The JROBOTS SDK 4.0 alpha is now available. You can download it from the Downloads Page. Send us any comment or bug report about this new version. After a few days of on-line testings, the new Arena is going to substitute the old one in the next tournament.
Enjoy the new features!

• During the next week a new JROBOTS SDK is going to be available on the downloads page. It contains a lot of improvements made by Samuel (the same Samuel that provides the prizes for the tournaments) and a more clear interface by Alan Lund (the author of IonStorm). The new arena is going to be more reliable especially on the management of disabled jrobots. For example, jrobots that throw exceptions loose immediately the match and we don't need to wait for the timeout any more. The same will happen to players who don't compile their sources with the "-target 1.1" option, when the matches are played on the Java virtual machine of the Internet Explorer (still based on the version 1.1 of the JVM).
  "Virtual Clock Generator" apart, Samuel's improvements are the first changes to the core simulator of JROBOTS since 1999!

• The results of the October 2003 JROBOTS Challenge are published on the Challanges Page. A few comments follow.

  This month a first prize was going to be awarded to the new winner of the Single Mode. Freshly printed new 5 and 10 dollars CND banknotes were the prize (CND=Canadian Dollar). Unfortunately no new players placed their jrobots at the first position of the Cadets' League: the winner was the old DeadDuck. I think that the owner of the prizes wants to reassign them again to new Single winners, but I'll wait for a confirm on the mailing list.
  In the meantime, there is a new challenge for new players: the new winner of the Double Mode will earn a freshly printed 20 CND banknote. This month won my old Dragon, but I hope that a new player is going to win the next month tournament.
  Remember that during the December Challenge the new winner of the Team Mode will earn freshly printed new 10 and 20 CND banknotes!

  The Cadets' tournament demonstates that a bunch of jrobots are too strong for the Cadets' League, but past tournaments showed that they are too weak for the Veterans' League. The jrobots promoted are: DeadDuck, bohan, Dragon, Ciaky, Phalanx, Platoon, Shark, Touche and DirtyCoward. I expect that most of them (especially mine) will be back at the end of the month.
  Then the confirmed jrobots are: Ajax, RoboTard, Leech and Cruel. I hope that their authors can improve them to try a future promotion.
  Finally, the removed jrobots are: FoxFire, Awoe, Looser and Raven. Their percentages were to low to make them survive.

  On the Veterans' side there are two great confirms: DOOM and Starkle. Now they are real veterans and I think they are going to stay there for a long time. A great news is that the author of Starkle wants to share the source of his creature with other people. I don't think it's a good idea during tournaments with prizes for newcomers: I forsee a lot of Starkle clones in the Cadets' arena, but we can discuss the topic on the mailing list. Anyway, thank you "hats" for your jrobot!
  The other confirmed jrobots are, as usual: IonStorm (triple victory again), Tango, Headhunter, KillerBees and Mouth. The degraded jrobots are: Vampire, MarukoV4 and Jimbo. The latter are again too weak for the Veterans' Leangue, but too strong for the Cadets' one. It seems that there is the need for an intermediate league ;-)

  Now you can upload your jrobots to win the November 2003 JROBOTS Challenge (November 5^th-26^th 2003) aka Double Duet!

  Remember that the new winner of the Double Mode will receive one freshly printed new 20 CND banknote. Read past news for more details.

The October 2003 JROBOTS Challenge starts now.
Remember that you can send your robots even in the course of the challenge, so you're never too late. To read the results in real-time simply visit the Veterans' Battle Applet page or the Cadets' Battle Applet page.

Remember also that Samuel funds some symbolic prizes for winners in the CADETS' category. The prize assigned for this month is:
OCTOBER prize aka "Lonely Ranger" for new CADETS' League players
The new winner of the Single Mode will receive freshly printed new 5 and 10 dollars CND banknotes.
Read past news for more details and... good luck!