In parentheses are the "normalized" scores. For the random bots, as expected, they are all around 0. The ExampleBots did much better, from a statistical-significance point of view.
Has there been a [restricted-source] that asks for a set of programs where each one represents and outputs a non-negative integer, but w/o using digits 0-9.
But with the added req that two concatenated programs need to output the sum. e.g. +0, +1, +2, etc. would trivially work in a lot of languages but they of course require digits.
@BrainSteel Like P0 is the program representing 0 and it outputs 0 as well, Same for all Pn, n >= 0
@PhiNotPi Do I understand correctly: Each time when all the players vote for one of the candidates, all players have different payoffs for the three candidates?
@Calvin'sHobbies at that point, I'll just shift the ASCII characters for the numbers away from the digits (or base encode them in all the ascii characters beyond 9)
@Plarsen I think you could tone it down a bit. Peter was trying to be helpful in pointing out parts of the challenge that were unclear, especially since he wrote three full comments to address specific problems instead of just close voting without a comment or saying "I don't understand what you're asking." Condescending replies aren't really a nice way to respond to that.
@MartinBüttner As I see it, it was not helpful at all since I could very easy meet most of his comments with references to the text in the question, and without any editing. He payed the commenting full attention, but didn't bother to try understand. Actually, I don't beleive he even read the whole question.
if you just do set[0]=rand(100), set[1]=rand(100-a), set[2]=(100-a-b), then shuffle set, you might get a distribution you're happier with. one number will tend to be about twice as high as the other two, I think.
@Plarsen PeterTaylor is a trusted member of our community. I, too, read the question and did not understand how many of the parts worked. I felt Peter's questions were perfectly justified. Either way, it is clear a trip through the sandbox would have helped the question.
@Plarsen your question is interesting, but very very complicated. You could probably remove half of the game mechanics and it would still be an above average complexity question.
@BrainSteel That may be true. But now I have given answers in the comments, and @MartinBüttner if he still thinks it should be on hold, or if more things is unclear ... that's what to do, right? Ask what is wrong and fix it?
@Plarsen I'm reading your post from the point of view of someone who plays a lot of board games with complex rules, and a lot of it is unclear or doesn't make sense.
Sudoku Swapping Shenanigans
code-golf? fastest-code?
Honestly, there's not many shenanigans in this challenge but I wanted that sweet tautogram title.
Introduction
Imagine you're on a train, and there is a Sudoku grid that's already been entirely filled in left on the seat. We'll represent ...
@Plarsen I shouldn't have to read the whole problem AND the comments to make sense of sentences at the beginning of the problem. That's bad writing.
"If you move your Hero(H) into the reach of any enemy piece" <-- does this mean adjacent, or to the squares the enemy piece can capture with a chess move? which way are enemy pieces facing? can pawns in the fourth rank capture en passant?
Later in that paragraph it mentions moving adjacent to other pieces, which is confusing if pieces capture at range.
@Sparr Well, reading the comments is not neccessary. All questions Peter Taylor asked is really answered in the text. "If you move your Hero(H) into the reach of any enemy piece" means the squares the enemy piece can capture with a chess move. You are correct, that description can be improved, thanks!
@Plarsen About Peter's comments: in 1. and 2. he wasn't implying that he didn't understand these things. He was making suggestions for how to make the post clearer by reordering the information. If you read the entire thing it *is* clear how traps and stonewalls work, but you reference them long before you introduce them, which makes those earlier sections harder to understand. His 3. was probably based on the misunderstanding that the initial input might contain stonewalls. (Which it doesn't, okay.)
One point I'd like to add is that the section "Piece movement" implies that pieces can only be moved if there is no wall between the hero and the piece, but when you move the first pawn in the example, there is a wall between the hero and the pawn.
@Plarsen When you say "you cannot move the hero adjacent to an enemy Queen() or Rook(R) unless there is a wall between the Hero(H) and the piece," by "adjacent" do you mean "in the same rank or column as", rather than "next to"?
@Plarsen I am confused about where stone walls exist and how they get left behind. You repeatedly describe them as existing on edges, not on squares, but you say they get left behind when a piece moves, and your examples show non-parallel walls.
@Plarsen ok, I think I understand the challenge now. I think I stand by what I said before. You could eliminate half the mechanics of this puzzle and it would still be something worth golfing.
@MartinBüttner I only visually the state at 4 different timeframes, not for all 43 moves. I have visualised a vertical stonewall after pushing a pawn to the east, and yet another vertical stonewall after pulling another Pawn west. If I should visualise all 43 oves as Peter Taylor suggests, the question description would be huge
@Plarsen you could remove the stone and piece movement and walls, leaving only hero movement and piece pushing, with the goal just being to get to the target square, and this would still be a puzzle worth golfing a solution to.
here is your step 5: "Push the pawn at F5 one step east, and then move it one step north" ... when you push it, that creates a wall between the hero and the pawn (as you just said). then why are you allowed to move the pawn north afterwards if there's a stonewall now?
Although a step by step series of diagrams would be excessive for the long example, it might help to have a much shorter example that shows the relevant types of move
@MartinBüttner If I've understood the rules correctly that would require the Hero to move around the wall and become adjacent to the pawn from a different direction before moving it
@MartinBüttner That is a 8 point description on how to solve the puzzle, not exactly every move the Hero takes. You miss the part where the Hero rounds the stonewall? Fine, that 8 point description can be more verbose into a 43 point description... but that was not the point there, I was introducing the concept there.
@Plarsen if you aren't going to illustrate it with an example, you need to mention somewhere that walls block the hero from moving a piece. More generally, you should mention early that walls block adjacency
PS: I totally want to play this game during a chess match :)
I think we're at the point where everything makes sense, but the next person who reads the question is going to ask all these questions again, so we just need a way of making it easier to grasp. I think a series of bullet points might help
@Plarsen Ultimately, we're just trying to help you. There's no need to get defensive and throw "but it's all there in the spec" at everyone. We're trying to make suggestions how you can make the challenge clearer such that others can understand the challenge in the first pass.
@MartinBüttner Well, another person thinks avoiding the pieces capture squares is a very iportant concept. And some other thinks something else is very important.. after all, the logic is complex, and everything can't be explained into extreme detail
@Plarsen I think you should write the challenge from scratch, incorporating the questions and feedback you've gotten here.
@Plarsen You could actually convey the mechanics of your challenge in fewer words if they were organized more intentionally.
if I were re-writing it, I'd probably intermingle the parts about output and the problem description. You don't need to explain the (E)ast (W)est (S)outh (N)orth thing twice.
tell us how to move the hero when you tell us we can move the hero. tell us how to move pieces when you tellus we can move pieces.
@PhiNotPi I think you need to better describe what you're looking for. It won't be a hard question to answer if you can actually ask it. Personally, I like #math on freenode for questions about producing distributions.
key observation of that article: a triangle is half of a quadrilateral, and distributing points uniformly in a quadrilateral is easy :)
although, this will only get you the target distribution for each player's payouts. the totals are still going to average to 33/33/33
if you want the totals to follow the distribution you're looking for, then things get trickier if you really care about accomodating your discrete integers instead of reals.
that's a port of this Mathematica snippet: SelectFirst[ Reverse@Divisors[ 2 n],(OddQ@# == IntegerQ[n/#] && n/# > (# - 1)/2) &] where n is hardcoded to 120.
Are folks up for another team based stack snippet koth? I thought BBBF would get a better response but I'm not sure if it was just too complex or if the genre got tired after RvB.
There are two pieces of wood. Both consist of a straight body and some extra blocks below the body. An example piece with extra blocks at (0-indexed) positions 1,4,7,9,10:
XXXXXXXXXXX
X X X XX
The piece can be represented as a 01 binary sequence with the ith character showing if there is a ...
Right now I'm thinking team based again: 4 teams/colors (based on id) on toroidal grid. The move around and try to paint the grid their color. Hopefully simpler than RvB or BBBF.
I have quite a wide variety of KOTH ideas in the sandbox, many of which are similar in that: 1) Each entrant is a single, movable, "player" in the game 2) Bots have a wide variety of moves, like short-ranged and long-ranged moves 3) Often, different bots have "customizable" strengths and weaknesses
ASCII Robot Wars
This idea is based off of the game "Besiege" (which I've never played) and a previous sandboxed idea of mine called "Epic Customizable Tank Battle."
The main idea is that your program is the AI that controls a robot equipped with various weapons. In this challenge, however, yo...
Epic Customizable Tank Battle (Work-In-Progress)
This is an idea I have been working on in conjuction with users @Trimsty and @githubphagocyte in the chat room. It is inspired by the flash game "Bubble Tanks" by Armor Games.
This will be a king-of-the-hill challenge.
Main Idea
The main idea...
Real-Time Hovercraft Battle
king-of-the-hill
Hovercrafts are cool. Hovercrafts with rail guns are even cooler. In this challenge, you will write a program to controller a battling hovercraft.
The hovercrafts in this game obey the laws of physics. A hovercraft with no acceleration will conti...
Super Smash Bots
king-of-the-hill
This is an idea for a KOTH based off of the Super Smash Bros video game series by Nintendo.
The basic mechanics of this KOTH would be an every-man-for-himself battle between a large number of players simultaneously. Players can execute a variety of moves, lik...
The Challenge
Consider the following diagram of the Fifteen Puzzle in its solved state:
_____________________
| | | | |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
|____|____|____|____|
| | | | |
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
|____|____|____|____|
| | | | |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|____|___...
Sudoku Swapping Shenanigans
code-golf? fastest-code?
Honestly, there's not many shenanigans in this challenge but I wanted that sweet tautogram title.
Introduction
Imagine you're on a train, and there is a Sudoku grid that's already been entirely filled in left on the seat. We'll represent ...
There are two pieces of wood. Both consist of a straight body and some extra blocks below the body. An example piece with extra blocks at (0-indexed) positions 1,4,7,9,10:
XXXXXXXXXXX
X X X XX
The piece can be represented as a 01 binary sequence with the ith character showing if there is a ...
