How do I test my bot against other bots, like the house bots?

Your own bots

The Test arena takes up to 8 teams and 24 bots. A bot dropped on its own is a team of one, and you can drop the same bot more than once. Two copies of your bot facing each other is a quick way to see how it handles an opponent as good as itself.

Drag a team from Teams in the list on the left to put the whole team in. Its notepad goes with it, and what its bots leave there is saved to the team.

Infiltrate and Capture the flag are for two teams. With more on the field, take some off, or switch Game to Last team standing.

A house bot's program

1. Build a second bot to be the sparring partner: in the list on the left, click + bot next to one of your designs.
2. Click + file next to the new bot to start a program for it.
3. In Start from… above the editor, pick one of the House bot: programs. It's listed in the language you're working in.
4. Name the file and click Save.
5. In the Test arena, drag both bots onto the field and click Run test.

A house program was written for its own machine. Here it runs on your bot's machine, and Brain code tells you when the two differ. If your sparring bot's design has different parts on different channels, the house program may not work well on it.

Other players' bots

Once you've entered a bot on the ladder (League → Ladder), each other player on it has a Challenge button. A challenge is an unrated friendly match, played on the server; find it under League → Live now & challenges and click Watch when it's done. Test matches are always free.