Can i ask you to have a look at ....
Yes i rewrote most of the original stuff to be highly configurable. I'm a little unhappy with all the changes right now but i hope in the end it will pay off to have something really nice to run test beds. It's fairly easy to provide batch runnings with multiple dev versions. I just have to make the challenger input ',' separated and then it runs all challengers against the current challenge. Or maybe a input file where all challengers are included (linked to whatever challenge).
I guess i use RoboRunner in a sightly different manner right now. While writing on my bot i make a quick dev jar and let the runner make a couple of battles against my test bets. Therefor i can still make changes - and in the background the first results can show me if i was wrong or if i'm on the right track with my changes. That's why i wanted the processes alive. What i had in mind was having RoboRunner running infinitely and if a new version arrives he just grab it and runs the challenge against the new bot version . I also can switch the challenge on the run so if i think i need another view of my development state its just one switch to the console. I'm defiantly on your side of having RoboRunner making its stuff without maintainance. The console is just to have a tool to make changes if you think you have to. And beside of the config stuff its just a run command now.
The main reason because i switched to a communication protocol, is having the possibility to improve later versions with more fancy stuff like diagrams on certain battle states and such stuff. I don't know if you run some melee tests as well but for me its better to have just a couple of precise test beds rather than just let the challenger run against everyone above a certain level. I guess this will be more important if i go for an appropriate 1v1 strategy (someday :)).
About the custom scoring, its more custom battle field statistics for me. It's still one of my main targets for RoboRunner. Some of my statistics gave me a quite nice view of whats going on on the battle field and for what i should watch out. Like average field population (where are the most crowded spots and how was my survival at this spots) or bullets fired far away from me with more as 6 opponents on the field (how much did i catch a hit of these bullets and where would be a better place to stay). Yes its quite a bunch of other stuff to and most of it is just not worth it but, you know, sometimes you have to think strange.
