On Thu, Dec 13, 2001 at 10:41:40AM +1100, James Cameron wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 06:21:43PM -0500, Mark Mielke wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 13, 2001 at 09:20:19AM +1100, James Cameron wrote:
> > > On Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 02:04:47PM -0500, Mark Mielke wrote:
> > > > > The robot code written in 1986 is good enough to get kills.
> > > > It is my understanding that this code cheats.
> > > Have you reviewed the code of both robots shipped in the Vanilla code?
> > > I'm beginning to think you've only looked at the server side one, not
> > > the client side one.  The client side design doesn't use shared memory.
> > They are very cute. :-) Not extremely effective, but definately cute. :-)
> Well, if you can get something better going by 7th Jan we'll use it on
> our outback computer games night.

I will try.

The "not extremely effective" comment was not intended to be a
slight. They are missing the same component that I found missing many
years ago in my own 'bots. They analyze the situation to determine
what they should do, but they do not analyze the situation to
determine exactly what they should do out of several options, nor do
they learn from experience. Also, they are not very well organized,
causing such things as three robots to speed to a planet with 5 armies
on it, all to cloak and zoom in to bomb that one little army.

They are reasonably good dog-fighters. Problem is, I can go to a
planet with fuel, beam down some armies, and 4 or 5 of them will all
cloak and speed towards me. I just have to scatter a few torpedoes to
find them, and often exploding one will explode all 3. :-)

This is the kind of thing I want to squash in the bots I intend to
write.  They shouldn't make the same mistakes 10X in a row.

Anyways, 'twill be fun.

What is 'outback' computer games night? Everybody moves their computers
outside so they can watch the smoke in the sky from the forest fires
while they play? :-)

mark

-- 
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