@ASCII-only it was in the sandbox for about 2 years before I learned JavaScript and finally wrote the controller
Most of my challenges are slow cooked
@dzaima with so many players and so many possible combinations of players per game, it take hundreds of games before the order becomes remotely meaningful now
..just took another look at my prolog for generating the pattern and found some old requirements meant for my Highway clone.. Seems to make the chance of outputting something way bigger ಠ_ಠ
and now it found a 5x4 pattern with only 4 colors..
Are the mine shafts still separated by an empty column to allow the 4-cycle repetition? Would making the ants move diagonally back and for allow viewing all the arena cells without losing any speed?
Or would that require losing the empty column in the middle of the mineshaft to avoid losing site of the other side?
@trichoplax yep, still 1/4th is lost, and diagonally moving is very dangerous and currently is left as a last escape as then you can easily get confused by bad new colors
Fair enough. I was imagining a double width coloured column with white columns either side of it, and the worker zigzagging within the coloured columns. Even if it would work it would be a significant rewrite for 33% more food
@trichoplax it wouldn't be a significant rewrite, I could probably get a working setup in a couple minutes, I just feel like it's way too error prone to move diagonally and moving orthogonally is very wasteful there
Hmm, I think I'm going to revisit orthogonal-only movement for Highway. Prompted by some... interesting observations in regards to how often workers actually misinterpret some colors when moving diagonally.
there are a couple things a zig-zag would need to do very well to be useful too - not die with multiple ants in one shaft, have reliable ways to get back to the shaft after getting food & not being easily confused about being on the rail