RobotWar

The premise is that in the distant future of 2002, war was declared hazardous to human health, and now countries settled their differences in a battle arena full of combat robots. The player selects multiple robots which do battle in an arena until only one is left standing. The robots do not have direct knowledge of the location or velocity of any of the other robots; they only use radar pulses to deduce distance, and perhaps use clever programming techniques to deduce velocity. There is no way for the player to actually take part in the battle.

• Title — RobotWar • Programmer — Silas Warner • Publisher — Muse Software • Released — 1981 • Platform — Apple II, PLATO • Genre — Programming

The robots' language is similar to BASIC. There are 34 registers that can be used as variables or for the robots' I/O functions. An example program from the game manual is: SCAN AIM + 5 TO AIM; MOVE GUN AIM TO RADAR; SEND RADAR PULSE LOOP IF RADAR < 0 GOSUB FIRE; TEST RADAR GOTO SCAN FIRE 0 - RADAR TO SHOT; FIRE THE GUN ENDSUB The robot with this program sweeps its radar in a circle, firing off radar pulses, and when it detects another robot, fires a projectile set to explode at the correct distance as estimated by the radar pulse. This particular robot stands still throughout the entire battle, as it never assigns any number to its movement registers.