is paused. Nothing
happens. Is this the reality?

cu, Yogi

"Marc Michael" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:chc4iq$l6u$[hidden email]...
...
You may wish to have a look at a little game I wrote in Dolphin a while ago.
It was a lot of fun to write.  You can find it with source code here:
http://www.mitsci.com/smalltalk/CJDSimpleGame.htm

Chris