Thanks for all the great suggestions!
How about ChipBots Challenge or ChipBot Combat?
ChipBot Combat sound’s like something i’d hear my friends talk about.
ChipBot Challenge sounds like a puzzle game.
So yeah i prefer ChipBots Combat.
Well, in the end the name ended up being just “ChipBots.” I had a chance to talk to a local FIRST Robotics team, and was informed that the word “Combat” in the title would make the app suspect with FIRST and similar organizations. So… ChipBots, just ChipBots.
It’s currently waiting for review in the App Store, thanks to the fantastic run time and @Reefwing’s easy to follow tutorials that steered me around the shoals of the submission process.
I just got the first few pages of the support web site knocked off. You know, in case Apple looks.
http://cleverhans.com/CleverHans.Com/ChipBots.html
I’ll do a jig when (if) it gets approved for the store.
Congratulations, @Mark! I’m glad your game is getting a shot at the store.
Thanks. Now comes the interminable wait, during which I try not to check the status of the app every 15 minutes.
Instead, I’m going to ready “OnTopic,” the presentation timing app, for its turn in App Store limbo.
okay im in no position to say this but make your app icon as attractive as possible, everytime i or someone i know goes app shopping they look at 4 things, in order they are:
app icon
app screenshots
reviews
descriptions
so yeah pay as much attention as you can to the icon, im probably too late in saying that but yeah the icon helps a ton.
I look at the following criteria in order:
Price
Icon
Title
Screenshots
Description
Reviews
iAPs
Btw, good luck with this! From what I see, it looks like it will be fairly successful.
Good luck with the submission, it’ll definitely be on my to get list.
The icon (visible on the web page link above) was drawn with the same artistic skill as everything else I make—none. I made it by throwing together shapes in Keynote then saving it off as a png. It’s… bleh.
The price is free, so that shouldn’t work against me. I figured that if I ever do work out that robot trading hub, or add a stack of new chips, or come up with new challenges, I can always come back with a $0.99 version.
But actually, the thing I want to work on is turning the Arena into a 3-D wireframe view ala Battlezone.
And it’s on the store.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chipbots/id586022588?mt=8
Now I can start working on the bugs that, naturally I found right after submitting it.
congrats on the app btw
Congrats @Mark ! Um, been playing with it and can’t seem to get the Coding/Design buttons to work - although I can drag and drop the bots onto the screen. It’s highly likely I’m being a bit stupid - but if you’ve got any tips that would be cool!
@andymac3d I think it’s probably way to obvious for me-- after writing eleventy versions, so I’ve been waiting to see how it went for people who’d not seen it before.
So, when you drag a bot to design, do you get the design studio, where you can pick the bit parts, or is nothing happening? Same with programming, does dragging actually a bot to the code bench bring up the coding tools? If it’s working at is basic level, take a look at the ChipCode tutorials and see if they work for you.
If these tutorials are helpful, I’m going to try and incorporate them into the next release.
If its just flat not working, please let me know. Thanks!
Ah! Thanks @Mark - it was me being stupid! My initial inclination was that your buttons activate by pressing them - rather than dragging the Bots on top, which work perfectly when this is pointed out! I guess (with my constructively critical head on) you may wish to make this a little bit more obvious with some helper images or a walk through mode for novices. My second port of call was your web address - which I couldn’t get to work(?) - although yet again this could be me ;-). However, despite this minor hiccup it work brilliantly well and I’m going have some fun - might even get my 7 year old to have a go as well 
Hmmm, www.cleverhans.com should pop the welcome page.
Can You try it again? I’ve been doing a lot of updating and you may have caught it in mid-FTP. Thanks.
It appears that your opening splash screen refers to www.cleverhans.com/chipbots which doesn’t work, but www.cleverhans.com/chipbots.html does - maybe if you could embed a clickable link that opens it directly in the browser?
Thanks for catching that. I should have a page plugged into both places now… I’ll need to clean everything up as part of the next release.
In the meantime, I’m going off to add tutorials. A whole 29 copies have been downloaded! Big time.
Make that 30! 
Actually, it’s up to 179 dowloads now. So I’m surely going to be at the top of the charts. No?
Seriously, it’s not quite in the territory of @Reefwing’s iMineSweeper, but for what it is, I’m happy that at least some folks have stumbled on it.
I’ve gone to a number of tech sites and tried to get them interested, including setting up a “press release page” at :
http://cleverhans.com/chipbots/about_chipbots.html
But so far, I don’t think I’ve managed to lure anyone into looking, much less running a review.
I’m trying to think of the best way to get in touch with robotics hobbyists.
@Mark - well done, you just need to target a few specialist forums/websites that deal with similar stuff to this. In the UK we had a programme on the BBC about 10 years ago called RobotWars - which was not a million miles away from what you’re doing, albeit with big lumbering remote controlled robots! Check out www.roamingrobots.co.uk which appears to be some sort of hub for this sort of stuff these days - I’m sure you can drum up some interest on here (and other similar ones!)