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Topic: May Botbash: discussion thread (Read 3609 times) |
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IdahoEv
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #15 on: May 3rd, 2006, 7:13am » |
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Hey folks; I'll try to finish the auto-scoring system in the next couple of days, because it's pretty clear from the number of errors I already have that doing it by hand is already totally untenable.
99of9's win over Bomb definitely skirts the spirit of the rules, but it's within the letter and Bomb *did* have an escape so I don't feel the need to amend the rules for just one instance. Besides, it would mean rewriting the no-barricade heuristic I've already coded. If it starts becoming the major technique people use to win in the challenge, I'll think about it again. Best solution: for 99 or someone else to generate a faster win against the same bot.
Anyhow, sorry for disappearing for a day. When I woke up on Tuesday morning the server was down, so since I had a fairly slow work day I took the whole day off to read Dan Simmons' new book Olympos cover to cover. I definitely needed the 24-hour vacation, and the book had been calling to me ever since I finished Ilium three weeks ago and my sister offered to loan me the new sequel...
Okay actually I'm not sorry, as it was a very pleasant 17 hours with that book. 
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IdahoEv
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #16 on: May 8th, 2006, 4:53am » |
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Is anybody else even working on this challenge, or is it just Arimanator going to town without a struggle?
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frostlad
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #17 on: May 8th, 2006, 9:55am » |
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I'll work on it once I'm done with this semester. Then I'll take my shot at his records.
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Arimanator
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #18 on: May 8th, 2006, 12:02pm » |
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on May 8th, 2006, 4:53am, IdahoEv wrote:| Is anybody else even working on this challenge, or is it just Arimanator going to town without a struggle? |
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About updating that score board?
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IdahoEv
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #19 on: May 9th, 2006, 12:37am » |
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on May 8th, 2006, 12:02pm, Arimanator wrote:| About updating that score board? |
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I've been buried under work and only sleeping three hours/night on average for about the last week. I'll get to it, don't worry.
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Swynndla
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #20 on: May 9th, 2006, 5:01am » |
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on May 8th, 2006, 4:53am, IdahoEv wrote:| Is anybody else even working on this challenge, or is it just Arimanator going to town without a struggle? |
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Perhaps the opposite of what we thought is happening here ... perhaps people are seeing that it would require sooo much work just to be able to compete for first place, and so are put off? ... and perhaps if it was shortest number of moves againsts the highest rated bot (like last month), then people might decide to have a crack ... even towards the end of the month too? If so then the rules were changed to stop several people fighting over one bot, but now we have one person fighting several bots 
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OLTI
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #21 on: May 9th, 2006, 3:05pm » |
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I was lucky to becouse I couldn't reproduce that win again, anyway in several games i reached a forced goal but couldn't win with only 3 steps
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IdahoEv
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #22 on: May 9th, 2006, 3:15pm » |
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Arimanator, I don't think Swynndla was criticising you or anything. He was just pointing out the effect of the rules change I made.
on May 9th, 2006, 5:35am, Arimanator wrote:| You fail to notice that there have been even less participants to last month's contest |
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On the contrary, that was exactly his point: because of the new rules structure, not very many people are actively playing.
Last month, it only took one game to win. So people could just play against Bomb and whoever got lucky won.
This month, it takes a lot of hard work to win against that many bots. You've worked very hard! A lot of people are probably looking at the contest and thinking "wow ... I'd have to play like 300 games just to have a chance of beating Arimanator", and so they may not be bothering to play at all! (And that's not the reason he's not playing .... Nathan said before the contest started that he was not going to play botbash this month, because he wanted to spend the time working on writing his own bot.)
Nobody questions your hard work or that you deserve the win, and Swynndla certainly wasn't attacking you. If he was criticising anybody, it was me for the rules I picked - but I don't think he was doing that either.
He was only making a neutral observation about this month's rules structure.
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Swynndla
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #23 on: May 9th, 2006, 9:16pm » |
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Arimanator, I obviously should have chosen my words more carefully, as I wasn't trying to criticize anyone.
Also, I should say, Arimanator, well done on your bot bashing this month. You really do deserve to win the May bot challenge.
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Arimanator
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #24 on: May 10th, 2006, 1:39am » |
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on May 9th, 2006, 9:16pm, Swynndla wrote:Arimanator, I obviously should have chosen my words more carefully, as I wasn't trying to criticize anyone.
Also, I should say, Arimanator, well done on your bot bashing this month. You really do deserve to win the May bot challenge. |
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Sorry for overreacting Nathan but some of these bots were really hard to beat and the idea that I could have done all this for nothing really put me on edge.
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Swynndla
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #25 on: May 10th, 2006, 2:32am » |
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Indeed, you make it look easy (but I'm sure it's not!).
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IdahoEv
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #26 on: May 11th, 2006, 5:50pm » |
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on May 11th, 2006, 2:36pm, Fritzlein wrote:| Seems to me if everyone else has 0 points, Arimanator should get both first and second prize. That's a lot of territory to defend, though. |
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Absolutely, I'm happy to implement that rule. If there is no second place player with any points, the first place winner is also awarded the second place prize.
Seems eminently fair.
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| « Last Edit: May 11th, 2006, 5:51pm by IdahoEv » |
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Arimanator
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #27 on: May 12th, 2006, 2:40am » |
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on May 10th, 2006, 2:32am, Swynndla wrote:| Indeed, you make it look easy (but I'm sure it's not!). |
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I apologize for my post Nathan. It was completely uncalled for but unfortunately, it coincided with a general lack of acknowledgment of the difficulties involved plus the amount of time one has to devote to achieve such a result. I thought that the goal of these contests was to see how it's done with different bots not whether it's done by one or ten participants. I intent to try it with every bot that in my view can fall for this strategy. Maybe that means all of them although I won't be trying it with Gnobot2006 since 99 decided to ruin it for everybody by ruling out botbashing for his bot even tho he participated to the botbashing last year. Whatever!
I would appreciate if the score board was updated once in a while, it seemed to me that it stopped as soon as I went alone on my bashing spree, I hope that I was mistaken.
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Swynndla
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #28 on: May 12th, 2006, 4:29am » |
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No worries Patrick
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Fritzlein
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Re: May Botbash: discussion thread
« Reply #29 on: May 31st, 2006, 10:38pm » |
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Well, with Arimanator's domination unchallenged even though he didn't play the last part of the month, I only have two questions:
Was it a clean sweep?
and
How will you get the prize money to him?
Maybe Omar can tell you his PayPal account if he has one.
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