The Nineteenth Byte

overactor

2:02 PM

Fuck it, I'm posting my challenge.

Trimsty

i made a food :D

Martin Büttner

@Geobits we've been discussing Underwater a bit (chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/16028/… if you're interested)... it looks like a few of the hazards have to be modified. I think I've fixed nets and jellyfish, but there is still a slight possibility that shrimp aren't enough of a threat.

Trimsty

Sparr

@Doorknob you could adjust the threading code to make sure two matches with the same entrant are never run at the same time.

Trimsty

behold, the workings of the world's worst chef

Martin Büttner

2:08 PM

@Trimsty that is a very beautiful food

Trimsty

@MartinBüttner :D

overactor

Title must be at least 15 characters

AAARGH

Trimsty

@MartinBüttner It says thanks.

Sparr

meta question: I don't get autocomplete for @users who aren't in the room at the time. Will they still get a notification?

overactor

I was going to just call it Dogfight

Martin Büttner

2:08 PM

@overactor oh the pain... I've been... two out of four times

overactor

What do I call it?

Sparr

@overactor taxicab metric dogfight

overactor

first answer here decides

Trimsty

@overactor "Pew Pew: Java Dogfighting (is adorable)"

overactor

maybe

Sparr

2:09 PM

Discrete Dogfight

ProgramFOX

@Sparr Yes, they will.

Sparr

Two on Two Dogfight

overactor

oh

Sparr

Dogfight in a Box

2

overactor

3D: Discrete Dogfighting Duel

I also like taxicab

Now I have too many options

Trimsty

2:10 PM

"Dogfighting (pwned by EmoFockeWulf)"

overactor

Veto on that

Martin Büttner

Dog fight Dog (exactly 15)

overactor

That makes it seem like it's about animal cruelty

Maybe that'll get people interested though

Everyone, pick your favorite, I'll take the most popular

Trimsty

Wolves are animals.

and also dogs

overactor

I'll just go with the one I thoughgt of.

If someone knows a better one, they'll have to suggest it in the comments

Trimsty

2:15 PM

sounds cool :D

and I'm on my toes, ready to post EmoFockeWulf asap

wow, an upvote already

overactor

Was just about to add the language thing, thanks @ProgramFOX

ProgramFOX

You're welcome!

overactor

@Trimsty, you answered my question before I did, impressive

Trimsty

@overactor I'd already written the post down in Notepad before you asked the question :P

@overactor i actually got an upvote before you answered, THAT'S impressive xD

overactor

I did that one ^^

Trimsty

2:28 PM

Ah

lol, thanks ;3

it's still an upvote O:<

"I like my coffee like I like people: I don't like coffee" - gindiesel

Geobits

I like my coffee like I like my code: fast, and with plenty of sugar

2

Trimsty

I like my coffee like I like my code. White on black.

Geobits

@Trimsty ....

Trimsty

@Geobits Can I not like black coffee with cream

and text editors with a black background and white text

Geobits

Yea, sure you can. I totally understood you, but my mind took that in a separate direction which I won't discuss :D

Trimsty

2:40 PM

xD

VisualMelon

2:52 PM

it took an age, but it's solved the full-adder

overactor

@Trimsty, DumbPlanes beat EmoFockeWulf

Where should I upload large text-files?

Trimsty

@overactor ix.io is pretty nice

:P

overactor

How does it work?

Trimsty

@overactor ...i'm not exactly sure o:

Hm. I always wondered how they did it.

overactor

3:09 PM

pastebin.ca/2826910

@Trimsty, that's the full log.

Trimsty

@overactor :D

overactor

Did you sabotage my DumbPlanes when you ran it on your pc?

I gotta go, I'll be back later.

See y'all

ProgramFOX

See you!

Sparr

3:46 PM

@Trimsty that machine is non-automated. humans stand on the far side and put the bricks in place. It's much less cool than it looks (but still cool)

@overactor ix.io is a bare bones pastebin, meant to be pasted to from a command line program. ix.io/client is a python client for it.

Martin Büttner

4:25 PM

haha I think someone wanted to bump their post there codegolf.stackexchange.com/posts/26128/revisions

Martin Büttner

4:37 PM

@overactor oh my god... it took me until now to get the title you picked for the KotH

if anyone's looking for me, I'll be in the corner over there, hiding in shame

Sparr

"The player starts in a random room on an icosahedral map (thus there are 20 rooms in total, connected to each other like the faces of an icosahedron, and every room has exactly three exits)."

wtf, that would be such an easy game of hunt the wumpus

figuring out the room map is the bulk of the difficulty in that game

Geobits

If there's anything worse than paying $10K for a piece of crap, it's finding out it isn't even a real piece of crap.

3

Martin Büttner

4:58 PM

@Geobits you set up persistent pipes for hunger gaming, right?

O.O

I'm the all-time top answerer on king-of-the-hill now

that's what happens when you have fun kickstarting KotHs by providing a bunch of simple and fun bots (or a good one every now and then)

Geobits

Yes, pipes.

And eeek, I've dropped to 3rd and 5th, from 2nd and 3rd. I need to kick into gear ><

Martin Büttner

5:38 PM

@Geobits cheers... I'll be updating the KotH tag wiki with some common practices, and I'll link to your challenge as an example for persistent pipes if you don't mind

Nathan Merrill

What's this pipes?

Martin Büttner

Named pipe

In computing, a named pipe (also known as a FIFO for its behavior) is an extension to the traditional pipe concept on Unix and Unix-like systems, and is one of the methods of inter-process communication (IPC). The concept is also found in OS/2 and Microsoft Windows, although the semantics differ substantially. A traditional pipe is "unnamed" because it exists anonymously and persists only for as long as the process is running. A named pipe is system-persistent and exists beyond the life of the process and can be deleted once it is no longer being used. Processes generally attach to the named pipes...

basically just redirecting STDIN and STDOUT from another process to yours

Nathan Merrill

ah.

Well, I guess I'm using pipes for my KoTH

and Martin, I'm working to get a graphical maze per your comment

Martin Büttner

that would be great! :) (ASCII is enough though)

Nathan Merrill

ASCII mazes look terrible

Martin Büttner

5:42 PM

they're good enough to get an idea for maze's structure ;)

Nathan Merrill

well, I already have a framework to do graphical mazes, I just need to modify it so it braids

VisualMelon

5:57 PM

I appear to have resolved the space-complexity problem (solver using 14MB instead of in excess of 2GB) but it's still slow as something slow, having already clocked 9 minutes on the 4-way multiplexer

Martin Büttner

the 4-way multiplexer should be quite tough

I need to come up with a fairly bad default score if challenges are not solved in time.

Sparr

I need to get a lot of python practice in the near future. I'm going to try to do that on codegolf problems here, along with stuff like spoj.

I wish there were more places to do coding challenges that published everyone's answers.

New Meta Posts

0

Q: Programming Praxis weekly challenges

This site (http://programmingpraxis.com) publishes every week very interesting code challenges, that could totally fit here. Example: http://programmingpraxis.com/2014/07/25/number-words/ : that would be a perfect code-golf question. Do you think we could, or should automatically publish those ...

Martin Büttner

project euler does once you solve them

Sparr

I thought project euler was just about answers, not code?

I mean, you [probably] have to write code to get the answer, but aren't you just submitting an answer to the question/problem, not your code?

@overactor I'd do the dogfight challenge if it allowed other languages

Martin Büttner

6:09 PM

yes you are, but once you do you get access to a discussion thread where people do post the programs they used to solve the problems

although that might not currently be the case with the security trouble they had

ah yeah, sorry, that doesn't currently exist

VisualMelon

Myself and some friends used to have competitions and we'd always network them, because I'd use C#, one of them would use Python, and another would use Bash, and the server would be C++ because it's the only thing we can agree on

would it make sense to assemble a reliable interface for each language, so people can quickly put together networked challenges?

Martin Büttner

What exactly do you mean by that?

network challenges?

interface?

VisualMelon

I mean, when you set up a KotH

Sparr

I wish SPOJ published their server code

VisualMelon

instead of writing the controller with pipes etc.

Sparr

6:11 PM

there's a lot of wheel reinvention to be avoided here

VisualMelon

it's a server

Martin Büttner

ah

someone suggested that before

VisualMelon

which the client connect to, but the network code and a flexible protocol would be pre-written, so it's easy to get involved

Martin Büttner

the problem is that you'd need all players to connect to the server at the same time

VisualMelon

get the server to start the client processes

Martin Büttner

6:12 PM

we don't get enough submissions for that yet, and it wouldn't be fair since not everyone would be pitted against the same bots

then every participant needs to have their client running 24/7 as well

VisualMelon

I would propose that we keep the current setup of submitting a solution, and then someone "controlling" the competition

it's just that instead of the server talking through pipes, talk over TCP

now that I've said that, the idea suddenly seems pointless, and I can't remember why I suggested it

Martin Büttner

:D

don't worry...

having a reusable framework in itself is a good thing though

Rainbolt wants to work on one and I might join in on that

Sparr

I really like the idea of using pipes, so an entry can just deal with stdin/out

Martin Büttner

yep, me too

Sparr

@overactor you made the planes start out facing each other again in your edited arena size...

I think...

oh, no, you started them on the ceiling and the floor, flying horizontally

Martin Büttner

6:20 PM

one more silver badge to go!

overactor

@Sparr, Someone will have to write a wrapper for non java submissions I'm afraid, I don't know how to do that. And thanks for looking at the starting positions.

Sparr

am I correctly reading that player 1 starts on the north edge of the floor, flying south, and player 2 starts on the south edge of the ceiling, flying north?

Martin Büttner

6:37 PM

I've expanded the KotH tag wiki a bit. this could still use some improvement but itäs a start:

codegolf.stackexchange.com/tags/king-of-the-hill/info

^ @Rainbolt @Geobits

Geobits

@Sparr I thought it was east/floor/flying west, and west/ceiling/flying east?

Sparr

the order of the coordinates in the rules is poorly explained

Geobits

Agreed. I assumed +x is east, +y is south, and +z is up, but it really doesn't say.

Sparr

I mean, I assume that too, but I don't assume that the coordinates are given X/Y/Z

I thought it was Y/X/Z per some previous documentation

and NS being presented before WE in the coordinate description

Geobits

Ah, I see. That would make a big difference.

Sparr

6:41 PM

I'm trying to get the controller to run locally so I can test a plane

# javac *.java
# java Controller
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Controller (wrong name: Planes/Controller)

Geobits

It's in a package called "Planes"

packages can be a pain in the ass from the cmd line.

Sparr

yeah :|

I'm not experienced with java compilation and command line stuff

Geobits

@MartinBüttner I like the wiki. Looks good.

Martin Büttner

thanks

I can probably add more if I actually do a KotH myself :D

Geobits

	// Returns a Point3D representing the direction.
	public Point3D getAsPoint3D() {
		return new Point3D(NS, WE, DU);
	}

@Sparr Looks like you're right.

Sparr

6:46 PM

makes sense if you consider the map as an array :)

row, column, layer

Geobits

Less sense if you consider it as a map ^^

Sparr

z,y,x is actually how I've encountered it the most often

anyway, got my local controller working

Geobits

I altered mine to spit output to the console as well as file. Much easier to see simple results that way.

Sparr

moving chat about dogfight to chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/16039/dogfighting-pitstop

Martin Büttner

7:40 PM

hmmmm

Nathan Merrill

9:06 PM

Martin: I added an image of a sample maze

Martin Büttner

ah great, thanks!

Doorknob

10:00 PM

@MartinBüttner Done

Geobits

10:23 PM

Begging for some monte carlo action: mathoverflow.net/questions/177364/escape-the-zombie-apocalypse

VisualMelon

11:08 PM

shiny new solver is now being tested - the other one still hasn't solved the 4way multiplexer, but it is using just 18MB, if for 5hours

VisualMelon

11:19 PM

demultiplexer that is... the multiplexer looks even worse

ok, I must be ill or something, this is the 4bit PRIME CHECKER

well, over 5hours down to 8minutes is a good start

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