RoboNode - Simulated robot competition

This seems really cool, however I find the interface confusing. Here's what I expected:

1. A sandbox where the opponent is a default set of code.

You start with the default code as well and there are two buttons. 'Start One Game' and 'Collect Statistics'. The first runs your code in real time against the computer opponent, the other runs many many games to collect win/loss scores on your code.

A critical component here is optimization. X games MUST run within 10 seconds. If they don't your code is too slow and must be refactored.

After you have a winning win/loss record against the default code you are then presented with a 'Challenge' button.

2. Challenge mode

In challenge mode you are facing off against every piece of code ever submitted. Your code gets run automatically against each bot until it looses, and you're given a rank. Here you're also given a 'Collect statistics' button where you try to climb the ladder many times to see, on average, how well your code does.

3. Scoring / Alerts

When you reach a new spot on the leader board you are awarded points. Individuals wins mean almost nothing, it's only when you defeat a higher ranked opponent that you get points.

If someone else manages to beat you, you are sent an alert so that you can go review that persons code.

Overall I think this is a very cool idea and I hope to see it evolve into something a bit more like what I described above!

Looks like Scalatron.

http://scalatron.github.com/

RoboNode looks pretty cool although it's limited in the same way Scalatron is limited, one language.

I'd love to hack one up that is based on a network API so that the bots could be written in any language.

Something similar but based on the Terrarium.net game: http://terrariumjs.wiselabs.net

Cool factor: the blue ball teleports your creatures to other people's terrariums to get them to reproduce and invade.

I love it:

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There's a thriving genre of such programs. Robot Battle[1], Robocode[2] (which was inspired by Robot Battle) and RealTimeBattle[3] are probably the best known. The latter has the nice property that it supports multiple languages.

The ur-program in the genre seems to be RobotWar[4], which inspired Robot Battle.

[1] http://www.robotbattle.com/

[2] http://robocode.sourceforge.net/

[3] http://realtimebattle.sourceforge.net/

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RobotWar