TclRobots Version 2.0 Copyright 1994,1996 Tom Poindexter tpoindex@nyx.net WHAT IS TCLROBOTS? TclRobots is a programming game, similar to 'Core War'. To play TclRobots, you must write a Tcl program that con- trols a robot. The robot's mission is to survive a battle with other robots. Two, three, or four robots compete during a battle, each running different programs (or pos- sibly the same program in different robots.) Each robot is equipped with a scanner, cannon, drive mechanism. A single match continues until one robot is left running. Robots may compete individually, or combine in a team ori- ented battle. A tournament can be run with any number of robot programs, each robot playing every other in a round- robin fashion, one-on-one. A battle simulator is avail- able to help debug robot programs. The TclRobots program provides a physical environment, imposing certain game parameters to which all robots must adhere. TclRobots also provides a view on a battle, and a controlling user interface. TclRobots is strongly influenced by my 1985 game, CROBOTS. CROBOTS is based on writing robot control programs in C, and the entire environment is tightly coupled into a sin- gle program that contains a small C compiler, virtual stack-based CPU, multi-tasking scheduler, and execution environment. TclRobots instead is loosely coupled, uti- lizing separate Tcl wish interpreters for each robot. Communication between a robot and the TclRobots program is accomplished with Tk's send command. TclRobots requirements: a wish interpreter built from Tcl 7.4 and Tk 4.0. TclRobots uses the Tk "send" command - if your X server is insecure (xhost access list not empty), you will need a wish compiled with the "-DNO_TK_SECURITY" flag. Better yet, use "xauth" instead of "xhost." Availability: TclRobots (and Tcl/Tk, if you don't already have it) are available at the following locations: ftp://ftp.aud.alcatel.com/tcl/code/tclrobots-2.0.tar.gz ftp://ftp.smli.com/pub/tcl/tcl7.4.tar.Z ftp://ftp.smli.com/pub/tcl/tk4.0.tar.Z INSTALLATION AND DEMO - Edit the Makefile. All that is needed it the path of your wish executable, and the directory where you would like TclRobots installed. See the com- ments at the top of the Makefile. `make' to install. - run `tclrobots' from the directory where you unpacked the distribution. - In the Files listbox, Double-Click on the `samples' directory for sample individual robot programs or the `teams' directory for 2-on-2 team robot pro- grams. - Click on `Select All' - Click on `Run Battle'