November 26th 2003
The final results of the November 2003 JROBOTS Challenge are published on the Challanges Page.
Finally one of the prizes awarded by Samuel was assigned. My compliments to Stately who won this month's Single tournament in the Cadets' League. Its author MUST contact Samuel on the javajousters mailing-list (http://www.onelist.com/group/javajousters) to send a valid email address and decide the best way to receive the prize.
During this month, two prizes were going to be awarded to the new winners of the Single and Double categories of the Cadets' League. Freshly printed new CND dollars banknotes for a total amount of 30$ for each category were the prize (CND=Canadian Dollar). Stately won the Single category but not the Double one because of another great performance of the old Jimbo, so he's going to receive only one of the prizes. I think that Samuel wants to reassign this month's prize again to new Double winners, but I'll wait a confirm on the mailing-list.
Anyway, Samuel already announced a new challenge for new players: the new winner of the Team Category will earn freshly printed 10 and 20 CND banknotes, that's the reason why the new tournament is also know as "A Magnificent Eight!". This month a great Berserk won. It is a new jrobot simply uploaded too soon. I'm really sorry for its author but no prizes were assigned to Team category this month. Anyway, Berserk earned a promotion to the Veterans' League and I'm sure it's going to make great things there.
Even this month some old jrobots are promoted to the Veterans' League while others come back to the Cadets' one and there are very good news: The prizes awarded by Samuel favoured great enhancements in the level of new entries and finally we have new strong jrobots to play with.
The jrobots promoted to the Veterans' League are:
- Stately, the new winner of the Single category prize "Lonely Ranger!"
- Berserk, the new winner of the Team category
- Snutteplutt, a new jrobot with good performances in Team category
- Jimbo, the winner of the Double category, an old jrobot but still very valid
- then follow the well known MarukoV4 and Vampire.
The confirmed jrobots are Cruel, Ajax and Edge, new jrobots with poor performances: Their author have room for a lot of improvements. Then follow the well known Leech.
Finally, the removed jrobots are RoboTard and Cuddles. Their percentages were too low to make them survive.
Now let's move to the Veterans' side. I must confirm that a new STAR is born
and its name is Starkle! It almost reached the great percentages of IonStorm and it made a serious attempt to stop the triple-victories sequence of the best jrobot of all times. Something like that already happened when Tango appeared months ago... it's a great event for the game and I'm sure that the December tournament is going to show other surprising results.
The other confirmed veterans are: DOOM, a strong new competitor, Tango, Headhunter, KillerBees and Mouth, while IonStorm got another triple-victory.
The degraded jrobots are: bohan, Dragon, DeadDuck, Ciaky, DirtyCoward, Touche, Phalanx, Platoon, Shark. The novices of the next tournament will have a lot of jrobots to play with.
Now some news and an explanation. I'm going to remove the class size limit for the game. Now the limit for Java class files is 20Kb and the strongest jrobots reached that limit a long time ago. To make life easier to players, there is no limit now except the physical limit for Java class files that I think it's fixed to 64Kb. If anyone has valid motivation to remove not the limit, send them to the mailing-list. Thank you!
Finally the explanation: The players may have read on the mailing-list a discussion about a bug in the on-line arena. That bug was caused by a mistake of mine in translating the new JROBOTS arena written by Samuel (thank you again Samuel!) that includes features for a better management of the matches. He wrote the off-line version of the new arena and I rewrote it for the on-line applet but... I completely forgot an important check introduced by Samuel, so the matches forced to break gave unpredictable results. Such a bug assigned a victory at random when visitors exited the page of the on-line applet, so strongest jrobots were penalized in their percentages in favour of weaker jrobots. The problem was more evident in the Veteran's placing list because of the low percentages of IonStorm.
When Samuel found my bug, he immediately fixed it and now both the arenae (on-line and off-line) work the same way. I decided not to reset the matches played during the first week of the tournament, because their number was not so high. During the last weeks of the tournament, the matches were regular as the percentages of IonStorm testify.
I'm really sorry for what happened and the next tournament will be regular from the beginning.
Now you can upload your jrobots to win the December 2003 JROBOTS Challenge (December 3rd-31st 2003) aka A Magnificent Eight!
Remember that the new winner of the Team Mode will receive freshly printed new CND banknotes for a total amount of 30$. Read past news for more details.
November 5th 2003
The November 2003 JROBOTS Challenge starts now.
Remember that you can send your robots even in the course of the challenge, so you're never too late. To read the results in real-time simply visit the Veterans' Battle Applet page or the Cadets' Battle Applet page.
Remember also that Samuel funds some prizes for winners in the CADETS' category. The prizes assigned for this month are:
NOVEMBER prize aka "Double Duet" for new CADETS' League players
The new winner of the Double Mode will receive freshly printed Canadian dollars banknotes for a total amount of 30$.
OCTOBER prize aka "Lonely Ranger" for new CADETS' League players
The new winner of the Single Mode will receive freshly printed Canadian dollars banknotes for a total amount of 30$. This prize was not assigned in the october tournament and, as you can read, now it is even doubled!
Read past news for more details and... good luck!
