- Core War
- Programming Games
- P-Robots
P-Robots is a Pascal programming game inspired by CROBOTS and released in 1988 by David Malmberg. The object of the game is to write a program in a subset of Pascal control a battle robot. Up to four robots take part in a mêlée battle with the survivor being declared winner.
Specification
Programs are written in a subset of Pascal and control a robot using the following functions:
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
drive(direction,speed) | Set the direction (0..359) and speed (0..100) for the robot to move |
speed | Return speed (0..100) |
loc_x | Return x-coordinate (0..999) |
loc_y | Return y-coordinate (0..999) |
scan(direction,resolution) | Scan in direction (0..359) with resolution (0..10) and return range |
cannon(direction,range) | Fire missile in direction (0..359) with range (0..700) |
damage | Return damage sustained (0..100) |
time | Return the current time measured in CPU cycles (0..32767) |
distance(x1,y1,x2,y2) | Return the distance between two points in the arena |
angle_to(x,y) | Return the angle to a point in the arena |
random(limit) | Return a random number (0..limit) |
sqrt(n) | Return the square root of n |
sin(n) | Return the sine of n° (0..359) |
cos(n) | Return the cosine of n° (0..359) |
arctan(n) | Return the arctangent of n |
Robots battle in a 1000×1000 metre arena. A robot is damaged when it's successfully attacked or involved in a collision and destroyed when its damage counter reaches 100%.
The complete specification is available in the P-Robots manual.
Version 3.0+ adds new features including bombs, cloaking device, shields and teams. Details are in the P-Robots 4.0 manual.
Software
P-Robots was published as shareware by Softworks for DOS and the Mac in 1988, priced $20. Registered users received a copy of the source code. In 1994 P-Robots was relicensed as freeware.
- P-Robots 4.0 (May 1994) - p-robo40.zip, manual, source
- P-Robots 3.1 (May 1993) - p-robo31.zip, manual
- P-Robots (November 1988) - p-robots.zip, manual
