Ricochet Robot Challenge News

8 March 2004

I've restored the code to pick difficult targets each turn. I hope to restore graphics to the roll-of-honour later in the week, and then the board timer and update. Note that for the first turn of the current game, the target is hidden under another robot.

1 March 2004

The game is now working again, although in a very basic form. This is a result of a complete rewrite, which should make the game more maintainable. A number of features are missing, especially from the roll-of-honour, and board updates are intermittent. Most of these will be fixed over the course of the next month.

13 July 2000

As some of you will have noticed, this version does not implement the rule from the original board game that 1-move solutions are not allowed! (Other differences include the fact that the original game is played with a timer and that the `wildcard' target is used once per game).

Also, a robot may make a U-turn (although there is no point in doing so unless another robot has made an intervening move). This was probably the original intention, even if the English rules translation can be read otherwise. Thanks to Geoff for confirming this with Hans im Glck and Rio Grande.

8th December 1999

Thanks to Pam for numerous little suggestions which have improved usability and made things easier for new players.

26th November 1999

The game applet has now been updated so that pressing the right-mouse button anywhere on the board mimicks the `Undo' button. If this causes problems with your version of Java, email me and I'll revert to the old version.

26th November 1999

The Ricochet Robot Challenge is online! Board updates are currently a bit erratic (in practice some time during the day each weekday). This will probably standardise eventually on noon GMT Monday-Saturday.

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