The Nineteenth Byte

12:02 AM

@BrainSteel I'm in Algebra II now.

What year?

Me? AP Calc, so 1st year I guess?

I'm in 8th grade

two or three years ago.

8th grade!

12:03 AM

@Doorknob That's what I did! My middle school didn't offer Algebra 2 so they bussed me to the High School every other day... Those were odd times.

I have a bachelor's in math

I'm a math/Electrical Engineering major now

I'm homeschooled

@BrainSteel Hahaha, yeah, I have to take a bus to the high school every morning too. There's about 6 other people who do it.

I work full time and I'm doing a master's in applied statistics part time.

12:03 AM

@PhiNotPi I meant what year of high school?

Dang, we got all kinds of smarts in here.

YOU GUYS ARE SO SMART. I stayed put in middle school and high school.

12th

@rolfl: I hear you're older than me!

Have to go walk the dog now. See you all later!

Have a good time!

12:04 AM

I graduated HS in 3 years. Finishing my first year in college now, with calc 1-3, linear algebra, and diff eq. So I guess not bad? :P

Cya

That's very impressive!

@Sp3000 I made some epic progress on out bots.

@PhiNotPi Just woke up. I'll take a look a bit later :)

So we are in complete opposite timezones.

@Sp3000: Just woke up? You must be on the other side of the Earth.

12:05 AM

I'll be going to bed in a few hours...

It's 5pm my time.

rolfl

@AlexA. when I was ... 14, my dad brought a portable computer home from work:

Did you know that more people live on that side of Earth than my side?

It's 11am here :P

7 hour difference

12:06 AM

8 hours here.

Go Kansas!

Err...

@PhiNotPi When are you planning on sleeping? Cos I probably can't work on it yet but I want to post before you head off if possible

rolfl

@AlexA. - about 5 years ago you were half my age ;-)

@Sp3000: Australia?

Yeah Sydney

Neat!

12:07 AM

Uhh, I can stay up... a while, if needed.

I believe the correct term is "Eastern Austria"

or "New Austria"

^ I don't think that's right

Austria? Are we still talking about Australia, or the country next to Germany?

I was making a joke about how the names are pretty close to almost the same.

boo

I know.

12:09 AM

Hahaha

We get that all the time :P

^ this guy gets it

Seriously?

Haha

I bet.

Well, if people can confuse Syria and Siberia, surely they can confuse Austria and Australia too

12:10 AM

Whoa.

Didn't know that was a thing.

(Syria/Siberia, I mean)

I don't talk to people who know much geography, haha.

Is the Siberian civil war still going on?

I... I don't know. I do math.

Syria is in Middle East and Siberia is in upper Asia, right?

Thereabouts.

12:11 AM

Hm. We don't have many scouts on our team.

Siberia is northeast Russia

Not sure how much they'll help though tbh

Also, Syria is a country whilst Siberia is not.

@PhiNotPi: I don't think so.

Yeah, Siberia is a land mass.

12:12 AM

The best way to learn geography is to play Risk.

Syria is supposed to be a country.

I didn't mean I don't think Siberia is a country

And don't get started on Scandinavia.

I don't think the Siberian civil war is going on.

Scandinav... oh sorry, I won't start.

...ia

12:13 AM

Or all the middle eastern countries that end in "...stan"

?ia

Fortunately all of those locations are in the Bible or in Risk.

Some countries end in "stan" and aren't considered part of the Middle East, e.g. Kazakhstan.

Not in real life, right?

Otherwise, I probably would have no idea where they are.

12:14 AM

Siberia is in the Bible?

@PhiNotPi What's supposed to happen when one's dead, i.e. what's the idea with the inbox spoofing?

@AlexA. Ah, quite right. I didn't do too hot in geography either.

@AlexA. In Risk.

So that the code for moving and attacking enemies is still activated.

Ah k

12:15 AM

@AlexA. Do you know what Risk is.

@TheBestOne: Never played Risk or read the Bible. Learning something new every day.

I know what Risk is.

Just never played it

If, by "played Risk" you mean throw around the little army guys at my big brother many moons ago, I played A LOT of Risk.

Today I learned: Siberia makes an appearance in Risk. The More You Know

Haha

You were that kind of little brother

Man, I feel silly that I didn't just do formpos = twinformpos == "T" ? "B" : "T";, that would have been much better :P

What are you talking about? I did all the little brother things right! The big siblings had life too easy.

12:17 AM

@Sp3000: Seriously! What were you thinking? Just kidding. No idea what you're talking about.

@BrainSteel: I'm not judging. I have a big sister.

Younger siblings unite

I have one of those, too!

@BrainSteel Me and my brothers end up slaughtering each other in Risk.

Phi and I are coding our epic plan for world domination, clearly :P

Figuratively... right?

Right :)

12:18 AM

Literally.

There can be only one.

@Sp3000 Are y'all on red?

That's how he got the name "The Best One."

Blue!

He slaughtered the others.

Dang it!

Did your mom scold you for slaughtering the other kids?

My mom always did.

12:19 AM

Hah

@AlexA. No. We slaughtered each other.

Like, more than once?

So what you're saying is that you're a zombie

Eventually, none of us would have any more armies.

Hey! There is more to the undead than just zombies.

12:20 AM

@PhiNotPi Nice, you handled the edge cases :D

I wouldn't know. Haven't died yet.

They actually weren't that bad.

Well I forgot about them :(

@Sp3000: Where do you fall in the age continuum? So far rolfl is the only person I've come across on here older than me.

I'm still just in awe of how young everyone is.

Two weeks to 21

12:22 AM

One key was the expansion of the filler code to select only safe moves (which avoids walls).

... dang I'm in the twenties

@Sp3000: Happy early birthday!

:P thanks

I'm just a few years older than you.

What

@Sp3000 "Happy Birthday" early.

12:23 AM

@Sp3000 Obligatory second question: What's your background, mathematically?

@Sp3000: Here comes the onslaught of questions! Are you in college?

@PhiNotPi I see you changed sideways movement to

if (formpos == "T"){return 13 - j;}
                        return j - 4;

@Sp3000 Have you played Risk?

Why the 13 - j and j-4?

@Sp3000 Do you have older siblings?

12:24 AM

Haha

College? No. University? Yes. Unless they're synonyms (which I don't think they are)

They are in the US

Mathematically? Doing a bachelor's?

In the US, it's pretty close.

Neat. Year?

College here is more the place you stay in a university if you're boarding

12:25 AM

Oh interesting

@Sp3000 Somehow that causes it to move sideways perfectly now.

Why am I getting the questions? XD

Don't question it.

Haha

Everyone else got them too, don't worry. It's the process.

12:26 AM

Don't eat cabbage.

Don't do it bro

Don't eat the cabbage

btw haven't played Risk, but everyone here should play Dominion. And Set. But not Munchkins.

@Sp3000: What are you studying?

@Sp3000 Never heard of any of those.

Going to eat some food. Talk to you all in a bit.

12:28 AM

@Sp3000 What's your first programming language?

@Sp3000 Your first OS?

First programming language? Python. First language? Actionscript. I don't even think that counts, but once I transitioned to Python I realised why all my AS programs were so slow. Of course, now that I know there's languages other than Python...

@PhiNotPi Seems to look good, is the only thing left to change the filler code?

The new "filler" code is a hard-coded search pattern that looks like this:

Quick poll: How long did it take you guys to first get Object Oriented Programming?

/\/\
\  /
/  \
\/\/

It seems to get stuck at the edges, so I think we need some x/y checks for that

12:33 AM

@TheBestOne I started playing with programming in 8th grade, beginning with Java. I decided I didn't like the JVM (keep in mind, I was a silly little person), so I migrated to C++. I also dabbled in Python. After lots of experimentation, I decided I didn't much care for OOP, and 95% of code I've written since is in C. I have since gone back and learned about it, but I still like my C.

Though, LISP is just about the coolest language in existence.

The wall-sticking is caused when the search pattern hits a wall. The search pattern is based on a timer, so it keeps trying to go a certain direction until the timer is up.

The benefit of the sticking is that the search pattern eventually gets aligned with the map.

You should make direction a function of position when searching.

I was already thinking of that. I have a possible map planned out.

Well there's never a need to go within 11 of the edge since the radius of the search area covers it

11^2 + 11^2 = 242 < 256 = 16^2

Maybe go in a lawn-mover fashion?

12:46 AM

Hmm I'll try something and you can try something if you want and we'll see what works best? :D

I guess.

I'm actually going to see if there is a better timer-based pattern.

The sticking occurs when the bot moves in the same direction for a period of time, and I think a more detailed pattern can reduce that.

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

@PhiNotPi Is it okay if I try something out?

New Sandboxed Posts

0

Here's a puzzle to be split into two questions: Build an evil-defying Tetris AI Build a program that takes the state of a current board and a piece and attempts to find the optimal space for it. Your program will be scored by the number of points it can score against the evil Tetris block gene...

Sure

We can always revert if the worst happens.

Heh, k

k, updated. I think that idea works, but the search doesn't cover the whole area yet (which just means more if statements, really)

1:00 AM

Seems much better.

The basic idea is that there's a set route which it should be on, and it takes the shortest safe move to that route

Hence why it cuts corners sometimes, when it's behind schedule

I don't think I did sideways movement right though - it should be smoother than that :P

That's not normal diagonal movement, but it works.

Might be more impressive to onlookers if we did it right?

Maybe :P

Ugh. That looks dangerous.

I'm gonna go get some breakfast then come back with a new search path

1:03 AM

Especially if they didn't have labels on.

Okay.

In the meantime, I'll get sideways movement working.

@TheBestOne :)

It makes you wish you were on the Blue Team, doesn't it?

Your bots go crazy if there is a red directly in between them.

Yeah. :/

The formation process is hard.

imgur.com/nxRBqDy

Your bots are in the upper right corner.

I know, I've seen it.

The problem is that in that frame, it's not blue's turn, so they can't capture.

I don't think they'll be able to kill Coward very well though.

1:13 AM

ehh..... good enough

@TheBestOne Late to the poll on OOP. Do you mean get as in understand or get as in try to use?

Both :)

I didn't know what OOP was until a couple years ago. Unfortunately I use a language called SAS for work, which is barely a language, and haven't gotten much exposure to OOP.

@Sp3000 Horizontal movement is working.

SAS (software)

SAS (Statistical Analysis System; not to be confused with SAP) is a software suite developed by SAS Institute for advanced analytics, business intelligence, data management, and predictive analytics. SAS was developed at North Carolina State University from 1966 until 1976, when SAS Institute was incorporated. SAS was further developed in the 1980s and 1990s with the addition of new statistical procedures, additional components and the introduction of JMP. A point-and-click interface was added in version 9 in 2004. A social media analytics product was added in 2010. == Technical overview and... ==

data _null_; putlog "I wish I didn't have to use SAS everyday."; run;

@BrainSteel: (+ ((('LISP' (* ('YOU SAY' ))) '?')))(()((())))()()

1:25 AM

@PhiNotPi Nice! I'll get onto making the search path now then

You know how the bots tend to go upwards when moving closer together, instead of horizontally towards each other? I think there might be a way to fix that.

Actually, it probably breaks horizontal movement. :(

New search path up

It's basically an inner square and an outer square

okay

I think the main idea is to take out the stationary enemies if possible, since the ones that shift position every so often are hard to predict :(

(since, well, we can't see them)