Welcome to AT-Robots Online, the 24 hour/day on-going automatic tournament!


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OLD README, as of Dec 2002, when the server was taken down for 
security reasons. The instructions for the current system are 
different
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Here's how it works...

Any robots uploaded via anonymous FTP into the incoming directories will
be processed usually within 30 seconds. Once processed, they are pitted
against the current Top-5 using the standard round-robin tournament
technique (using ATRT). Whoever comes in 6th in this battle is kicked out, 
and the other 5 remain as the current champions. The battle usually takes 
about 5 to 15 minutes, at which time the results are viewable 
immediately in the corresponding results directory (your robot, and an
asociated TXT file will be there, and the Top-5 will also be updated).

You may notice that the Top-5 may be ranked differently than in the
results of the individual battles. This is because some robots may
have better overall scores simply because they happened to fight against
easier opponents once upon a time, or worse scores because they fought
harder ones. It takes time for the relative scores to reflect how they
actually relate to one another.

There are currently four classes that the robots may be entered into, 
Light, Standard, FastCPU, and Rumble. The "Standard" class is.. well.. 
the standard class, where there are no limits other than the standard 
game rules. All of the default settings are used for timeslices, program
length, etc. The "light" class is for small programs only. They can not 
be any longer than 32 compiled lines. Note- compiled lines do not 
include #configs or !labels. The "Rumble" is just like the "standard" 
class, except that instead of having a "round-robin" battle (robots 
facing each other one-on-one), all of the robots are thrown into the
arena at once. Tactics in a crowd are tested here, rather than one-on-one
ability. FastCPU is just like the "standard" class, except the robots get
a timeslice of 200 (instead of just 5), which means they get a huge amount
of CPU time per game cycle in which to do their calculations. Robots will
have to be specifically designed for this sort of processor power.

The server is only capable of running one battle at a time. That means
that if any battles are already underway (in any class) when you upload
a robot, or there are other robots ahead of yours, it may take some time
before the results are available.

Please keep in mind that this FTP server is running on my personal PC
through my little DSL connection. For this reason, I please ask that you 
be gentle on the bandwidth usage, and also be understanding if the server
is down or the contest program isn't running. Any time that the system
is offline, unresponsive, or slow, it is usually because the system is
currently in use (whether or not I'm present, since this computer does
a lot while I'm away from it too).

Results files for the individual robots may be deleted without warning,
depending on the clutter.

Enjoy!

                                                       -Bones.