Archived talk:Main Page 20110903

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Forum For Discussion

Does anyone else think that Wiki Discussion pages are an absolutely terrible way to communicate? It's fine for individual page feedback, but has anyone considered hosting a normal chat forum for Robocode? Skotty 00:08, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think they're terrible, but I am curious to check out something like LiquidThreads, which might be a good fit with the large role that discussion has on this wiki/in this community. --Voidious 02:09, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

IMO, Wiki Discussion is very good, because it allow very easy comment structuring, and very flexible way of communicating. I personally think that User_talk page should be use for thread not related to other topics. The only bad thing IMO is that is is not newbie-friendly (more like newbie-enemy). --Nat Pavasant 06:02, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Why is the "Robo Wiki" icon in the upper left corner so small?

The headline speaks for itself. --Awesomeness 21:08, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

So small? It seems just right to me really. --Rednaxela 21:56, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Because it is the same size as the old wiki =) » Nat | Talk » 23:41, 3 May 2009 (UTC)


http://www.csdgn.org/files/images/robowiki2.png

I have a solution to this! I was bored so I drew this (though it is probably too big!). I realize I forgot the radar, but to be honest, from this angle it would block to much however. Just consider it a drone! --Chase 21:50, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

You could just said that it is a Droid instead of saying that you forgot them... --Nat Pavasant 13:36, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
I like it - it looks good :) on the current one you cant really read wiki because its blocked but this looks really good :) --Exauge ◊ talk 14:51, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
I suppose I could have. On another note, I notice that some of my shadows are wrong/inconsistent. --Chase 15:30, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
Looks really nice! I like it. Of course I have a soft spot for the old one, but this one's also very true to the original idea. And the text is way more readable. --Voidious 00:05, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

http://www.csdgn.org/files/images/robowiki3.png

I fixed some of my shadow work in this. I made the wording a bit more visible as well (by adding more depth to it). I also made the book lines heavier. — Chase-san 06:25, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

http://www.csdgn.org/files/images/robowiki_thumb.png

Obviously this is to big to go in the corner, but I made a reduced size one. — Chase-san 06:28, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Was a decision ever reached on this, because I am considering redrawing this (but better). — Chase-san 20:13, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm up for changing it and I don't think anybody objected. Just fell off my radar - sorry! I think my only criticism of that first one is that the "IKI" is a little smushed together. --Voidious 20:20, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Well (I personally think) my art has improved considerably since I drew this. — Chase-san 21:31, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

If nothing else, I will go over it with a pen and clean up the line work. — Chase-san 21:38, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

http://www.csdgn.org/files/images/robowiki2_small.png

Here is the new version. It's a bit cleaner, though it doesn't have as much character (because it is so much cleaner). — Chase-san 02:01, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Nice stuff, looks pretty good to me :) --Rednaxela 06:04, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

So are we going to use it? — Chase-san 16:12, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Just updated it. I think it looks really nice, it really changes the look of the page a lot more than I expected. Let me know if anyone sees it looking weird anywhere - I'm not exactly a CSS guru. :-P Nice job, Chase! --Voidious 17:40, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

You just change the $wgLogo, right? I don't think it would affect the page at all. I does feel weird at first, I agree. --Nat Pavasant 15:18, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, but the new one is taller so I had to move the sidebar down a bit. Took me a while to track down the right CSS to change. =) --Voidious 15:22, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

What about the favicon? --Nat Pavasant 10:59, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Does robo rumble work?

hi im new to robocode, been doing it as part of my uni course and i was wondering, is it possible to run roborumble at home anymore because ive follwed the instructions and none of the battles ive been doing have been uploading.... Quietus 15:47, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Yep! It sure as he heck still works! The thing is, the rumble.fervir.com server has been kind of broken for a while. You need to point your client at this URL instead now (See here for more information). There's new fanciness in that server too :) --Rednaxela 19:48, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Article count

A couple questions about the article count (after having some trouble Googling for answers). First, why isn't it updating automatically? Is that something I can trigger to update, or add to the "job queue", does anyone know? (Notice if you edit / preview it is higher than 43, which it reads on the main page right now.) Second, what qualifies as an "article"? Is there a minimum length that a page needs to be (other than not being a user or talk page) to qualify as an article? --Voidious 19:56, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

The main page just updated, it now says 48 articles. Also, the statistics page says that there are 145 pages total, but it is excluding, "talk pages, pages about RoboWiki, minimal 'stub' pages, redirects, and others that probably don't qualify as content pages." --AaronR 20:00, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

According to the MediaWiki wiki (now that's a mouthful), the main page will come up to date as soon as its HTML cache is invalidated, at which point all of the templates, etc. will be transcluded again. Don't know if that helps... --AaronR 20:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Font size

Just out of curiosity, why is the font size so large here compared to, say, Wikipedia? I know, I know, it's the same as the old wiki's font, but that wiki didn't have a sidebar. --AaronR 07:04, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Primarily because I thought "x-small" was just too small, and yes, it was also just sooo much smaller than the old wiki. I also figured that with the skins options, we could easily give people more choices to choose their own style, anyway. I will confess that tiny fonts for the sake of sleeker designs is a major pet peeve of mine. :-P --Voidious 07:12, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Smileys :-)

I would be relly nice if we could somehow support smile, e.g. just as simple as stating: 

[[Image:HappySmiley.png]]

--Flemming N. Larsen 09:04, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons has a whole section of GFDL'd or public domain smileys (look at the link at the bottom for more). I don't really see the point though. If you want to upload them and use them, feel free, but I'll stick with =) on the wiki. --AaronR 01:21, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Old wiki

The old wiki is not working (error 500), and so my roborumble client (it cannot find the list of partecipants), but i see many client is uploading. What is your solution? --Lestofante 10:35, 1 Dic 2008 (UTC)

The clients currently running are just using the last copy of the participants list they downloaded from the old wiki. I emailed PEZ a bit ago and got a reply that he'll look into it so hopefully the old wiki will be up again in not too long. If that ends up taking longer than expected though, we could update/fix the participants page on the new wiki and point clients at that instead. (Note: Don't point clients at the one on the new wiki just yet, it's out of date and such. It needs to be copied over from a downloaded copy of the list from the old wiki) --Rednaxela 12:00, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

maybe we can drop definitely the old wiki for roborumble client, or better every ramble server can implements it's own participants list, maybe integrated with general wiki list --Lestofante 15:13, 1 Dic 2008 (UTC)

I'd agree that migrating to using the new wiki participants list would be good, though I think some more veteran wikiers/rumblers than myself should give their input before any such switch is made 'official'. As far as keeping a participants list with the rumble server, well, there's only one working rumble server at the moment so I'm not sure what good that would do, and furthermore multiple rumble server would be a bad thing I think becacuse it would divide the processing power that goes towards making the battles. --Rednaxela 17:47, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

That's right, then I thing the server have to had a mirror of the wiki's official participants list, so in this case we can continue run our client, simple we cannot modify the list (if the two list are not synchronize together) --Lestofante 21:49, 1 Dic 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, the real problem is getting the participants list from the currently-erroring wiki. The RR client has no problem parsing the new wiki format. I may be able to get that from the RoboWiki server when I get home (if it isn't fixed before then).

The other issue we might encounter in the future would be when we move this wiki to robowiki.net, and we have RR clients pointing to testwiki.roborumble.org, but I don't think forwarding that URL and/or having people update their clients would be a big issue. I'm glad you contacted PEZ about the old wiki's current problems, I've been out of touch for at least a week...

--Voidious 19:03, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay to mention it here as well for people who haven't been checking up on it... The old wiki is back up! --Rednaxela 18:43, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

mailer error

I'm trying to confirm my user e-mail, but I still get "mailer error". I've tried 3 different and working address... and there is a way for automatically sign the edits? --Lestofante 22:00, 1 Dic 2008 (UTC)

I couldn't get the mailer to work either, but you can easily sign your edits using --~~~~. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cheatsheet for more tricks. --Darkcanuck 03:13, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

InterWiki Links

Who have fully access to this server apart from David Alves? I want both my thai wiki and this wiki a inter-languages link. Please look here for more detailed. » Nat | Talk » 15:16, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I have full access, or at least I do if I can remember the password. =) I'll see about logging in and taking a look at the InterWiki stuff. Sorry it took so long to respond about this. --Voidious 14:50, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey Voidious, I believed that the SQL will take less than 1 seconds to copy/past/execute. Plus login/connecting time I think this can be accomplished within a minute so please do asap (or I must say NOW). » Nat | Talk » 16:19, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey Nat - I will add the InterWiki link because I'd like to support your efforts to start a Thai Robocode community and wiki. But I really don't appreciate being commanded to do that (or much of anything, really), and especially to do so "NOW". Please keep in mind the RoboWiki's only rule: "Pretty please be polite." --Voidious 18:48, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Cool, I read up on the InterWiki stuff, added your Thai wiki to the database, and posted a link on the main page. As I can't read Thai, please make sure that looks right and edit it if necessary. =) --Voidious 22:54, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for that rude. But anyways, thank you very much. The link at main page is correct. » Nat | Talk » 01:37, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Database error

I didn't know where to put this, but here seems like a decent spot. All my posts are getting this message today (4 times, probably 5 with this one), the posts are still uploaded but the message is: 

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software.
The last attempted database query was:
(SQL query hidden)
from within function "SearchMySQL4::update".
MySQL returned error "126: Incorrect key file for table './wikidb/searchindex.MYI'; try to repair it (localhost)".

I don't know if localhost is meant to be from mine point of view, or the server's. Maybe someone else is getting the same messages, I haven't tried to logout/in, because I just thought of that. --zyx 23:47, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Just like when you go to the mechanic, I didn't get the message this time. Another piece of information may be that all the other 4 posts where at Talk:PwnBot‎, so maybe the problem relies in that page. --zyx 23:49, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
I found some mentions of people hitting this, and it sounds like a "repair table" SQL command is the remedy. I've run that now, so hopefully it's fixed. Can you let me know if it happens again? Thanks, --Voidious 00:31, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Just got it again, and again in the same page Talk:PwnBot‎. --zyx 20:45, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. I saw it as well when I posted the downtime note. I'm guessing the server crashing corrupted the searchindex table -- I'll rerun the "repair table" and post here when I do. I'll also be backing up the database very soon. --Voidious 20:52, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
Is it... My fault?! I created that page. It seems whenever I change a page I get it too. It doesn't matter what page I go to. Also, for the majority of today, (for me at least) it seems your server has been down. I've been unable to connect. --Awesomeness 22:04, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
It's not your fault, and I saw it on another page too. The server went down for a while as of last night, still not sure what happened, but glad it's back up. I've rerun the "repair table" command, so I think that database error will go away for now. --Voidious 22:06, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
I now know why I can't access the wiki (and roborumble.org) yesterday. Night there, afternoon here. » Nat | Talk » 00:25, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

SourceForge.net Community Choices Awards

http://sourceforge.net/images/cca/cca_nominate.png

Please nominate Robocode to SourceForge.net Community Choices Awards!
Nominate Robocode

Anyone mind to put this to MediaWiki:Sitenotice or front page? I not sure if I can post to front page. » Nat | Talk » 10:21, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Please nominate Robocode in category of "Best Project for Academia" and "Most Likely to Change the Way You Do Everything". If you nominate to another category, please post here so other robocoder can nominate in same categories (note that you can nominate in multiple categories) Nevertheless, please nominate! » Nat | Talk » 11:26, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Special:Disambiguations

Do anyone know why the Special:Disambiguations has spammy report? » Nat | Talk » 11:23, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Image Uploads

It looks like the image uploads folder is not set as writable to the wiki. Is this expected to change? -- Synapse 05:27, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Haven't test yet. If this is true, I think this problem cause due the upgrading of MediaWiki. Voidious, check it please? Another note to Voidious, MediaWiki/1.15 just release =) » Nat | Talk » 13:29, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Not sure why it stopped working, but I'll take a look at the image uploads and upgrading MediaWiki this afternoon. (And making a mental note to test that whenever I upgrade. =)) --Voidious 15:41, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Fixed the uploading issue and upgraded MedaWiki to 1.15. Enjoy. =) --Voidious 20:10, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

/wiki/PageName-style url

Recently this day I noticed that the /wiki/PageName-style URL is now work. Voidious, why don't you set the $wgArticlePath = "/wiki/$1" in LocalSettings.php? And I wonder why the old server at 174.132.4.195 now has new wiki code, and available in both /wiki/PageName and ?PageName style (but not /w/index.php?title=PageName style). What's going on? » Nat | Talk » 12:56, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Syntax Highlighting

It would be great if we could have syntax highlighting for code snippets. This would make code snippets easier to read. Currently, if I want to read a code snippet from the wiki, I would copy and paste it into my favourite text editor.

Wikipedia itself seems to use SyntaxHighlight GeSHi.—

Duyn 14:56, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

User:Voidious/RoboWiki_To-Do --Nat Pavasant 13:41, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that's been on my to-do list for a while, I'll try to get it up and running soon. Can't be too tough. =) --Voidious 16:12, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Favicon

I just noticed that the new Robowiki doesn't have a favicon. This is easily remedied by copying http://old.robowiki.net/favicon.ico so that it is accessible at http://robowiki.net/favicon.ico --Skilgannon 18:00, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Will do. --Voidious 16:12, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Robocode on Wikipedia

Well, wikipedia:Robocode article is just challenged for reference, as well as a original research. Please help it by adding reference. --Nat Pavasant 15:09, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Honestly, I believe many things on the wikipedia article, at least 2/3rds of the page, just plain don't belong on Wikiedia, due to valid reasons. In fact I'm not sure anything beyond the overview and the first two sections belong, given how Wikipedia's 'original research' and 'notability' criteria apply to such sections. Even those sections which do make sense to keep to desperately need citations. Essentially, I don't feel the sections added by PEZ fit wikipedia's criteria for what belongs. So... I think it does deserve to be challenged for good reason. I don't have time to improve what should stay though. --Rednaxela 16:39, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I'll make more comments on the Wikipedia talk page, but I agree it needs a lot of cleanup and I'm willing to help out with that. I half agree with Rednaxela. The overview and first 2 sections are fine and neutral. The rest could use a lot of cleaning up, but I don't think it all needs just to be axed. Some editing down / revising / adding citations should do the trick. (I think the RoboWiki is a "reliable source"? If not, I don't know what is.) --Voidious 19:03, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, while I would personally consider Robowiki a "reliable source" for my own purposes, it seems to me it violates some of what is noted on Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published_sources, in particular how it notes "open wikis" among other things as "largely not acceptable". Also, note the "no original research" policies, and consider that much of the purpose of Robowiki is for "original research". There is a significant difference between a source one trusts, and a source that fits Wikipedia's rules. --Rednaxela 01:54, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
Hmm, thanks. I really don't know much about Wikipedia's policies, but just starting to read up on it now. In that case, you are probably right that a lot of stuff needs to just be axed... --Voidious 13:46, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

"Robocode Guidebook"

Migrated to Talk:Robocode Guidebook

RoboCode Chat / IM

So it is to my understanding that currently the only real way for robocoders to talk is on talk pages on this wiki so I had this idea... what if we had an IM type web chat system for Robocoders to talk :) within a few months i could probably get a website set up to do that and it would use the open-source AJAX project. What do you all think of the idea? --Exauge 00:33, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I think we have an (deserted) IRC channel (or not?). But actually I do chat with some Robocoder through GTalk and e-mail. --Nat Pavasant 00:38, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Seems like a lot of work. =) Some of us have each other on IM. I use my handle on AIM and my handle at gmail for GTalk/Jabber. (But my AIM is set so you can't see my status if I don't have you as a buddy.) We used to have oldwiki:ContactInfo, but there's no current page with that kind of info. --Voidious 00:41, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi, anyways I've started working on a Robocode talk page and it's getting to be pretty sweet ;) I can probably have it finished in a few weeks (maybe sooner) and anyways if you like it you will all be very welcome to use it and if it's popular enough I might purchase a domain name for it :) and if not, well it's a good way for me to practice my website building skills :) anyways back to studying for tomorrow's exams lol :S --Exauge

Well, personally anyway, if were to have a robocode live chat place, I'd strongly prefer it be an IRC channel (i.e. on Freenode?). Mostly because I always have an IRC client running anyway, and those without an IRC client can still sign in via a web page (i.e. [1] and [2]). Also, IRC is probably about the most mature system for such things anyway, and it's nearly maintain free to maintain a channel. --Rednaxela 04:03, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Wall Avoidance

moved to Talk:DustBunny...

Walking to the center of the wall

Well, i'm trying to make a Robot that goes to one of the walls, walk to the center of it an then start to circulate the entire Field, touching the center of each wall.

Anyway, I'm having problems to take the Robot to the center of one of the walls. That's what i'm doing: 

   package MyRobots;
   import robocode.*;
   import java.awt.*;

   public class Walle extends AdvancedRobot
   {
       double moveAmount;
       int miss = 0, hit = 0;

       public void run() {
       
           moveAmount = Math.max(getBattleFieldWidth(), getBattleFieldHeight());
       
           setBodyColor(Color.black);
           setGunColor(Color.orange);
           setRadarColor(Color.yellow);
           setScanColor(Color.black);
           setBulletColor(Color.orange);
       
           turnLeft(getHeading() % 90);
           ahead(moveAmount);
       
           turnGunRight(90);
           turnRight(90);
       
           if((getY() + getWidth()/2) == getBattleFieldHeight() || (getY() - getWidth()/2) == 0) ahead(getX() - (getBattleFieldWidth()/2));
           if((getX() + getHeight()/2) == getBattleFieldWidth() || (getX() - getHeight()/2) == 0) ahead(getY() - (getBattleFieldHeight()/2));
           while(true) {
           }
   }

The problem is obviously with the 2 'ifs', but I really can't get it. Thanks for any help!

getX() & getY() methods returns double value and you cannot compare them using ==, use something like this 

  epsilon = 0.0001; // or another small value
  if (Math.abs((getY() + getWidth()/2) - getBattleFieldHeight()) < eplsilon) {
      ahead(getX() - (getBattleFieldWidth()/2));
  }

  // or
  if (robocode.util.Utils.isNear(getY() + getWidth()/2, getBattleFieldHeight())) {
      ahead(getX() - (getBattleFieldWidth()/2));
  }

And it's better to ask questions like this on yours page --Jdev 16:21, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Strategy

So I'm in high school and I'm in a first year Java class. Right now our project is to create a robot in robocode. The rules are the each battle will be fought with 3 to 4 players, the final battle will be 1 on 1, and we aren't allowed to use Advance Robot. There's so many opions in Robocode that I have no clue what's the best strategy going into this. Help!!!

Thanks.

The class JuniorRobot might work well for what you are doing. For your robot just make a class extending JuniorRobot. It could be helpful to override onScannedRobot() and perform actions in there. Also be sure to check out the Radar page and try to implement one of those radar locks because without a decent radar system your robot will be seriously limited. Just spinning the radar might work OK though. ex turnRadarRight(Double.POSITIVE_INFINITY); Also be sure to check out all the tutorials on this site. --Exauge ◊ talk 02:56, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Well... don't get hit. :-) My advice to get started would be:

  • Check out the sample bots first, learn how and why they work.
  • Try to beat all the sample bots.
  • I'd also check with your teacher about using code from the RoboWiki / internet. There's plenty of code and tutorials available, but it's up to your teacher if you're allowed to use that code (even if the code's license says it's ok).
  • A page like Melee Strategy should be good to get the strategy gears turning.

Good luck!

--Voidious 03:33, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Question Forum

Is there a question forum or something of the sort where people can ask random questions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Starhammy (talk • contribs)

No, but actually you can ask on your talk page. (I forgot to welcome you properly, so it's my bad you don't know where to ask) --Nat Pavasant 12:53, 29 December 2010 (UTC)


I got an email from some website (itbhu.ac.in). Apparently an Indian college is hosting a "CodeFest" tournament for about 730 something USD (35000 Indian Rupees, it says), and it's an extension of Robocode; it has different modes including Capture the Flag, and it adds walls to the battlefield itself. My main concern: is it safe to download, ie. it has no viruses or trojan horses whatsoever? --AWOL 20:34, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't know, but the first prize is only 15000, e.g. about 300 USD. The rest is for second, runner up, stuff like that. — Chase-san 23:05, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm rather confident it's safe. It is hosted at a well reputed Indian university, and the event seems to have some notable partners. I'll point this out though... it appears to be using a build of the "custom-battlefields-workspace" branch of Robocode, which hasn't kept up to date with the main Robocode changes since version 1.7.1.4. This means all known bugs in Robocode 1.7.1.4 likely apply, and some of them are rather... serious... for a competition (i.e. a teleport bug, and a kill-other-robot-threads bug) --Rednaxela 00:20, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
And also a lot of security vulnerabilities in that branch... --Nat Pavasant 12:53, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
I've been playing around with it for the last couple days and it's seems to be just a different version of Robocode. Totally safe so far. Like Rednaxela said, it's just a reworked copy of the custom battlefield branch. I will say this, it's been a lot of fun working on how to detect objects in the battlefield... --KID 20:58, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Main Page overhaul

I've been thinking the Main Page needs a serious overhaul. I'll probably experiment at User:Voidious/Main Page soon, and anyone else is of course free to do the same. Some of my thoughts apply to the wiki more generally, as well.

  • Rednaxela commented to someone recently about how discussion-based this wiki community is. We've also been looking at LiquidThreads because of that. We should probably point this out. I know I never visit Wikipedia's Recent Changes... I wonder how many people miss out on the community aspect of the RoboWiki?
  • Current events stuff needs to be removed or updated.
  • I don't think we need to list every Challenge. Maybe 2-3 of the recent ones and then links to the categories (which themselves could be polished a bit).
  • I think the "Building a Bot" section is really important. It's not bad right now, but could be better. We should probably link to more of the Robocode docs stuff. Radar is the 2nd link and goes to a very detailed page, but Targeting and Movement are not as newbie friendly.
  • Would be good to link to specific details about development tools - like Utilities, RoboResearch, Robocode/Eclipse.
  • I think the layout and colors could also be revamped - especially that gray background is pretty drab.
  • Maybe more prominent and detailed info on the RoboRumble.
  • Is the @roborumble Twitter feed interesting enough to include? (Like the @robowiki tweets on the sidebar.)

I'm sure there's plenty more we could do, just some quick brainstorming for now...

--Voidious 19:01, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Another thing I think we need to note (especially to someone who is Wikipedia's editor) is that the RoboWiki is subpage-based, like we like Robocode/Getting_Start and not Getting_Start_to_Robocode. Just my two cents. --Nat Pavasant 10:59, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

About the spam...

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SpamBlacklist - See bottom of page for spamlists. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmEdit - Has our old math captcha type thing in it. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Bad_Behavior - No idea how this is suppose to work

That is all. :) — Chase-san 16:39, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

We already use ConfirmEdit in reCAPTCHA mode. I checked SpamBlacklist and it's blacklists don't match anything in the recent spam. Unsure about Bad_Behavior. Now, on the ConfirmEdit page, it does note that as of 2011 spammers seem to have gotten around reCAPTCHA by some means. --Rednaxela 18:18, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the trick is to do something custom so that the usual anti-antispam techniques don't work. Just something simple like "What is the next prime number after 7?" or so. --Skilgannon 08:40, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Maybe the spammer wait for autoconfirm to bypass the reCAPTCHA. Voidious, can we change the autoconfirm rules to four edits and ten days? And enable reCAPTCHA for every page edit in non-autoconfirm group? --Nat Pavasant 01:41, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Ah, good call! I forgot about the autoconfirm stuff. I just changed it to 4 edits/10 days. I checked and we only skip the captcha if you're autoconfirmed, bot, or sysop, so I think we're good. Hopefully we'll be seeing less spam now... --Voidious 01:56, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Since the spam was still coming in, I updated mediawiki, update the version of the ConfirmEdit extension, AND did some custom hacks to the ConfirmEdit extension to make it simultaneously require both reCAPTCHA and a LaTeX-rendered arithmetic question. Hopefully the combination of the two will keep this spam out for good :) --Rednaxela 06:06, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I thought Voidious still keeping it up to date..... Well, Red, you have checked permission of upload folder, right? Every time Void upgrade the MediaWiki, he needs to re-set the permission of upload folder. Good thought with Recent Change cleanup, though.

If the spam doesn't stop (as I believe many spambot can solve simple math image, I've face one), maybe you could have them solve equation ;-). --Nat Pavasant 07:54, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, it wasn't *very* behind in versions, but was still 1.15.x as opposed to 1.16.x. Yep, I made sure to check the permissions for that I believe. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if some spambots can solve ConfirmEdit's MathCaptcha as-is, but I'm doubting that many spambots are designed to handle both that and reCAPTCHA on the same page. If they do however, I'll keep that suggestion in mind :) --Rednaxela 13:57, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I took a look at the HTTP logs and the recent spambots have been jumping IP addresses, never solving the reCAPTCHA from the same IP that they requested it via. As a precaution, I further tweaked the captcha code to only accept answers as valid if they're from the same IP that was given that captcha. --Rednaxela 15:34, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

It seems like we're still getting a high number of users with odd names... might I suggest doing something custom? Doesn't have to be complicated, just "the next prime number after X" or "the next number in the sequence 3 6 9 ..." or some such. The trick is to make it not worth the time and effort for the spammer to implement a custom cracker just for robowiki. --Skilgannon 13:04, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I've looked at the http logs for the IP addresses of those recent users, and they appear to be real people. They browsed some pages, made an account for some reason, browsed some more pages. Btw, an interesting stat: On March 21st so far (based on the server's clock), there have been 76 failed signup attempts due to captcha, and none of them browse pages before the signup attempt. --Rednaxela 23:25, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Just seems odd to have 3 new people in 1 day =) Looks like it's stopped, nice work Red. I'm guessing the usage patterns would be a good attribute to block on if the spam ever picks up again in the future. --Skilgannon 12:16, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Glad I could help by starting a thread about the problem. I also like making custom security. One of my favorite methods is changing the URL to the php or module that does the add page/register, and making a fake captcha (hidden via CSS, putting `anything` in it means you fail the check). :P — Chase-san 15:31, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Robot Repository is down. Can't get any of the newer bots nor run the game efficiencty :) --Miked0801 16:00, 16 May 2011 (UTC) I can delete this entry when the issue is fixed...

It seems that Robot Repository has been down for about a week. Been trying to upload my newest bot but its not working. I need a place to upload my bot. --Khanguy 03:08, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, one idea for both of you would be to using Google Sites to upload your bot; I started doing that recently and found it to be much simpler and easier than uploading bots onto the repository.--CrazyBassoonist 03:45, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

The problem being, I can't get the latest bots for running the rumble nor competing against you CB :) --Miked0801 04:28, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

The Robocode repository has always been sort of unreliable, hence why I've never used it personally. Anyway, perhaps look for backups of the relevant bots here or here? If missing ones that are avaliable in neither, list the ones that are missing? --Rednaxela 11:57, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Neither of these locations contain CrazyBassoonists latest nanos, Fuatisha 1.1 nor Caligula 1.15. I'm also pretty sure they are missing a few of the other minis that were updated within the last 6 months as well. --Miked0801 14:57, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

If you go ahead and post your bot, I'll run a few battles to get some rankings. From now on none of my bots will be on the repository, but they won't make the switch until the next version.--CrazyBassoonist 20:12, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Is is possible to upload bots here on the wiki?--Khanguy 23:43, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Technically, yes. The issue we ran into is that it forces all filenames to start with upper case, while we all want the package name lower case. But we want the enforced on page titles, so we're kind of stuck. We could setup some kind of external file upload solution on the wiki server, just hasn't been a pressing issue because of other options, like Google Sites. --Voidious 00:59, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I can't post a new version of my bots because I have no way of testing against your current bots Bassoon :) And I can't really contribute without a complete set of bots for the tournament server stuff. Grrr. --Miked0801 01:25, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Hey Voidious, can you upload all the bots currently in the rumble to your dijitari site? or maybe another site. Its to help poor Miked here.--Khanguy 04:21, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Yep, here's every JAR in my RoboRumble directory, but I didn't take the time to remove multiple versions of older bots (I'm sure there are a ton). So probably want to cherry pick the ones you need. roborumble_bots.zip (69 MB) --Voidious 13:42, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Dl'ing now. Can't wait to see how things have changed :) --Miked0801 04:16, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't suppose you can make it so I do not have to fill out those two captcha boxes, unless you think I am going to spam everyone with external links ;-) — Chase-san 15:20, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I have a proposal: create new roles with skipcaptcha rights. Give this role to trusted users. This should help protect from spam and let others in peace. I know almost all long-time active accounts here are already admin with skipcaptcha rights... --Nat Pavasant 11:29, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Google Plus

A number of the other robocoders and I myself are now on Google plus (thanks to Voidious and others). So if any of the rest of you feel up to it, you could join us as well. PEZ, Voidious, Skilgannon, Darkcanuck, FNL, Pavel Šavara, Nat, and a few others (probably) are there. Just ask for an invite, I am sure one of us could help out. — Chase-san 02:49, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

I've never even heard of Google Plus. Guess I should check it out if I want to maintain my computer programmer guy credentials. > Update: I just checked it out. I tried to log in, but it says they have exceeded their current capacity, and it won't let me do anything. -- Skotty 02:53, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
It is actually last I checked invite only. I got the exact same message, but someone then invited me and I got right in. — Chase-san 02:58, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Kind of like Google Facebook? That was my first impression. Is there a Robocode group? If you can get me in, I'd join up. I suppose you would need my gmail address? -- Skotty 03:03, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
No idea how much like or unlike Facebook it is. Since I never used Facebook. See my latest post on the Talk:XanderCat page for a way to get your e-mail to us. — Chase-san 03:07, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Sent. If you don't get my email, check your spam folder. Subject line is "Skotty from Robocode". -- Skotty 03:14, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Alright, the reason that particular thing works is because bots are very simple and look for character matches, and the two things that it looks for in that thing are very common words/punctuation. So by doing that thing it breaks the bot from quickly scanning to find those things. Having to do that thing to the entire page to find just those things would be for the most case, not worth the bots time and effort as it is not often used as a way to conceal the thing we are talking about. — Chase-san 03:18, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
it will be cool, if someone invite me to google+:) my email: alexey dot jdev dot zhidkov at gmail dot com --Jdev 04:43, 14 July 2011 (UTC)
Thank you, Chase:) --Jdev 06:17, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Community website/Fan site?

Is there a community website or a fan website that allows robocode fans to communicate easier (such as a forum and a portal)? Or is the wiki's talk pages it?

I was wondering as Robocode's wiki is a little outdated (and a lot of resorces as well) in some areas and the Talk pages are difficult to navigate with (in my opinion). It's also difficult to see how big of an active community there is. --Ultimatebuster 21:25, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

The RoboWiki is pretty much the main community site. You're right that talk pages aren't ideal - we've been looking at the LiquidThreads extensions for MediaWiki, but haven't installed it yet. You can see Special:ActiveUsers to get an idea of active community size (it fluctuates a lot over time). There's indeed a lot of older content on the wiki, but I think most of the main important articles are pretty well up to date. Hope you stick around! =) --Voidious 21:39, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

EDIT CONFLICT Most of the active people (that I know of) hang around on google plus. But lacking groups you need to add everyone one by one on there (difficulty varies). Usually we watch the recent changes page for whats going on. If that seems like to much work, you can watch the robowiki twitter instead. I personally keep in contact with others via any number of messengers and so on. But if you're asking if most of us all frequent a forum, the answer as far as I know, is, no. The only semi-active group I know of is the yahoo one and that pales vs the wiki activity usually. We could probably set up forums, but it is unlikely that at least I would use them. — Chase-san 21:44, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

The Yahoo robocode group isn't very active. The robocode facebook group has someone ask the occaisonal question and fnl seems to be the only actuve user. What I was thinking of doing was to create a robocode/robowiki app (android for now), one that gets you the latest on the robocode community and allows you to submit questions as well as suggestions.Khanguy 05:13, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

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