RoboCode: Tools come in all shapes and sizes

Download: CounterAll

I took the robot from my previous posts and modified it to fix some of the problems I encountered during a RoboCode tournament with my classmates. One problem was that if the match dragged on for a while, my CounterAll robot would run out of energy and become disabled. I addressed this problem by lowering the fire power when its enemy was far away in order to conserve its energy.

In addition to modifying my CounterAll robot, I used the build tool Ant (+Ivy) to build and test my system. I had no major problems using it, although because it was my first time using Ant I had a difficult time understanding and modifying the .xml build files. I used an example project called pmj-dacruzer as a template which made it a lot easier.

I also used 3 quality assurance tools (QA) and received the following results:
FindBugs: 0 warnings
PMD: 0 warnings
CheckStyle: 1 error

There was one CheckStyle error which consisted of a missing package-info.java file. It was fixed by adding the missing file.

I found that automated quality assurance tools are easy to use and catch programming or style errors that you probably would not have found yourself. It is also a great learning tool because it helps me understand what I did wrong and correct those mistakes and therefore become a better programmer.