Short Trem

I'm currently working on RoboWar 4.5, which already includes a (small) host of changes:

• sin/cos/tan aproximation turned off, it cuased roblems with robot's evaluation of sin.
  
• Group Scoring Alteration: servival point's now aworded to outliving opposition. Outlive 3 bots = 1pt, 4 bots = 2, 5 bots = 3
  
• Syntax Colouring
  
• Improved Battle points display, now it's coloured and displays this battles points and total points
  
• IconFactory colour selection is bigger.
  
• 32k limmit on the size of a robot's text has been removed.
  
• Help moved to help menu!
  
• Preferences Dialog, I think this has been a little overdue, but it's here at last.

• There's more to come, but the total rewriting of all text handling took me some time, so don't expect too much more. Although I promise to make alterations to the loved and almost equally hated debugger.

Longer Future

• Complete rewrite. Sorry but it's got to be done. RoboWar is not currently in a state that can easily be modified. My Plan for version 5 is to rewrite it in the PowerPlant FrameWork. Changes that go along wit this will inlcude:
  • SAT intergartion (which I have already written the PowerPlant Code For), which for the less-technical of you means: SPEED. Graphics speed will be increased vastly. aswell as making the whole graphical interface allot more versitle.
    
  • Contuniued improvemnet of the drafting board. You'll be able to handle you code even more efficently. You'll have total custom sytnax colouring and procedure control. You'll get a label/procedure menu which and you'll have the ability to seperate you code into sections, of which you'll get a label/procedure listing for each section.
    
  • Full Prefs dialog.

  That's more or less it for the interface changes, but let me tell you by the rewrite you will get allot of interface improvements, suble stuff mostly, but it will give RoboWar a better *feel*. As for more core changes? I take those with allot more consideration, but I do have some plans...

  I would like to make every robot act similatiniously. That is each Robot's will declare it's actions to the engine each chronon, but the updating of positions etc will happen at the end of the chronon. This will get rid of all bias. The big question will of course be how does it effect dashers? It will, if I implement it correctly, give all robot's the equivalent of the the current bias against dashers.

What happend last time?

If you are interested you can have a look at the last future document and see if I actually made any of the changes I promised.

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