[Botzilla-discuss] Welcome!

[steve <sjb...@ai...>]

I see a bunch of new subscriptions to the Botzilla-discuss list,
so WELCOME one and all!

This year's Engineering Week Botzilla contest will be a lot like
last year's - except that I'm changing some details of the rules
of the contest in an effort to make things a little more exciting.

The new revision of the control software isn't *quite* ready,
but a lot of it will be similar to last year and the final
version will be out in time for you guys to work on it over
the weekend.

If you havn't already done so, I suggest you grab last years
version from the BotZilla web site (http://botzilla.sf.net),
read the rules, play with some of the robots from last year
(who's source code is provided for you to practice against).

Use this mailing list to ask questions, report problems and
generally talk strategies.

The innovations that are going in for this year are:

1) The ability for Bots to move slowly backwards.

2) Powerups that you can collect just by walking into
    them.

3) (By popular request) Speech balloons to allow you
    to 'trash talk' the opposition (but PLEASE keep it
    clean - there may be kids watching - and your boss
    will certainly be there!)

4) The ability to find out the status of other bots
    that are in visual range (eg health and power rating).

These will (I believe) subtly alter the balance of play
towards a more dynamic style.  Sitting in the corner and
waiting for something to happen should become a losing
strategy if your opponent is out there grabbing the
powerup tokens.  Mindlessly charging into the enemy
will be less attractive if you can see he has more
power than you and since you can now reverse, you
can safely back away from a confrontation you think
you may lose.

I'll post more details on Friday evening with the
new software release.