I broke something along the way and it now spawns 2 times as much right-side workers than left-side :c

@Alion I have a handy random4() function that returns a number from 0 to 4 that I use for that

Oh dear lord, using randomness in a Bad Way.

@Alion what do you do for side choosing?

Basically, if rand is lower than x, I spawn a worker. If rand is lower than y, where y is equal to x, spawn on the left side. facepalm

Argh, that hurt me to the core.

Firefly is waaaay to vulnerable to corrupton. If a worker encounters a stray black, red, or yellow pixel, it gives up, and a single line of them will occupy every single worker

@eaglgenes101, the Official Formic Functions Entry Critic!

Wait, I don't even have a real way to fix that issue with how I use randomness, because of some further checks... Hmm...

Oh, right, I have a different source of randomness...

from what I know you have 2 randomness sources - the orientation (4 possible values) and the offset (5 possible values)

I only have 4 & 2

Yeah, and I'm using both of them for separate tasks, and it still doesn't work properly.

What is going on??

@Alion correct randomness result indexing? correct comparisons (e.g. <=2 vs <2)?

@dzaima Yep, and I removed one of the two mechanisms and it works properly now.

This is arcane...

But it doesn't get as well rate-limited now...

Okay, I think I've managed to get a more watered-down version of rate-limiting to work. I had to utilize orientation only, otherwise it just wouldn't work.

NOPE, I take that back. It still doesn't work!

Please help me debug this. I don't understand what's going on at this point... I'm probably just missing something obvious.

Like, for most of the spawning, I don't even use randomness.

How is this breaking??

@Alion m.orientation is 0-3 inclusive, right?

@dzaima Mhm.

that's an interesting idea to spawn the opposite worker :D

does it work okay without it?

Wait a sec, I don't even know anymore.

I know it worked, sometime in the past.

If I change line one to true and line 11 to m.orientation < 2, it works.

Ooh, if the first check matches at ME.food < 17, I should use m.orientation < 2 still.

But that second check becomes pretty much dead at that point anyway...

@Alion oh, didn't notice that line 1 wasn't and &&

@dzaima It should be?

It should be if I wanted to stop producing workers after I hoard 17 food...

But I don't want to.

m.orientation < 2 could be replaced with m.orientation%2 == 1 and the later m.orientation < 1 to m.orientation < 2 for a simple solution

@dzaima And for some Godforsaken reason it doesn't work!!

I swear there's some bug somewhere in my framework... There has to be.

Your solution is as logically feasible as they get. There's something somewhere else.

So the whole idea of this is pretty simple. If a left-worker brings food, spawn a right-worker. Flip otherwise. That means that when a lot of workers come from the right side, a lot of workers will get created on the left side, and so on and so forth.

What could possibly not work here...?

And I swear, on the same seed, without the first check, everything is fine.

And upping the limit just delays the inevitable. Suddenly, more workers decide to come back from the side lines.

Hmm, maybe the balancing power is limited by the rate-limiting...

Finally! I managed to confirm that this "bug" is actually a feature of rate-limiting... So I can't rate-limit. Whoopsie.

Now, back to your random, genius idea. I need to test it out!

Some serious imperfections are appearing, but I can probably fix them. Oh my god this is glorious. That was an insane idea, @dzaima!

Actually, this will require quite a major rework, but still!

Here's a quick report - on an empty map, it usually works great. But the Queen sometimes gets desynchronized. It works kinda like Wildfire now, but workers have to travel up to 5000 cells if they miss the Queen from the front...

I don't think that this particular idea is worth it, though it gave me a different idea. What if I just expand the highway backwards, along with bringing food backwards? That should usually bring the food to the Queen faster, right? It's the next thing that I'm going to try out.