Hi,

The last post was done on 07-02-2003. Long time ago...

My love for this kind of game started when M$ introduced that .NET terrarium. But since .NET was new (and thus difficult), I just read what the purpose was.
In the mean time, RobotWars (that TV show with REAL robots) has been introduced in The Netherlands too, so I'm apparently not the only one who loves this kind of game.

Well back to software, I have read a lot of posts, and I must say that the first step should indeed be creating a working framework. The game should be turn-based, and the framework should be client-server. The client being the robot, and the server being the game where a client can register. The communication should be based on TCP/IP sockets.

Well, enough talk about concepts. I have only seen one post with a proposal for the framework and I thought: lemme post one too. So I started writing some OO code (C++) for the framework starting with the server, and two days later and a lot of sleep less I have a working multithreaded server accepting registrations from clients (read robots or creatures or whatever you would like to call them). The messages that are sent are structs (cf. the framework that was posted). The client starts with a connection and sends a registration command/struct. The server responds with an acknowledge command/struct.
The principle is that a client can send a command to the server only if the server sends a command first (except for the first registration command). You can interprete it like this: the server asks the client if he has something to send. This way, each client gets one turn and the server controls it.

But now I'm thinking: is this thread still active? Are people still interested in this project? So I'm NOT going to post the code yet, but wait until there is some response.

Also it would be too easy to look at the code and copy it. So I suggest you all start writing some code. Dig into threads and sockets and enjoy the trouble that comes along with it.
[Hmmm, I sound evil]

regards
Kurt