*****

During the next week a new JROBOTS SDK is going to be available on the
downloads page. It contains a lot of improvements made by Samuel (the
same Samuel that provides the prizes for the tournaments) and a more
clear interface by Alan Lund (the author of IonStorm). The new arena
is going to be more reliable especially on the management of disabled
jrobots. For example, jrobots that throw exceptions loose immediately
the match and we don't need to wait for the timeout any more. The same
will happen to players who don't compile their sources with the
"-target 1.1" option, when the matches are played on the Java virtual
machine of the Internet Explorer (still based on the version 1.1 of
the JVM).
"Virtual Clock Generator" apart, Samuel's improvements are the first
changes to the core simulator of JROBOTS since 1999!

*****

The results of the October 2003 JROBOTS Challenge are published on the
Challanges Page http://jrobots.cfxweb.net
A few comments follow.

This month a first prize was going to be awarded to the new winner of
the Single Mode. Freshly printed new 5 and 10 dollars CND banknotes
were the prize (CND=Canadian Dollar). Unfortunately no new players
placed their jrobots at the first position of the Cadets' League: the
winner was the old DeadDuck. I think that the owner of the prizes
wants to reassign them again to new Single winners, but I'll wait for
a confirm on the mailing list.

In the meantime, there is a new challenge for new players: the new
winner of the Double Mode will earn a freshly printed 20 CND banknote.
This month won my old Dragon, but I hope that a new player is going to
win the next month tournament.

Remember that during the December Challenge the new winner of the Team
Mode will earn freshly printed new 10 and 20 CND banknotes!

The Cadets' tournament demonstates that a bunch of jrobots are too
strong for the Cadets' League, but past tournaments showed that they
are too weak for the Veterans' League. The jrobots promoted are:
DeadDuck, bohan, Dragon, Ciaky, Phalanx, Platoon, Shark, Touche and
DirtyCoward. I expect that most of them (especially mine) will be back
at the end of the month.
Then the confirmed jrobots are: Ajax, RoboTard, Leech and Cruel. I
hope that their authors can improve them to try a future promotion.
Finally, the removed jrobots are: FoxFire, Awoe, Looser and Raven.
Their percentages were to low to make them survive.

On the Veterans' side there are two great confirms: DOOM and Starkle.
Now they are real veterans and I think they are going to stay there
for a long time. A great news is that the author of Starkle wants to
share the source of his creature with other people. I don't think it's
a good idea during tournaments with prizes for newcomers: I forsee a
lot of Starkle clones in the Cadets' arena, but we can discuss the
topic on the mailing list. Anyway, thank you "hats" for your jrobot!
The other confirmed jrobots are, as usual: IonStorm (triple victory
again), Tango, Headhunter, KillerBees and Mouth. The degraded jrobots
are: Vampire, MarukoV4 and Jimbo. The latter are again too weak for
the Veterans' Leangue, but too strong for the Cadets' one. It seems
that there is the need for an intermediate league ;-)

Now you can upload your jrobots to win the "November 2003 JROBOTS
Challenge" (November 5th-26th 2003) aka "Double Duet!"

Remember that the new winner of the Double Mode will receive one
freshly printed new 20 CND banknote. Read past news for more details.

--
Ciao. Leonardo boselli@...
* Jrobots Battles Online http://jrobots.cfxweb.net
* APOCALYX 3D Engine http://apocalyx.sourceforge.net