Ten - fifteen years ago they had a text based c-robots game. Thousands of hours were spent playing that. One of the guys at IBM (I think) had developed a GUI tcl/tk based game similar to this one.
I remember one of the c based games had objects within the field of play that could be used to hide behind. It was always tricky trying to decide how "smart" to make your robot. Many times while the smart robot was deciding what to do, the dumb robot would blow it away.
Some of the more successful robots, IIRC, were A)corner-sitters - they just head for the nearest corner and blast the field, and B)the sideline robots - they just run back and forth down the side of the field and shoot.
I seem to remember a robot named Rabbit. It didn't shoot anything, just runs around the field so you can test your robots ability to shoot it.
Lots of fun to play with.
Fascinating, thank you.
I'm thinking of starting with something that spins and shoots, just to try it out.