Messages

31

Bugs and fixes / League Problems

« on: December 31, 2006, 01:18:20 PM »

I wonder how my results could be so different ... your Spanish C and Animal S
ending up ranked so much higher?
what that tells me is ... this thing isn't as consistent as we would like to think it is...
who would ever do it again to see if the results were the same?

Well there is always the chance that you used the win button and changed a match result, other than that, seeing as I've had what looked like identical results (didn't record so not 100% sure) four times now (never complete lists though) I would guess that it is differences in the way the leagues are set up on each of our pc's.

how can they be set up different?  
I didn't use the win button to change any results ...
unless the outcome was an obvious rout ...
I let those close contenders do their thing for however long it took.

Darth Shimazu defeated Spanish C, and Spanish C defeated Animal S.
how can that be different on my PC than on yours?
certainly something as simple as using a different 'seed' shouldn't
affect the results ...
after all we have that 'statistically accurate' function working in there, eh?
now ...
if by different league setup you mean F1 might not override all parameters ...
I can see that.  and if that is the case, then how are anyone's results ever
going to be the same as somebody else's?

would be interesting to see if other people get different results ...
'cause if so, how are we going to be able to call 'Offical League Standings'
official?

I'll run these top 10 again a few times and see where Animal and Spanish C end up.
maybe others can do the same?
shouldn't take too long with just 10 bots.

1 - Callidus (F1Vir)(Shen)-05.04.05
2 - The One (1G)(Shen)-23.04.05
3 - DIN (F1)(Endy(Mod))-21.02.05
4 - Dominator Invincibalis(DOM INV) (F1)(PY)-pre 18.06.04
5 - Destinatus Preliator (F2)(PY)-16.09.04
6 - Darth Shimazu (F1)(Henk)-pre 30.07.04
7 - Spanish Conquistador (6GVir)(Numsgil)-12.05.05
8 - Animal Supremus (F1Vir)(Elite(Mod))-22.01.06
9 - DIN2 (F1)(Endy(Mod))-02.04.05
10- James 4 (F1)(Jez)-27.07.04

32

Bugs and fixes / League Problems

« on: December 30, 2006, 05:21:10 PM »

I did wonder how easy it would be change program to save sim after each re-entry had been run, allowing for interrupted reruns of the league, a while ago. Good idea to slim the league length down in the meantime, maybe starting the league with just one bot and re-entering each bot by turn would be better. Might identify if it is a bot causing the trouble.

yeah ... thought about that too ...
using the 'challenger' mode but then that likely uses different code.
I wonder how my results could be so different ... your Spanish C and Animal S
ending up ranked so much higher?
what that tells me is ... this thing isn't as consistent as we would like to think it is.
I mean, as long as it takes to run a whole league ...
who would ever do it again to see if the results were the same?

in fact ... I will do the short list of the top 10 at least twice ...
just to see if the results are consistent.
if not ... well ... then I guess we will be rethinking a few things.

btw ... do you have a list of what you think the ranking is from 1-30?
I must say I wondered why UNA 3.0 was listed first ...
unless as a 'rabbit' to force new matches all the way down the list.

Every time, using VB debugger, I have used the win button to speed things up I have hit the same bug, wonder why it doesn't seem to show up when not using the debugger.  

Hmmmmm ....
I have been running compiled ... hoping to get an error.sim file that I can
then load in and run in the VB version ... but had the prog 'hang' on me instead.
also ... I was very careful to strike that button as quickly as I could to NOT get the bug ...
so perhaps I'll redo it and see if I can get it to happen compiled ...
or with the VB to see if I can see where the error comes in.

see ... here is the problem with this forum, imo ...
if you already reported that ... I haven't a clue as where to find it.

well ... will experiment.

where do you want the league bug reports then ... if not here in league problems?
can we do a League Bugs thread under Bugs?

ta ta

33

Bugs and fixes / League Problems

« on: December 29, 2006, 11:09:05 AM »

Version 2.42.9r ...
compiled version.
F1 Leagues

attempted to rerun the league ...
things went along well for quite awhile until it came to
the contest between Virulus Discretus and Virulus Spinnens ...
which apparently both died out in the same cycle ...
DB ending up in some loop it couldn't get out of ...
leaving me no choice but to Ctrl/Alt/Delete and stop the task.
so, no error message or anything.

also noted that in earier matches, clicking the InstaWin ...
even when taking great care to click as fast as possible ...
the Wins would often be upgraded by 2, not just 1.

fyi ...
the standings up to that point were as follows:

1 - Callidus (F1Vir)(Shen)-05.04.05
2 - The One (1G)(Shen)-23.04.05
3 - DIN (F1)(Endy(Mod))-21.02.05
4 - Dominator Invincibalis(DOM INV) (F1)(PY)-pre 18.06.04
5 - Destinatus Preliator (F2)(PY)-16.09.04
6 - Darth Shimazu (F1)(Henk)-pre 30.07.04
7 - Spanish Conquistador (6GVir)(Numsgil)-12.05.05
8 - Animal Supremus (F1Vir)(Elite(Mod))-22.01.06
9 - DIN2 (F1)(Endy(Mod))-02.04.05
10- James 4 (F1)(Jez)-27.07.04
11- Duplo Simpleboticus (F2)(Jez&PY)-01.03.04
12 - Carnatus Orbis (F1)(PY)-20.09.04
13- HDV4 (F1)(PY)-pre 30.07.04
14 - Kyushu (F1)(Henk)-08.05.06
15 - UNA 3.0 (1G)(Elite)-29.04.06
16- Virulus Discretus (F1)(Flowin)-02.03.04
17- Virulus Spinnens (F1)(Flowin)-01.03.04

I've saved these, seeing as DB doesn't seem to save/update
the leaguefile unless the entire league gets run ...
so I have to start over every time.
I don't know that anyone's made it thru the whole thing yet
to get a final ranking.

so for now I'm making three leagues ...
the top 10 here in F1A ...
#11-#20 and #21-#30 in two more ...
in an effort to at least get thru them and see if everything is
saved correctly when a league completes.
then I'll have to run some challenges ...
#21 challenging the 20-11 league ...
then #11 challenging the top 10 ...
to see if any of them are able to work their way up.

that's the plan for now.

34

Bug reports / league out of memory error

« on: December 26, 2006, 04:00:17 PM »

Np there, I was hoping that using the win button would allow me to track it down a bit quicker. I'll redo the league debug rerun again now my pc has stopped creaking and groaning.

Griz, if you want to start a thread with the info you have gathered so far I'll sticky it for you.

I don't know what that means?

there is already page on the wiki ...
where I'm gathering debugging info as I find it:
http://www.darwinbots.com/WikiManual/index...title=DeBugging
it's just a work in progress ...
anyone is free to add to it right now ...
will see how to organize it once I see what we have to work with.
suggestions welcome.

35

Bug reports / league out of memory error

« on: December 26, 2006, 01:01:07 PM »

You'd probably have better luck just re-running the league under debugger and clicking win repeatedly, error sims for leagues don't hold the relevant league info. Only took me a couple of minutes to reproduce. you may notice, specially if you start clicking as soon as the sim starts, the number of wins going up by two for every click.

I had noticed in the past that unless one is VERY quick on clicking ... it jumps up by 2 or 3 wins. need a bit of delay built in there somewhere, eh?

How do you decide what is relevant? Is it just the next few values after highlighted line?

well, IN the line the debug brought you to, eh? the error occurred/was found ... there, yes?
if the problem can be seen there ...
then troubleshooting is about going back 'upstream' to see where it may have come from ...
but that quickly gets into PY/Num/Eric territory, eh?
seeing/knowing what is out of place, is not quite right , is too ...
but sometimes it might be obvious.
ie ... if  'Num of existing bots' is greater than 'MaxRobs' ...  
or if in a 'from t = 1 to 10 loop, you see t is 0 or 11 ... that might be a hint.
or if a variable is >32768 ... and is defined as a single integer ... than there is a problem.
those are really the only one's I've spotted in the past ... only the most obvious.

but reporting these values for the variables in the offending line ...
is all good data for those who have a chance of knowing what it might mean.

this is the value of having a discussion and/or page on Debugging ...
where those with knowledge/experience can help those of us who do
not yet possess those skills but who are willing to learn ... do so ...
so we can then return the favor and help out on some level.
you know ... make it a real cooperative effort ...
sharing as much info as possible.

in fact ... that might be a good idea ...
to have a thread here just on Debugging ...
which I will also then mirror on the wiki ...
archiving the relevant info.

36

Bug reports / league out of memory error

« on: December 26, 2006, 11:17:22 AM »

Here's one I caught though, error 76 subscripts out of range IIRC

Was just rerunning the league and clicking the win button to see how easy it was to get the competitors to disapear again

HDRoutines (Code)

-> Open path For Binary As 1

    Put #1, , numOfExistingBots
   
    For t = 1 To MaxRobs
      If rob(t).exist Then

Debug even offers me breakpoints now, solves that issue.

error sim attached although I doubt it's of any use

this is where 'hovering' the mouse over the variables
to see their values can show you one that is out of range.
iow ... numOfExistingBots or MaxRobs or rob(t).exist or even 't'.
if you also report these values, that can help Eric or someone
familiar with what the ranges of the variable should be ...
to see if there is a problem with one of them.

also ... if you zip the error.sim first ... it will only be a few KB ...
much less than the 500+kb you've attached.
that makes it easier to download for me ...
using my *TCAAS isp
[*two-cans-and-a-string which at times is 28kbbs!!!
one, of only a couple, downside to living in the boonies.  ]

will load in your error.sim and poke around a bit.
don't hold your breath.

37

Bug reports / league out of memory error

« on: December 25, 2006, 06:31:18 PM »

The immediate window is a mostly a place where you can execute code you write on the fly while debugging - code that is not part of the program, but code you want to execte right then for help in debugging.  Say you hit a breakpoint and want to step through from there, but with a certain set of variables having a certain set of values, say to reproduce a bug further down the line.  Well, instead of waiting for the program to happen upon those values, you can change those varaible values manually in the immediate window e.g. x = 5, y = 10, etc. and then proceed.  The code you type in the immediate window is, well, immediate.  It does not become part of the DB source code - it only executes right there and then is gone.  Also useful for things like printing variable values at breakpoints.

good to know. thanks. I'll try to put this all into a Debugging Guide ...
so any other hints/techniques you can share will be appreciated.
you just got to put them somewhere where I can find and gather them.
hmmmm ... I know of such a place.

Wiki is for static, long lived information.  Forum is for dynamic discussion.

that sounds like a pretty good guideline. however, finding things here on the forum
still leaves something to be desired ...
esp if one, such as a newbie, doesn't already know it exists.
I still have a hard time tracking down messages/topics I KNOW are here somewhere ...
they tend to end up being scattered about in different threads ...
and even then have spent a great deal of time searching for them, sometime unsuccessfully.
so I'm still for making it as easy as possible for those folks who haven't been in on all the
discussions from the beginning, to be able to find their way around ...
and hopefully have them aware that there is also such a thing as the wiki available to them.
some may find it easier and less confusing to work there. I certainly do.
at least the search function here seems to now at least sorta work.
there is a search function on the wiki as well.
 

Most of the league code is in the F1mode module though some is in with the options form
code and a few other places.

ok. thanks. I'll keep looking.

Any assistance that helps narrow down a bug is totally appreciated.  The ones with the long repro times are the worst.  If someone catches one of these in the debugger, that is gold since they are so hard and time intensive to reproduce.  Even just telling me what line it occurs on and nothing else helps tremendously.  Non-programmers who are willing to run under VB can really be tremendously helpful even without any understanding of the source code or programming skills.  Some bugs can be environment specific and hard to reproduce execpt on a specific machine.  Getting someone to run DB under VB on that machine can be serious money and save days of debugging elsewhere.  Many thanks!

for those running/searching for those errors in long sims ...
if you run the compiled version and do an occasional save ...
[this can be automatically done, yes?]
then hopefully when an error is encountered and an error.sim
file produced ...
you can then fire it up in VB, ensuring the error trapping is
commented out, load in the error sim or ideally, the save that
you captured which occurred just prior to the error ...
and then run it from there using the debugger.
this may not always work, as there seem to be many varialbles ...
but I have had it do exactly this for me in the past ...
even using the generated error.sim ...
the error still existing ...
which can certainly save a great deal of time debugging.
[remember to save/rename the error.sim to keep on file
for continued debugging, so it isn't overwritten]

onward

38

Bug reports / league out of memory error

« on: December 25, 2006, 12:39:50 PM »

Jez ...
left you some messages at http://www.darwinbots.com/WikiManual/index...e=User_talk:Jez
you should be alerted as to any new messages there when you log in ...
but just in case ... now you know.

39

Bug reports / league out of memory error

« on: December 24, 2006, 09:46:59 PM »

oh yeah ...
1st problem I encountered with looking at
the code for leagues ...
man ... it's all over the place!
so I'm still searching to find where it lives
in the moduals ...
to see if I can get some idea of how it does
everything it does.

so any code snippets you find ... please add them to: http://www.darwinbots.com/WikiManual/index.php?title=Leagues
and I'll try to sort it out as we go.

40

Bug reports / league out of memory error

« on: December 24, 2006, 09:42:28 PM »

the wiki stuff is my idea for learning DB/VB myself ...
a place to ask questions as they arise ...
to have it documented/archived, if you will ...
so that would then benefit anyone else who happened
along wondering the same thing.
in fact, wiki's are all about that ...
group participation.
but I'm a novice at it VB and debugging ...
so I need to have a little feedback ...
a little help, ie ... someone with answers
to the questions ...
or I don't get to learn anything either.
so that just never happened there ...
sometimes I don't think anyone knows the wiki exists.
I've linked to it many times in the past ...
but you'd be hard pressed to find them here ...
and never had any indication that anyone ever
even went to look.
a lot of folks did a lot of work there documenting
robot DNA and all the commands ...
Ollj was a major contributor ...
but I don't know if anyone actually used any of it ...
or that people even know it's there.

so I have no problem doing the grunt work of getting
the wiki pages set up so they can be a good source
of information ... and organizing that info ...
but if no one is going to participate in that ...
if no one is going to use it ...
then there's really not much point.

another thing was ...
it was mostly about VB code ...
and as soon as it was decided to go to C++ or whatever ...
interest in VB seemed to end ...
at least up until Eric began sorting it out.
that's what brought me back ...
otherwise it was going to be a dead end for me.

anyway ...
if I can get someone to answer some of the questions
as they come up ... to help some of us get up to speed
on debugging so we can lend a hand there ...
great.

we will see.

we need to get PY interested in 2.4.X ...
I don't think he liked abandoning 2.47 ...
and all of the bots he had worked so hard on.

so it goes

41

Bug reports / league out of memory error

« on: December 24, 2006, 05:19:45 PM »

for searching ...

click on the 'binocular' icon on the VB toolbar ...
select what you want to search ... in this case 'project'.
that will step you thru all the moduals.

I found 5 error.sims ...
don't think I missed any ...
the only one seems relevant is the one I posted.

I haven't yet been able to sus out setting breakpoints either.

I hear ya about pulling PY/Nums/Eric away from what they are doing.
it would be great to be able to give them a hand debugging ...
but I'm certainly not any good at tracing back a problem to
it's source.
about all I can contribute is to locate where a variable is out
of range or some such thing ...
take that data and document in which modual and sub and
line it shows up.

the wiki idea was about keeping everything in one place ...
where everybody would have access to it ...
to the code and the changes made ...
which would then allow them to edit the code and recompile
themselves ...
in addition to being introduced to thr DB code and how it works.

how we want to do that ...
is up for grabs ...
I just started in hoping I would get some feedback as to how
we might go about it ...
but I don't think anyone ever even looked at any of it.
there were never any comments or anything ...
and it was a lot of work.
so I just gave it up.

how about this:
seeing we are playing with leagues right now ...
what if I go ahead and put the league code on the wiki?
then we can go thru it and have a place to ask questions
about the code, document bug fixes, ect ...
just as a way to perhaps begin ...
to see what kind of format we might be able to come up
with for debugging ...
as in the process I'm certain we will begin to pick up how
both VB and DB works.
that's what I'm interested in.
and hopefully eric/nums/py/others ...
might also give us some VB/Debugging tips on some page
there as well to get us started.

well ... that's the plan ...
in addition to the Debug page that's already there ...
http://www.darwinbots.com/WikiManual/index...title=DeBugging
where we can ask debugging questions ...
I'll do a page for League Code ...
http://www.darwinbots.com/WikiManual/index.php?title=Leagues
and we will see where it goes from there, eh?

If nothing else ...
'I' intend to learn something about VB/DB.

ah ... editing ... I would think you have to stop VB to do that.

immediate window and other windows?
I ain't got a clue.

all this can go on the wiki  on the Debugging page ...
I'll put it there as we find out.
and/or anyone who knows can go there and put it in ...
or raise any other questions.
doesn't matter what one puts there ...
it can all be edited.

so yeah jez ...
you can be a big help at the wiki ...
play with learning the wiki code/editing ...
I recall making a 'sandbox' page there for just such 'playing around'.
http://www.darwinbots.com/WikiManual/index.php?title=Sandbox

42

Bug reports / league out of memory error

« on: December 24, 2006, 03:11:25 PM »

So, search the entire source for the string 'error.sim'.  You will find it about 6 times, but there are two lines where the comment portion of the source code line indicates that line should be commented out when running under the debugger.  Just put a single apostrophe at the beginning of the line.  This way, the source code won't try to handle the exception (an 'exception' is just a fancy name for a crash, a divide by 0 or something like that) and VB will get the error.  When an exception does happen, you should get a pop-up dialog that offers to let you debug the problem.  When you hit the debug button, it should hightlight the source code line where the exception is occurring.

two lines?
I know of one here:

in MDIForm1 (code)
in Private Sub simload
~~~

Code: [Select]

Private Sub simload(Optional path As String)
  Dim I As Integer
  Dim path2 As String
  
 On Error GoTo fine ' Uncomment this line in the compiled version error.sim~~~
comment this 'On Error' out when using VB and Debugger ...
or it will abort and go save the error.sim.

then remember to uncomment it once you have
located and fixed an error and want to recompile ...
or the recompiled prog won't do it's 'save error.sim'
[not that this has ever happened.  lol]

also ... once the debugger has sent you to the break ...
'hovering' the mouse over variables in the code will
give you their value at that time and place in the execution.
this is helpful in finding overflows or variables out of range.
using this, even I have been able to locate errors on occasion.

again ...
I urge those with VB and Debugging knowledge to use the Wiki
page to document some of the basics in this area.
the advantage of the wiki being ...
it can be continually updated/edited by any of us ...
and is always in the same place ...
not getting lost somewhere in the archive of posts here at
the forum.

I used to have a lot of pages there listing the codes
for various moduals and bug fixes when we were
trying to help out PY debug version 2.37.
they are now out of date ...
but still exist.
here's a couple of them to give you an idea of how
I started to go about it ...
just couldn't get anyone else to use them!
http://www.darwinbots.com/WikiManual/index...tle=Bug_Reports
http://www.darwinbots.com/WikiManual/index.php?title=Senses
http://www.darwinbots.com/WikiManual/index.php?title=Robots

the idea was to put the code out there so people could
ask questions about it, begin to see how it works ...
and perhaps get interesting in debugging/writing themselves ...
to perhaps start an interactive  VB and/or DB tutorial.
that was the plan anyway.

so maybe something like this would be useful ...
or perhaps someone has a better idea.
like I said, this can all be edited and changed to
make it whatever we want to make it ...
whatever works.
so check it out ...
see what you think ...
see what you can come up with ...
and if people are actually interested ...
then I could see getting behind it again and
investing more time and energy.

43

Bug reports / league out of memory error

« on: December 24, 2006, 10:14:19 AM »

Where do I find the latest source code pls, only seem to be able to find it for C++

source code for 2.42.9r
http://www.darwinbots.com/FTP/Darwinsource2.42.9r.zip

thanks eric ... these are most helpful to have.

if you still need VB6:
http://www.darwinbots.com/FTP/VB6.zip
you may get some error messages when installing ...
ignore them ... it's stuff you don't need.


attempted to get a Debugging page happening on the WIki ...
hoping to have a place where 'seasoned' debuggers could give some
tips to we newbies ...
help us finger out some tricks using VB ...
so we could then help debug ...
but nothing ever came of it.
the page is still there ...
and still a good idea, imo.
http://www.darwinbots.com/WikiManual/index...title=DeBugging

44

Bugs and fixes / League Problems

« on: December 18, 2006, 01:08:31 PM »

I know you have noticed the extra information this gives because you were questioning the classification for bots in the F1 league, something that wasn't immediately obvious originally. I hope you find the new naming system at least cursory helpful.

yes ... all for as much info as possible.
of course there was nothing to keep folks from
making this info part of the bot text right up top ...
commenting out the data ...
which some people did, along with a short description
of some special features the bot might possess.
this is still a good idea, imo.

Part of the new naming system has meant the underlines _ have become spaces. This caused some (temporary) problems in the F1 and F2 leagues but hopefully I was a little more exact with the other leagues!

The downloads I provided for the leagues should work ok, if not then when I can re-run the leagues without bugs then the new downloads should work perfectly.

so far, so good ... or at least I haven't noticed any problems with the names.

Eventually there will be downloads for each section of the bestiary as well so yoiu can easily obtain all the renamed bots.

cool. all of this will simplify things for the new user.
many of the long time users take much for granted
as they were 'in on it' ... aware of the changes as
they were developed and implemented.
but this 'tribal knowledge' ...
is unknown to new folks just coming in ...
so I think we do need to make an effort to keep the
learning curve 'less steep' wherever we can ...
so peeps don't become discouraged just trying to
get started.
keeping DB adaptable/vialble makes it a complicated program.

so ... much thanks for doing so with leagues.

and to eric and all who spend so much time trying
to make this thing work.
it's got to be a work of love, eh?

45

Bugs and fixes / League Problems

« on: December 18, 2006, 10:11:48 AM »

ah ...
I see now what you are talking about with the '_' thang, Jez ...
all my old Robot files use the underline rather than spaces ...
while you seem to have eliminated that in the bot's names
for those in the Leagues.

so ... is that the plan then ...
to no longer use '_' in bot names, but spaces?
as long as we are consistant, eh?

are there no problems that crop up having spaces in the names ...
say like a long name file such as
Darth Shimazu (F1)(Henk)-pre 30.07.04.txt  
being listed as Darth Sh~.04.txt or some such thing?

just wondering how this all came about.