The Blue team is back on track thanks to PhiNotPi and Sp3000:

hi fives PhiNotPi

hi fives Sp3000

anyon here?

Just me I think

I'm not.

is it correct that y (on screen ) is left-right

y is left right on screeen

and x is up and down on screen?

no

completely wrong :)

x is 0 at left, 127 at right

hm ok

y is 0 at top, 127 at bottom

thanks

ah thats whats wrong...

mystery = solved

i thought i have a fool proof minimal program but it doesn not work the way I wanted it=/

it is so fucking difficult to debug

as blue i can do the following movements:

sorry

(when i am at the center x)

then my program checks for each of those possible steps, if an enemy can reach it within one step

it always tries to stay where it is and only moves if the current position could be beaten in the enemies next step

but somehow it is still getting caught all the time

Try zooming in on the screen and using the "step" button to whatever it's called.

Then, you can see every step it makes.

When it's getting caught, it is being caught by a single enemy or two working together?

@flawr I just told you the directions of x and y. The spec also says it too: "x is your current x position, an integer from 0 (leftmost) to 127 (rightmost)."

There is no way for a single pixel to defend an attack from two pixels.

Why not make the battle field wrap? So that a move of 6 at 127,1 wraps you back to 0,2

That would drastically alter some battle strategies.

It's wayy to late for that now. It would make a lot of chases never end.

If you're trying to chase after someone, it's impossible to catch up to them.

@Calvin'sHobbies If my bot throws an exception, how do I tell which line it was thrown?

@TheBestOne There's unfortunately not an easy way to tell which line. If a bot errors and Debug messages is checked, the error will be pronted to the browser console, but it could have come from anywhere in the bot code.

One crude way to do it is to surround suspect code with try/catch blocks in the test entry bot

So it's like try { /*code that might be erroring*/ } catch(exception) { console.log(exception) }

Hah. I just found the problem.

Never mind. It's a Syntax error for an unexpected semi-colon.

;)

Surrounding all the code with try{}catch(e){} doesn't help.

Is "use strict"; allowed?

Ok. Now I'm getting this error: setMsg is not defined

I don't really know how to help you without seeing the code.

jsfiddle.net/dfmz6htw

Maybe I'm blind, but I don't see setMsg used anywhere.

line 69

I don't really know JavaScript very well. Maybe it expects that the function gives a return value, but setMsg() doesn't?

Or it could be something weird about how setMsg is implemented by the controller.

Preventing it from being called within functions like that.

@Calvin'sHobbies ^

@TheBestOne This is strange.

I think it will work if you assign the function to a variable with var instead of declaring it outright.

//USE THIS:
var f = function () {
    console.log(setMsg)
    setMsg('abc')
}

f()

//DON"T USE THIS:
function f() {
    console.log(setMsg)
    setMsg('abc')
}

f()

I really don't know why but the top version works and the bottom one doesn't.

I always thought these two forms were exactly identical besides syntax

I'm surprised no one else has noticed

The var f = ... version prints to the console but the function f... version doesn't.

It's working now.

After adding the vars?

yes.

Good. Sorry about that. Really no clue why there's a difference

Also, could you add 'times clocked-out' to the final stats? On my busy machine, I think there are some times where I'm able to capture powerful foes (and vice versa) because one of us timesout. This happens much more early on that after, since we're all looping through eNear and it's fuller in the beginning.

@Ph

@PhiNotPi Just submitted my entry, thanks for the encouragement.

And anyone else: thank you for your help and patience=)

@flawr I'll think about making it possible to say which bots compete but that kind of feature may have to wait until my next koth.

@flawr I fixed some typos in the description, if you don't mind

@PhiNotPi thanks=)

@Calvin'sHobbies Do you have already other similar challenges in planning?

I really enjoyed the challenge, and want to thank you again for this enormous effort!

@Hylianpuffball As for the timeouts, in my own testing I've never noticed a bot timeout. Just looking now, 8.5 ms is the highest time I see and most are from 1-4 ms. (check Debug messages and look at your browser console)

I'd rather not bother with any more changes that aren't bug fixes but you guys can always fork the fiddle and mess with things yourself.

@flawr In planning? No. But after this one I'm much more prepared for the next. I definitely want to make at least one more koth like this.

Sounds good! Probably just my machine lagging anyways!

@flawr Autorunning some stuff right now.

I'm pretty sure I've seen some timeouts of the Sphi-bots.

Where the are traveling and the formation seems to glitch for a turn.

for a simple timeout checker you can change the if (debug) on line 181 in the fiddle to if(player.id === 1234), or whatever your id is. You may want to change line 178 as well

Status update: just ran 50, Blue seems to be doing even better.

We did add two more people... Red team, find some friends!

nice tabs

:)

I was trying to get just the box, but I was too lazy to edit it.