AIWars

[somerville32]

There is a game I play called AIWars... except I don't "play" it. AIWars is a very unique game that not everyone can apprecaite but I thought I would share it here. What you do is program a little cybug in CAICL (a language created by the developer of the game) and the you can pitt it against other cybugs. The only problem is that the community is dying/dead. I have started a fan site about a month ago (www.aiwars-ofs.com) and there is a programmer who wants to port the game to Java (so that people on other platforms besides windows can use it). He has the developer's permission and it looking for other Java programmers to help him, if you are interested then please feel free to e-mail me. Once you get into the game, it is a blast and a half, so I hope to see you soon *smiles warmly*

Thanks,

~Me

P.S. The Java Programmer doesn't want the community as a whole to know about it, so if you join the forums, please do not post about it.

[blahblahblahh]

From what you've described, it's a ripoff of a clone of a copy of a rewrite of a clone of an original game from 20 years ago . A lot of people like it, but there are approximately 30 versions of this game in java already, written by differnet people over the years.

At least 3 versions regularly run online competitions.

Another version was written / released by IBM, IIRC.

So, you'll probably find no-one is particularly interested - unless this one you like is *considerably* different from all the others, and significantly better. If it is, you'd better explain why, and compare and contrast it to the well-known ones (off the top of my head, the most famous used to be JRobots, but probably there's several newer better ones by now)

[somerville32]

The concept may be the same but it defiently not a rip off. The CAICL language is completly orignal (and quite a bit different in comparison to what I have seen). What I think might be unique, but not sure, is that this game is in a complete 3d environment (with the option of 2d simulations as well). Battles are heavily customizable with thousands of options. Some features that others clones might not have is strategy nodes, advance debugging mode, hive queen, unique tournament mode, own editor with syntax highlighting, and much more. Here is a description of the 3d mode:

"All new 3D mode along with the old standard 2D and text modes. Free floating camera for you to control, allowing you to watch the game from any angle. Follow camera allowing you to watch the game from the perspective of any Cybug in the battle. New sounds. New Music. New textures. Ghosted objects. Fog. Shadows. Smoke. Flames. Scrolling skies. Fully animated Cybug movements. 3D Replay and movie record modes. Lightning fast text mode (with the ability to save the battle as a 3D movie for later viewing!) Added 3D command line options for battle/tournament automation. 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768 3D resolution options. 20+ Megs of full screen 3D goodness!
A.I. Wars 3D contains all standard view modes (3D, 2D, 2D Follow and TEXT) so those limited to 2D or TEXT can still enjoy A.I. Wars on their systems."

I'm not an expert and I don't know all the different games like this, but I know that out of all the ones I have tried, this one has kept me interested while the others haven't. Another bonus is our unique and growing community. Once again I stress that I'm not completly informed about all the other clones out there, please inform me if my preaching is in ignorance.

~Me

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[blahblahblahh]

Sounds pretty cool compared to most of the clones. I'm sure with that new description you'll get more people interested

You might want to try gamedev.net forums too, although there are few skilled java devs around there as opposed to c++ devs.

[Jackal von ÖRF]

When you are saying that the game is 3D, do you mean that it has 3D graphics or that also the simulation is in full 3D? From the screenshots of A.I. Wars it looks like it has 3D graphics for visual effects, but the simulation is actually run in 2D.

[somerville32]

The shareware version runs only in 2d and the registered version has 2d and 3d (look at the bottom of the page). Hopefuly if someone took on the project then there would be only the one freeware version.

~Me