Robocode and A.I.

The month of September is already done! I have to say, this month has been a crazy month, crazier than I think I realize right now. My wife finally had our baby, which we named Autumn Rose, beautiful huh? She’s gorgeous and I am absolutely in love! Also, this month was AI, and that class is now finished, and my robocode robot kicked some serious behind! (still not quite good enough to take first in the FullSail robocode Hall of Fame though..ah well)

This was my first experience with java coding, which wasn’t too bad considering I’m fairly confident with c# and the two are nearly twins. I must say that doing robocode is not for everyone, and at first glance of some example robot code, I thought I might be wanting to choose something else for the research project. But I persevered and eventually decided it was time to learn a little math…ok it was a LOT of math. Some great videos on youtube, notably khanacademy’s videos on trig, geometry, and linear algebra helped me out a ton. I had a decent foundation for all of the math needed, but I had never really applied much of it in game logic before. Needless to say, I am glad I did it! For those interested in trying robocode, here’s a good place to start. If you have robocode and want to check out my robot, head over to my site and go to the games page.

AI is a very interesting and vast subject, including but not limited to: pathfinding, decision making, steering behaviors, and an intense use of data structures. What a great month it was! And onward I go!