Author Topic: The F1 League lives again!  (Read 42436 times)

Offline bacillus

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The F1 League lives again!
« on: March 26, 2008, 11:54:33 PM »
Hello to all!
I would like to take this little space up to formally announce that I have started up the F1 league again. There are 78 contestants, including every single bot in the F1 bestiary, and a few random ones which seemed F1-esque from the starting gate. In this forum, I hope to give a daily report on how the league is running.

To EricL, I apologize that I am dragging in an old corpse into the bar, and probably am putting this in the wrong forum, but I hope to make this worthwhile.  
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan

Offline bacillus

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The F1 League lives again!
« Reply #1 on: March 27, 2008, 12:06:30 AM »
DAY 1
-------

Downloaded all bots, ran 32 simulations against Animal Minimaxis
Status: 1.1%
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan

Offline abyaly

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The F1 League lives again!
« Reply #2 on: March 27, 2008, 12:21:38 AM »
Just to make sure, are you using version 2.43.1e?

PS - I thought every bot in the starting gate was F1 eligible...  how can we know which ones will be successful without running them?
« Last Edit: March 27, 2008, 12:22:46 AM by abyaly »
Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all
the time and handed on the fight to their descendants.
        -- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)

Offline EricL

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The F1 League lives again!
« Reply #3 on: March 27, 2008, 01:11:09 AM »
Quote from: bacillus
To EricL, I apologize that I am dragging in an old corpse into the bar, and probably am putting this in the wrong forum, but I hope to make this worthwhile.  
Glad your doing it.  You may find bugs - the league code is.... delicate.  Just let me know.
Many beers....

Offline Commander Keen

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The F1 League lives again!
« Reply #4 on: March 27, 2008, 04:48:52 PM »
 Yay for the leagues!  

If everyone does a league each it could reduce load. I could do the F2 league...

Offline bacillus

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The F1 League lives again!
« Reply #5 on: March 28, 2008, 01:23:01 AM »
I've tried the run league function already, and it never works. I'm running the league manually.
I'm only running the F1 marked bots, then me and Commander Keen will take the top 30 bots from the F1 and F2 league, and make a final table out of that, which I'll run any bot against who thinks it has a chance to overthrow a current bot.

DAY 2
-------
Ran a few more sims.
Status report: 1.7%
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan

Offline Numsgil

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The F1 League lives again!
« Reply #6 on: March 28, 2008, 01:30:34 AM »
What never works with the league function?  You don't mean you're running one match at a time do you?

Offline bacillus

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« Reply #7 on: March 28, 2008, 01:52:54 AM »
Quote from: Numsgil
What never works with the league function?
Everything.
Seriously, I've tried everything I can, and I've never gotten a league to work.
I've spent too much time on the forum today. I should start continuing the league.
I will be leaving now.
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan

Offline Numsgil

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The F1 League lives again!
« Reply #8 on: March 28, 2008, 03:32:53 AM »
League running might be broken.  Might not.  Let's work through it together.  There's just no way to run the hundreds of rounds by hand.  You'd go crazy.

Running it just now, I do notice that it crashes if you don't have a league folder.  That's a bug.  It should create all the initial files and folders if none are found.

To fix it, check out Jez's instructions on running your own league.  It's in the F1 folder I believe.

After that, I managed to get some bots in the league, but when I tried to save the results, I got an error.  That's bug #2.

After that, I downloaded the F1 Zips from the F1 forum and moved them in to my DarwinbotsII\Leagues\ directory.  I was then able to rerun the league (but since it's Guardian my poor laptop is having a hernia )

After forcing Guardian to win manually, I got in to other rounds.  The program keeps wanting to stay on top when it's running league matches, which is annoying.  Bug #3.

(Oh, and not really a bug, but the program trying to parse Guardian more than once is especially annoying.)
« Last Edit: March 28, 2008, 03:53:32 AM by Numsgil »

Offline Moonfisher

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« Reply #9 on: March 28, 2008, 05:47:43 AM »
As far as I understand it isn't possible to create a bot that isn't F1 compatible, since there are no rules in the F1 league you can't realy disqualify a bot from it.
So... realy all bots are F1 bots... and usualy people don't label with F1 if they qualify for another league. A lot of the top bots in the F1 league do not have the F1 league tag in their name, instead they show what other leagues they qualify for.
So I don't think picking the bots by their label is a very good idea, atleast not for F1, since you need to run the bots in chronological order (Ordered by the date the bots topic was created), so you can't just run the remaining bots later on, or atleast that wouldn't realy be "fair" to the makers of those bots.
Either way, no matter what label a bot has it is also F1, so if you want to run the entire F1 league you need to run all bots in the order they where submitted or you wouldn't be doing it right...
Personaly I wouldn't run the entire league thought, I'd just take the current F1 league tabel and run all the bots in the starting gate against it, the bots that aren't in the starting gate should already have been run before, if something changed then the author can always update it or just ask for it to be run again, otherwise I wouldn't worry about the old bots.
And remember, taking all the bots in the F1 section.... not nearly enough.... as mentioned.... F1 is ALL bots, no exceptions.

Unless you realy want to reevaluate the entire league, then I would sugest just taking over where Jez left off and just run the bots in the starting gate against the current league files.
I don't think anyone is expecting you to start over from scratch.
This would also leave you the time to categorize the bots with no label, the rules are posted in different topics, but they can easily be summarized :
F1 : All bots, no exceptions.
F2 : All bots that don't use a virus or transfers energy through a tie.
MB : Organisms made of more than one bot (The multi flag must also be set I think)
SB : All bots with 6 genes or less.
SS : One store comand, no more no less.

I should mention that some of these leagues kindof lost their concept along the way.
The SB league is anything but short since you can just SG'fie any bot, so 6 genes only sets a limit of 5 viruses, the bot can still do an unlimited amount of things.
The MB league is rules by the bots that spend the least time worrying about ties, since they're usualy more of a disadvantage. You can comunicate a lot better through the air than through your tie, the tie will disrupt your aim, if you form new ties the old tie angles will change, moving around is hard to controll, you can't stiffen birth ties so you risk tieing to enemies or alge when forming, and generaly the ties are just anoying and useless and creates weaknesses. I'm not saying you can't somehow make a multibot that uses the ties to it's advantage, just saying it has yet to happen. The ties just have a will of their own, you're not realy in controll and theres not much you can do with them. Ties are just far more usefull when used as a weapon.
So as far as I'm concerned you don't need to run SB or MB leagues, I don't think anyone cares... maybe if abyaly actualy makes a good MB you could run that
The way I see it, if the top MB can't even make a spot in F1 or F2, then the MB league just seems like a sandbox for handicapped bots.

Offline abyaly

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The F1 League lives again!
« Reply #10 on: March 28, 2008, 10:12:47 AM »
Quote from: bacillus
I've tried the run league function already, and it never works.
I used the league function to run SS. It works in d. I just tested the league function in e. It also works fine.
For the sake of formality and consistency of results, I insist that you use the league function. If you're having problems, I can probably help you get past them.
« Last Edit: March 28, 2008, 10:13:30 AM by abyaly »
Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all
the time and handed on the fight to their descendants.
        -- (Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum)

Offline EricL

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The F1 League lives again!
« Reply #11 on: March 28, 2008, 10:15:28 AM »
I will be working on the bugs above...
Many beers....

Offline Numsgil

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The F1 League lives again!
« Reply #12 on: March 28, 2008, 01:01:51 PM »
I let the F1 league run over night (rerunning the current F1 table).  A lot of bots are changing positions.  Guardian dropped way down.  Just two spots above my ancient Spanish Conquistador.  Excalibur seems to be the current champ...  So the current rankings are mostly bogus.  I think we should probably make a huge list of every bot in the beastiary (a huge undertaking to be sure), and run them ALL in chronological order.  I have some spare computers.  Eric, if you could make DB command line drivable, so I could run extended league matches using a batch file or something, I could probably run an automatic league.  People could just log in to my computer and upload their bot, and DB would automatically run the bot in the league.

Offline bacillus

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The F1 League lives again!
« Reply #13 on: March 28, 2008, 06:32:12 PM »
Quote from: Numsgil
There's just no way to run the hundreds of rounds by hand.  You'd go crazy.

Already am.    

I think I tried running my own league using about 3 or 4 bots last year, and even with every instruction found, I still didn't get it to work. I don't like the way it runs the wins; a draw is declared even if its 1:4 at the end, and the contest is infinitely extended.
Besides, I enjoy doing it; some bots are so outdated they are lucky to survive 100 cycles, and I get to see an interesting variety of bot techniques.
  My favourite bot so far is one that stubbornly sits in one position, and very slowly expands to take over the  simulation. It almost seems territorial.

DAY 3
-------
Finished running all of Animal Minimaxis 3's fights; final result 48.5 out of a possible 76. I think he will be the minimum standard at entering the league. I was glad to see the only bot to beat it faster than my Occura Amplificis was Martian Tank 3.
2.6% of contests done.
« Last Edit: March 28, 2008, 06:58:06 PM by bacillus »
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan

Offline Commander Keen

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« Reply #14 on: March 28, 2008, 06:53:50 PM »
I've never had any recurring problems with the league function, although it does seem to be a bit flaky at times, and the way of doing it could be simpler.

I'm running the F2 league, using the DB league "automator", with defenders winning after 10 rounds. Once I've run the league with it's current bots, I'll test all the other F2 bots out there. Haven't had any problems at all. Possibly Bacillus's problems are related to his installation, I can't remember if I gave him the old installer and the new exe, or if I just copy/pasted my DB folder. Also, I think you need the bots to go in the League folder to work. Thats ...(Darwinbots root folder)\Leagues\(LeagueName)
I had problems initially, but I accidentally put my League folder in the robot folder.

We still need volunteers for the MB/SB leagues. I think the SB league is worth running, it's pretty competitive, and I really think MB's need more attention. Multibots are really cool, unfortunately they aren't very efficient.
« Last Edit: March 28, 2008, 06:55:26 PM by Commander Keen »