About JS Robots
What is JS Robots?
It's a JavaScript reimagining of Tom Poindexter's seminal CROBOTS game. You program a script to control a robot and then put your robot up to fight against other CPU or human controlled robots each with various scripts!
Is this going to work in my browser?
Famous last words perhaps but it's worked in every browser I've tested it with. Namely the latest versions of:
- Chromium on Linux
- Firefox on Linux
- Opera on Linux
- Chrome on Windows
- Firefox on Windows
- Internet Explorer on Windows
- Opera on Windows
- Safari on Windows
- Dolphin Browser on Android (slow)
- Opera Mobile on Android (super slow)
Browsers vary wildy in their JavaScript performance and especially with HTML5 canvas. HTML5 audio performance varies most of all though, with some browsers not playing the sounds at all! (Though this might be because they are in WAV format...)
Release history
| Version | Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 0.91 | August 2017 | Removed PasteBucket and Twitter calls. Removed Zend Framework. Removed "Contact us" and "Legal" from About page. Published on GitHub as JS-Robots-2. |
| 0.9 | March 2012 | Site redesign using 960 grid system. HTML5 canvas and audio. Removed jQuery. Improved game control buttons. Improved game instructions. |
| 0.9 | June 2012 | Added PasteBucket publishing (and tweeting) option for winning human player scripts. |
| 0.9 | March 2012 | Site redesign using 960 grid system. HTML5 canvas and audio. Removed jQuery. Improved game control buttons. Improved game instructions. |
| 0.4gh | November 2011 | First version of JS Robots in GitHub. Essentially as v0.85 minus any Twitter functionality and packaged to work purely from local files in the browser. |
| 0.85 | October 2011 | Twitter hall of fame working again. It had stopped working since Twitter moved to oAuth only (which was a very long time ago!). |
| 0.8 | July 2011 | Mostly cosmetic / internal revamp.
|
| 0.75 | 4 August 2009 | Fixed start / stop button bug. Added Twitter hall of fame entry for winning players. |
| 0.7 | 2 August 2009 | First public version. Contains quick getaway and jitterbug bugs. |
TODO
- HTML5 canvas [done!]
- Concurrency, concurrency, concurrency! (Web Workers? NodeJS?)
- Some kind of sandbox for robot script development / debugging...?
Bugs
There's a pretty irritating bug which we call the quick getaway bug. Basically, if your robot's speed is zero due to colliding with another robot, then you need to drive() away as soon as possible in the code rather than waiting for the next iteration. See the presets for examples.
Possibly related to the above, there's also the jitterbug bug. A robot will occasionally jitter back and forth when in front of a wall or other robot.
Another irritating bug is that starting the game again after a stop or game win isn't perfect unfortunately. Best to reload the URL [fixed!]
Behind the site
- Cute robot icon as used for the game sprites and favicon is by Henning at the wonderful naioo.com blog. I really like this kind of "future cute" style!
- Icons on buttons and links are from the rather excellent Famfamfam icon sets
- Top left planet is a public domain image by NASA simulating what an ice age on mars might look like
- Bottom most image is a public domain image by NASA of an actual martian landscape
- Gradient between the above two images was knocked up by myself using HTML5 canvas (and Firefox's "Save Image As" capability on HTML5 canvases!)
- CSS3 stretches the martian landscape image to fit the browser width
- Sounds are from soungle.com which is a search engine for royalty free sound effects
- The robots and their weaponry are animated using HTML5 canvas
- The arena background is a colourised picture of a Google Mars snippet
- The site is laid out using 960 grid system
Other bits and bobs
The Programming Games Wiki is a very comprehensive review of programming games past and present. JS Robots is listed!
