Robot Programming
The robots' language was similar to BASIC. There were 34 registers that could be used as variables or for the robots' I/O functions. An example program from the game manual follows:
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 ENDSUBThe robot with this program would sweep its radar in a circle, firing off radar pulses, and when it detected another robot in this way, would fire a projectile, set to explode at the correct distance as estimated by the radar pulse. This particular robot would stand still throughout the entire battle, as it never assigned any number to its movement registers.
In a way, RobotWar was a multiplayer game, in that different people could program their robots, then copy all the robots' source code to the same floppy disk and load all the robots to fight in the arena.
The game was sold in cassette tape and floppy disk versions.
Read more about this topic: RobotWar
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