Jun 04 2009
Programming Games: Request for Information
Over the past few weeks I’ve been taking a closer look at a few early programming games. It’s disappointing to note there’s very little information about most of them online.
RobotWar by Silas Warner is the earliest example of a battle robot programming game, published by MUSE Software for the Apple II in 1981. Robots are programmed in a proprietary language. Apart from the RobotWar page on Wikipedia and the results from the first four tournament in Computer Gaming World, there’s no information online. If you remember RobotWar or the Postal RobotWar Club, I’d love to hear from you.
P-Robots by David Malmberg is another early example of a RobotWar style programming game, published as Shareware in 1988. Robots are written in a subset of Pascal. Later versions added features such as customizable robots. There’s very little information online, so I’d love to hear from you if you used to play P-Robots or have a copy of Robot Editor by BJ Gleason.
BF Joust by ais523 / Kerim Aydin is a capture the flag programming game designed in 2008. Programs are written in the Brainf*** esoteric programming language and an online King of the Hill tournament is available. For more information, see the BF Joust Wiki page.
There are still three early programming games I need to take a closer look at, Darwin (1960s), C-Robots (1985) and Omega (1989). If you’re aware of any I haven’t mentioned published before 1990, please let me know. 
