The Nineteenth Byte

Sp3000

12:11 AM

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12:29 AM

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A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Make a Modem! audio code-challenge Objective Design a modulator/demodulator pair. The modulator converts X bytes of random data to an audio file. The audio file will be run through a Python script that dirties it up like it went through plain old telephone service (POTS) and returns another au...

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12:45 AM

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A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Simulate a Game of Quagmire Many moons ago, in a galaxy much like our own, a young BrainSteel attempted to invent a board game. He believed that he, too, could find an amazingly simple set of rules that would generate wonderfully strategic gameplay. He drew up the first set of rules--it looked p...

PhiNotPi

1:39 AM

I'm currently trying to do some testing of the Red vs. Blue challenge.

I think something is buggy somewhere.

here's my testing bot: meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/4963/2867

It should theoretically move towards an enemy.

But something about its homing is broken.

It appears to be homing up and down, but not left to right.

@Calvin'sHobbies My bot doesn't seem to work right now.

BrainSteel

On that note, my simple "return 4;" should make my bot move downward, right? It seems to be rather immobile.

PhiNotPi

Yeah.

BrainSteel

1:55 AM

It appears to be reading the code correctly, but something is odd in execution.

PhiNotPi

@Calvin'sHobbies Which corner is (0,0) also?

I think I have the y-axis swapped.

Calvin's Hobbies

Top left is (0, 0)

BrainSteel

Ah, nevermind, I see you've edited my answer. Disregard me.

Calvin's Hobbies

Was return 4 really not working?

BrainSteel

I don't know if I ran the test before or after you edited it. It probably would've been pretty close. Worth checking, at least.

Calvin's Hobbies

1:59 AM

I made me return 4 and it works

BrainSteel

Yeah, I must've ran it too late. False alarm.

PhiNotPi

Okay, try the latest edit of my bot.

It appears functional, at least in the single test or two I've tried.

Calvin's Hobbies

@PhiNotPi I just did. It took out BrainSteel when he was homing in.

Did it again

By the way, to help debug you can check the checkbox at the bottom of the snippet and look at your browser console.

PhiNotPi

Is the top-left (0,0) in the spec?

BrainSteel

I'm curious as to what a bunch of PhiNotPi's solutions look like pitted against each other.

PhiNotPi

2:05 AM

Stalemate occurs, I believe.

Calvin's Hobbies

I'm not sure I specify where (0,0) is. I should though

PhiNotPi

Have you decided anything about asymmetrical move patterns?

Calvin's Hobbies

Yeah, I'll do the second thing you suggested. Red goes L/R, Blue U/D, both go diagonally.

I'll also make still moves impossible. If a player tries to move off the grid (or errors) they will be moved randomly to one of their 6 move choices.

But I probably won't getaround to it until tomorrow

PhiNotPi

2:27 AM

One thing I'm noticing is that the game doesn't play well on a sparse field.

Maybe the time-limit to board-size ratio is too small.

By this, I'm referring to the distance a pixel can travel in a game vs. the length of a game.

I think I've seen predator-prey simulations like this before, and the environment is much smaller, denser, and action-packed.

On the other hand, there's only five test bots.

But still, more often than not, all the bots start completely isolated from each other.

Calvin's Hobbies

I could decrease the grid size, or make games longer. (Note that the players are drawn as 3x3 squares just so they are more visible. They are really 1x1 as the spec says.)

I wasn't really sure what to choose for those kind of values.

PhiNotPi

I'm going to go to sleep right about now, but try seeing what a 128x128 board looks like.

Bye!

Sp3000

5:00 AM

Hmm shift-reduce conflicts. Fun.

Does anyone happen to know the grammar for regex char classes?

Martin Büttner

that really depends on the flavour, no?

Sp3000

Hm... that's true. Most of them seem to have similar behaviours for char classes though I think (barring ECMAScript)

Sp3000

5:15 AM

Hmm interesting... a{5}? is valid in Python, but the ? isn't optional, it's lazy matching

Zgarb

7:32 AM

@Calvin'sHobbies I had the same problem with my grid-routing battle. The grid was initially too large for the bots, and no-one scored any points. I had to shrink it after a while, which broke a couple of submissions. I also recommend that you make the board smaller.

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