From: Johannes N. <joh...@hp...> - 2005-10-12 07:23:52
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On Saturday, the RealTimeBattle Team Framework Goup will release=20 RealTimeBattle 1.0.8 So if you have got last minute wishes or patches, feel free to write them t= o=20 the list immediately, perhaps they will go in 1.0.8 as well. To get an overview about the changes to be expected, take a look about a=20 preview version of the Release Notes. If you have suggestions or questions to the notes, write to list as well: =2D--- PREVIEW---- The RealTimeBattle Framework Group (http://rtb-team.sf.net) proudly announc= es=20 RealTimeBattle 1.0.8 There is a long distance between the last version and the current one, beca= use=20 we have integrated improvements from different developer teams around the=20 globe who have only little time to work on RealTimeBattle. So what's new on the 1.0.8 version? We will list the ten most important poi= nts=20 here: 1. Beginning separation of GUI and Core Now, the first steps are made to separate the GUI components from the=20 simulation core. If you compile RealTimeBattle with the --enable-network=20 option, you can connect to the RealTimeBattle core via TCP/IP on a port=20 specified as command line parameter. You will be able to start and watch=20 tournaments from remote. With this approach, new external clients and=20 visualization plugins can be developed without changing the core. The=20 protocols corresponds to the protocol used for logging tournaments. At the= =20 moment, there is only one client available, that is still in development.=20 There are progresses in external clients that also support sound and commen= ts=20 about the running games. Thanks to Mr. Friendly (Volker Str=F6bel) for his= =20 efforts to get things done. 2. More sample robots, improved sample robots With version 1.0.7 we started to distribute a variety of different robots i= n=20 different programming languages in the Extended Edition. We have recognized= ,=20 that almost every person interested in RealTimeBattle downloaded this=20 version, so we will only release an Extended Version for 1.0.8. The sample robots has been improved and new robots were introduced: The=20 RealTimeBattle Team Framework now supports two more strategies (Cobra and=20 Columbus) and Raziel (a python bot) joined the other robots. Thanks to=20 Sebastian Rolof, Tino Truppel and Torsten Sachse. 3. Code Cleanup All custom collection classes in the code were replaced by STL containers.= =20 RealTimeBattle will now stand a Denial of Service Attack by an evil robot a= nd=20 is no longer vulnerable to several buffer overflow possibilities. Thanks to= =20 Georg Zetzsche for helping me with this issue. RealTimeBattle will not cras= h=20 any longer if a wrong tournament file or arena file is supplied. Thanks to= =20 Christian Heinemann for his work. 4. Bug Fixing =46eatures that were broken in 1.0.6 and 1.0.7 like the replaying and recor= ding=20 of log files or the compilation without GUI now work again. For further=20 details about the fixed bugs, see our bugtracker on=20 https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=3D561&atid=3D100561 5. Supported platforms RealTimeBattle 1.0.8 was successfully compiled and tested under =2D Linux (32 and 64 Bit x-86, Alpha) =2D Open BSD (x-86) =2D Free BSD (x-86) =2D Net BSD (x-86) =2D Mac OS X 10.2 =2D Solaris 9 (sparc and x-86) =2D Windows with the Cygwin environment Thanks to Simen R=F8kaas for his distribution to the Windows port. It would be cool, if some volunteer would manage to create some binary=20 packages (e. g. RPM, MSI) for RealTimeBattle 1.0.8. At the moment, the only= =20 distribution we know, that already ships with RealTimeBattle is Debian. 6. Team Support=20 RealTimeBattle now supports teams without changing the protocol. The RobotI= nfo=20 message now distinguishes friends and enemies. All team members get the sam= e=20 colour. To assign to a team, you have to specify the team name with your=20 name. "Name foo Team: bar" lets your robot "foo" join the Team "bar". 7. Updated Documentation The English and German documentation will tell you everything about the new= =20 features like team support and GUI/Core separation. Furthermore, outdated=20 links and email addresses were updated. Documentation for other languages=20 still do not reflect the latest changes. We need volunteers to update them. 8. Introduction of the RealTimeBattle Security Infrastructure While we are planning the next World Champion Ship (probably held in Potsda= m=20 on the RoboClash 2006), we have developed a method to guarantee, that robot= s=20 must behave according the rules. Deletion of files, spying out other=20 binaries, establishing network connections, sending signals to non team=20 mates, creating files in other directories than the team directory,=20 interacting with other processes not part of the team, misuse of resources= =20 like memory, CPU and disk space and other evil actions will be automaticall= y=20 prevented by the applied mechanism. The solution works with a portable syst= em=20 call interposition tool named systrace (www.systrace.org). The RealTimeBatt= le=20 security infrastructure mainly consists of a shell script=20 (create_guardedrobot.sh) that automatically creates wrapper scripts and=20 system call policies for the competing robots. The RealTimeBattle Security= =20 Infrastructure is described in detail in chapter seven of "Secure executio= n=20 of untrusted code" on http://www.myhpi.de/~nicolai/sichereausfuehrung.pdf= =20 (only available in German). 9. Tournament Pack To get an overview about how clever robots can act in the RealTimeBattle=20 arenas, we have packed the log files of all champion ships together and=20 released them in a separate download file. This is nothing really new, but= =20 very convenient because otherwise you have to download a lot of files. =46or those who took part in the recorded tournaments: We would be very hap= py,=20 if you could provide us with the source code of your robots so that we can= =20 add it to the sample robots. 10. Diagram Pack We always search new interested developers to assist us improving=20 RealTimeBattle and the RealTimeBattle Team Framework. In order to get a qui= ck=20 overview about the architecture of RealTimeBattle and the Framework, we hav= e=20 packaged all existing design and analysis diagrams (UML and FMC) in a=20 separate download. Sometimes, you can save a lot of time studying these=20 diagrams instead of reading the code over and over. If you have further questions about one or more points, please contact us o= ver=20 our mailing lists. Have a lot of fun Johannes Nicolai for the RealTimeBattle Team Framework Group |