The Nineteenth Byte

7:00 PM

On that end, I also am still getting the hang of things. Five trials was obviously far too few, and I wouldn't write a challenge that takes 8 hours per trial ever again

Geobits

I think I'm about to end up writing one that takes a long time... ugh

Rainbolt

Omg I love the new jelly movement lol.

It's so realistic

Straight down, potentially diagonal up

Sparr

@MartinBüttner for people unfamiliar with fishing nets, clarify that nets move towards the open end? that is, u moves up and n moves down (which is very mnemonic now that I've typed it out)

@MartinBüttner also, you should totally represent nets as u and n :)

(one of those two is a serious suggestion)

re the net shape, I don't like the idea that seeing the leading edge of a net doesn't tell you which way the net extends. that seems unrealistic and algorithmically annoying

but I can't immediately think of a good fix

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt "realistic"... it's how it works in Super Mario basically...

@Sparr I think I've writting "in the +y direction?"

Sparr

sure, but +y means different things to different people and challenges :p

Martin Büttner

7:07 PM

@Sparr No, bots should figure out in which direction the net is moving from the relative position

@Sparr Yeah I should specify orientations better anyway... +y is North

Sparr

if you're passing the arena as a [z][y][x] array, +y is south

in some conventions

is +z up or down? altitude or depth?

Martin Büttner

altitude

Rainbolt

Jellyfish Movement (because the more you know)

Martin Büttner

right handed coordinate system

Rainbolt

if +z is up and +x is right, then +y is away from you?

Sparr

7:09 PM

north south east west up down

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt yeah

Sparr

@MartinBüttner z and y can be arbitrary and it still be a right handed coordinate system...

Martin Büttner

@Sparr yes, but x is never to the left, and I specified z as up, which determines y ;)

Sparr

X never to the left? you've obviously never dealt with western-hemisphere-only lat/long coordinates :p

Rainbolt

Up generally indicates positive z, and east generally indicates positive x, so I would use those

VisualMelon

7:10 PM

Y is always up in my mind

Sparr

Z is always up in my mind

X and Y are east and north

like on a map :)

@VisualMelon if Y is up, then is your 2d coordinate system x/z?

Rainbolt

I agree with Visual though, on some planes I draw Y up and then Z ends up coming at me. It needs to be specified @MartinBüttner

Martin Büttner

@Sparr that's not too uncommon a convention either

Sparr

I think the origin of this distinction is whether we are thinking about a map on a table as the default 2d coordinate system, or something on a (vertical) screen.

the idea of Z being "away from you"

VisualMelon

nah, my 2d coords are x/y, it's on a nice screen facing me, so Y is up ;)

Sparr

7:12 PM

that's screen-based thinking

anyway, the punchline is that you need to specify the coordinate system :)

Geobits

Does this really matter at all as long as the spec tells you what it is? None of these is going to be harder to use.

Yea, what he said :p

Sparr

@Geobits it matters when the spec doesn't tell you :p

Rainbolt

Good point Geobits. @MartinBüttner Pick one that nobody would ever use in real life.

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt done

Geobits

The enemy's gate is down.

Sparr

7:13 PM

also, remember that not only do you need to specify X/Y/Z as pertains to NSEWUD, but you also need to be explicit about how blocks of data are transmitted.

You could send X Y Z DATA for each bit

or you could send 27 pieces of DATA and specify what order they are in

Martin Büttner

@Sparr Yes, I will do that once I've written the controller

wait

misread that

Sparr

send 125 to squid

one line, 0 (blind) or 27 (normal) or 125 (squid) characters

Martin Büttner

for bots written in the same language, it will be a 3D array with specified indexing

for the command line protocol I need to figure something out