It is possible to specify options and predefined properties from the command-line when running Robocode. The usage of these can be listed by writing this from a command prompt or shell:

robocode -help 

For example, it is possible to:

• disable the graphical user interface (GUI).
• disable security that is specific to Robocode (but does not override the security that comes with the JVM).
• enable/disable the debugging mode, useful when debugging robots.
• play a battle based on an existing Robocode .battle file.
• replay a recorded battle visually.
• save the results of battles in a comma-separated file.

You can read more details here:

If you want to challenge your robot(s) and yourself as robot developer, the RoboRumble@Home is the best way to do it. RoboRumble is the ultimate collaborative effort to have a live, up-to-date ranking of Robocode bots. It uses the power of available Robocoders’ computers to distribute the effort of running battles and building the rankings.
RoboRumble is actually 3 different rumbles:

• RoboRumble (aka 1v1): One robot versus another robot – both picked at random. These two robots a alone on the battle field.
• MeleeRumble: Ten robots picked at random all battle against each other..
• TeamRumble: One team versus another team – both picked at random. Each team consists of five or less robots.

In order to get started with RoboRumble, you should read this page:

• Starting With RoboRumble

Note that the RoboRumble@Home client is built into Robocode and can be started using the batch/shell/command files:

Two other competitions exists which are:

• Twin Duel: Two teams battle on an 800×800 field. Each team consists of two robots (twins).
• Hat League: Two teams not knowing each other are paired together at random (like drawing names from a hat). Each team consists of two robots. These two teams must work together and defeat two other teams that have also been picked at random.

A good way to improve you self as a robot developer is to try out some real challenges. On the RoboWiki, two famous challenges exist for testing/studying a robots movement, targeting, and gun abilities:

• Movement Challenge
• Targeting Challenge
• RoboRumble Gun Challenge

The community around Robocode is using the RoboWiki as communication channel. At the RoboWiki, people share new ideas, code snippets, algorithms, strategies, and lots of other stuff about Robocode. New official documentation from the developers of Robocode will be put at the RoboWiki as well.
On the RoboWiki, these strategies are provided:

• Radar
• Movement
• Targeting

The code snippets are also provided on the RoboWiki:

• Code Snippets

If you want to try out new robots than the sample robots that come with Robocode, you should visit the Robocode Repository.
Robots are available under the Bots section of the repository.
The Robocode Repository is developed and maintained by David Lynn as a project independently of the Robocode project.

The Robocode API is provided as HTML pages for both the Java and .NET platform.

• Java API
• .NET API
• .NET Control API

The Robocode API actually consists of 3 different APIs.

• Robot API: Within the Java package robocode and .NET namespace Robocode.
  The Robot API is used for developing robots, and is the only part of the API that robots are allowed to access.
• Robot Interfaces: Within the Java package robocode.robotinterfaces and .NET namespace Robocode.RobotInterfaces.
  The Robot Interfaces are used for developing new robot types with a different API that the standard Robot API.
  Note: The game rules and robot behaviors cannot be changed.
• Control API: Within the Java package robocode.control and .NET namespace Robocode.Control.
  The Control API is used for letting another application start up battles with selected robots in Robocode and retrieve the results. It is also possible to get snapshots of robots and bullets (like position, heading, energy level etc.) at a specific time in a battle.

Most documentation about Robocode is provided thru the RoboWiki, which contains the official documentation about Robocode, but which also hosts the community around Robocode. It is highly recommended to read the articles on the RoboWiki for getting started with Robocode. These articles are provided from here:

• Getting Started

You should read about the anatomy of a robot, the game physics, scoring etc

In order to run Robocode, Java 5.0 Standard Edition (SE) or a newer version of Java must be installed on your system. Both the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and the Java Developer Kit (JDK) can be used. Note that the JRE does not include the standard Java compiler (javac), but the JDK does. However, Robocode comes with a built-in compiler (ECJ). Hence, it is sufficient running Robocode on the JRE.

Also note that it is important that these environment variables have been set up prior to running Robocode:

JAVA_HOME must be setup to point at the home directory for Java (JDK or JRE).
Windows example: JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_22
UNIX, Linux, Mac OS example: JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/jdk1.5.0_22

PATH must include the path to the bin of the Java home directory (JAVA_HOME) that includes java.exe for starting the Java virtual Machine (JVM).
Windows example: PATH=%PATH%;%JAVA_HOME%
UNIX, Linux, Mac OS example: PATH=${PATH}:${JAVA_HOME}/bin

You can read more details from here:

System Requirements

If you want to program robots in .NET or control Robocode from a .NET application, you need to install the Robocode .NET API plug-in on top of Robocode. The plug-in is installed by double-clicking the robocode.dotnet-xxx-setup.jar the same way as Robocode itself is installed

The Robocode game was originally started by Matthew A. Nelson, aka Mat Nelson, as a personal endeavor in late 2000 and became a professional one when he brought it to IBM, in the form of an AlphaWorks download, in July 2001.
In the beginning of 2005, Robocode was brought to SourceForge as Open Source with Robocode version 1.0.7. At this point, the development of Robocode had somewhat stopped. In the meanwhile, the community around Robocode began to develop their own versions of Robocode in order to get rid of bugs and also to put new features into Robocode, the Contributions for Open Source Robocode and later on the RobocodeNG project by Flemming N. Larsen.
As nothing seemed to happen with Robocode in more than a year, Flemming N. Larsen took over the Robocode project at SourceForge as administrator and developer in July 2006. The RobocodeNG project was dropped, but the Robocode 2006 variant, which contained a lot of contributions from the Robocode community, was merged into the official Robocode with version 1.1. Since then, lots of new versions of Robocode have been released with more and more features and contributions from the community.
Recently (from version 1.7.2.0), the .NET platform is supported through a .NET plug-in provided by Pavel Savara based on jni4net, also developed by Pavel Savara.

Robocode is a programming game, where the goal is to develop a robot battle tank to battle against other tanks in Java or .NET. The robot battles are running in real-time and on-screen.

The motto of Robocode is: Build the best, destroy the rest!

Besides being a programming game, Robocode is used for learning how to program, primarily in the Java language, but other languages like C# and Scala are becoming popular as well.

Schools and universities are using Robocode as part of teaching how to program, but also for studying artificial intelligence (AI). The concept of Robocode is easy to understand, and a fun way to learn how to program.

Robocode comes with its own installer, built-in robot editor and Java compiler, and only pre-requires a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to exist on the system where it must be installed. Hence, everything a robot developer needs to get started is provided with the main Robocode distribution file (robocode-xxx-setup.jar). Robocode also supports developing robots using external IDEs like e.g. Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, NetBeans, Visual Studio etc., which supports the developer much better than the robot editor in Robocode.

The fact that Robocode runs on the Java platform makes it possible to run it on any operating system with Java pre-installed, meaning that it will be able to run on Windows, Linux, Mac OS, but also UNIX and variants of UNIX. Note that Java 5.0 or newer must be installed on the system before Robocode is able to run. See the System Requirements for more information.

Be aware that many users of Robocode (aka Robocoders) find Robocode to be very fun, but also very addictive.

Robocode comes free of charge and is being developed as a spare-time project where no money is involved. The developers of Robocode are developing on Robocode because they think it is fun, and because they improve themselves as developers this way.

Robocode is an Open Source project, which means that all sources are open to everybody. In addition, Robocode is provided under the terms of EPL (Eclipse Public License).