Robocode/Robot Console

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This page will explain how to use the robot console for your robot.

The robot console

The robot console is a window that first and foremost contains information dedicated to an individual robot. The information is printed out by the robot itself or by the game engine. Information is printed by the robot by using out.println().

Information can also be printed out from the game about events that involves the robot. Such information will be prefixed with "SYSTEM: ", so you know that the information comes from Robocode itself.

If an exception occurs in a robot that is not caught/handled inside the robot, the game will catch the exception and dump the stack trace of the exception to the console. This is done to notify the developer of the robot that something went wrong inside the robot, and also where in robot it went wrong.

Thus, if your robot does not behave as you expect, it might be a very good idea to open the console window for your robot and see if the robot is causing an exception, is skipping turns, or something else.

Opening the robot console

In order to be able to open a console window of a robot, the robot must first be added to the current battle as participant.

The console window of a robot is opened by clicking on the button on the right side of the battle view, which contains the name of the robot you want to open the console window for:

Shows the Robot Console buttons on the right side of the battle view, where the mouse pointer is pointing at the console button for the sample robot named Corner

Using the the console window

When you have clicked on the button for the robot, the following console window will pop up:

Shows the Robot Console window for the sample robot named Corner

As you can see on the image above, the Robot Console window contains some buttons, which are described here:

  • OK ‒ Closes the window.
  • Clear ‒ Clears all the text printed in the console.
  • Kill Robot ‒ Artificially kills the robot.
  • Paint ‒ Enables painting for the robot, for graphical debugging.
  • Robocode SG ‒ Enables graphics compatibility mode with a robot coded for Robocode Swing Graphics.
  • Pause/Debug ‒ Pauses/resumes the game. Can be used when debugging.

See also

Robocode API

Beginner Guides

External Editors

.NET Robots

Links