Darwinbots Forum

Bots and Simulations => Bot Tavern => Topic started by: Unc on July 29, 2005, 04:17:46 PM

Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Unc on July 29, 2005, 04:17:46 PM
Hello all.  My "first" bot, but I have been tinkering with it for quite a while now.  I was wondering which league to enter it in, it seems to do same the in either one.  Quite well until either TheOne or Excalibur shows up, basically. :D  I've got it listed in the F2 forum for now.  A_Praxidikae_Mk2 (http://s9.invisionfree.com/DarwinBots_Forum/index.php?showtopic=642)

Some of the code is cluttered, as I have been changing things left and right, heh.  The basic idea is to eat and breed for the first few hundred cycles, then go into "tough" mode, building body and conserving energy, while hitting harder.

It's kinda fun to watch.  Put it up against DIN. They both build up to about 50, then A_Prax gets outnumbered FAST, about 1 to 3 or 4 usually, and eventually A_Praxidikae pulls back.

Edit:  The new and much improved A_Praxidikae_Mk2 (http://s9.invisionfree.com/DarwinBots_Forum/index.php?showtopic=642)
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Numsgil on July 29, 2005, 04:30:09 PM
Some of the genes are, well, confusing.  Did you pull random genes from disparate bots?  Reminds me of Ghen's writing in Myst (and if that reference just passed over your head, you suck  ;) )
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Unc on July 29, 2005, 04:32:02 PM
Well, let's just say that some of the genes were attempted to be used, did not work, and some did not get properly removed.   I tried to clean it up a little, and, well, it stopped working.  So I left well enough alone.  :P
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on July 29, 2005, 04:39:38 PM
I am currently running A_Praxidikae in the F2 league (using V2.36.7)

A_Prax got off to a good enough start, despatching C Discernens in short order.
Now after 35,000 cycles he has just won the first round against Jez's pesky little poison bot, Circumversor Cantharisa.
A_Prax got a good start but Cantharisa came up with a really weird defence system. Due to the age of the DNA (V2.35 or therabouts) she has no waste removal gene. This rapidly resulted in her getting stuck to the spot via Alzheimer's. At this point she built up a great big flotilla of rotating, fixed, poisonous robots that blast the crap out of anyone coming close.

It worked pretty well and almost won her the first round. At one point she led by 298 to 21. Eventually she just starved to death and A_Prax took the first round.

The second round ended quickly with A_Prax's second win. The third is kind of equal so far. I am pretty confident that A_Prax is going to take the contest though.

I will let you know how far he gets before DB crashes  :rolleyes:
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Unc on July 29, 2005, 04:41:09 PM
lol.

I can't figure it out.  Prax won't shoot at either Cantharis or Cantharissa.

 :(
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on July 29, 2005, 04:53:55 PM
It looks like he tries to!
He just has his shoot memory location messed up I think. Poison will do that to you.
Check the eye numbers and stuff. Sometimes you just come up against a bot that appears to be a conspec.

Anyway, finally beat Cantharisa, wiped out EDD (E Diplomaticus Diplo) and is currently Battling I Venia. Slowly winning but not that effectively. Prax just seems to slow to catch them.

I am a little surprised at how easily he beat EDD. I normally have more trouble with him than with any other lower level bot when I am making a new contender.

Venia has finally fallen and Lisa Vegetarious got carved up like a stick of celary in a liquidizer.

D Pointer Algaefagus looks like going th esame way but a LOT slower. Speed again. Prax is just too slow when he gets older.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Numsgil on July 29, 2005, 04:55:11 PM
Quote
This rapidly resulted in her getting stuck to the spot via Alzheimer's. At this point she built up a great big flotilla of rotating, fixed, poisonous robots that blast the crap out of anyone coming close.
Oh, this sounds fun.  I might make a bot that works like this.  By pumping out a steady stream of shots you can usually hit something.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Unc on July 29, 2005, 04:57:37 PM
Hmmm...  I'm still very new to this.  How can I speed him up?  Is his body getting too large in old age?  Or should I merely increase his acceleration when he spots something?

I've noticed that the more aggresive the bot, the better Prax seems to do.  Probably because they come to him.  Hmm...
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on July 29, 2005, 04:59:45 PM
Algaefagus has fallen and Equalite is well on its way down.

Unfortunately I am going to have to leave as my wife is picking me up in five minutes. I will leave the league running and with any luck it will still be OK in the morning.

Bye guys.

PS Equalite dead too. Just started in against Cantharis, the tougher of the poison twins. neck and neck at 80 bots each after 5000 cycles.
OOH! cantharis is now leading 198 to 80.

Crap I have to go. :(
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Unc on July 29, 2005, 05:02:03 PM
Heh. ok, thanks for running him through.  I'm still trying to assemble all the bots to run the league, heh.

Dang, he does bad against poison.   :D
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Numsgil on July 29, 2005, 05:22:25 PM
Poison is only triggered by -1 shots, so you can circumvent it by switching to -6 shots if the enemy has poison.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Unc on July 29, 2005, 05:53:47 PM
I'm starting to think that it's not so much the poison as the fact that for some reason, Prax can't kill Cantharis.  Prax just kind of wigs out when he sees Cantharis, and even when he does go after Cantharis, he can't manage to kill it before it gets away.

Hmmm....
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Unc on July 29, 2005, 10:38:49 PM
Alright, I fixed the targeting problem.  I merely removed some of the friendly fire conditions.  So, now, every so often it will blast one of it's own, but now actually fights the other bots without spazzing out.  What can I say?  I was getting tired of having to wait 30,000+ cycles for fights to finish with Cantharis.  Now they are over in under 1000.

If you could give the "new and improved" version a run, I'd be very appreciative.  :D  I replaced the old version with the new one in the Bestiary.  On my computer, it got all the way to Excalibur before losing.

EDIT:  I just got done running PraxMk2 through the F1 league, just to see how he'd do.  Suprised the hell out of me, was what he did!  Got through all of it without problem (Well, Spanish Conquistidor caused the program to crash a few times...), beat DIN_Endy  (lost 2 rounds, though), before finally getting crushed by TheOne.  Dang.  Didn't even stand a chance against it.  Hmmm.....
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on July 30, 2005, 04:55:06 PM
Wow! that is a bit surprising.

I would bet that the main reason he does so wel is that he is probably one of the only 3 or 4 bots ever designed in V2.36.7. The others include The One and my own latest Hunter bot. Even Spanish Conquistador is getting old now.

I will try out your new version when I get the chance. I am not on the same PC as I was yesterday.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on July 30, 2005, 05:02:35 PM
If you want to see your bot get creamed real good, try it against Hunter 2.3

Utterly stuffed in an average of about 700 cycles  :P
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Unc on July 30, 2005, 06:41:51 PM
Yup.  He gets taken down fast by Hunter 2.3.  Ah well.  I suppose that leaves me with a goal to improve on, eh?   :D
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on July 30, 2005, 07:42:31 PM
Pretty much beats everything else though, including Icarus, Ymir and Destinatus Preliator.

That is going to place it second (unofficially) in the F2 league unless something really strange happens. I have run the league from home now and confirmed this but I have a nasty feeling that a few of my robot files may be messed up. (they worked on my other PC)

For example, I venia and Equalite don't move at all  :blink:
Icarus and Ymir don't seem anything like their old selves either.  :(

I need to look into this. Maybe it is just a feature of V2.37. Sometimes certain robots just go tits up when we change versions.

Great start Unc. It's not often that a newbie come in and stuffs the top bots. Shen was the last one to do it.  :D
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Unc on July 30, 2005, 08:35:07 PM
:D   Thanks!

I think I'll give up on trying to Prax for now, and work on some new bot.  I tried messing arround with Prax to see if I could get it to do any better against Hunter 2.3, but the best I could get him to do would put up a fight, but still end up losing.  Hunter's a tough little sucker, heh.

I have some "creative" ideas I want to give a try, and see if they are practical or not.   :ph43r:

Oh, and quick question.  What version should I be using?  I'm using 2.36 currently.  I take it 2.37 is the way to go?
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Numsgil on July 30, 2005, 09:41:22 PM
2.37 is the most official, although it has some bugs in it still.  If anyone notices any major behavior differences between 2.36 and 2.37 they're probably bugs, because not that much was changed between the two.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on July 31, 2005, 11:38:26 AM
I am evaluating the leagues in 2.37. (at home) and 2.36.7 at work
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 01, 2005, 09:11:40 AM
Well here is an interesting development.

When I got to work today I found that Prax was stopped cold by Purple Flamma. I reran it again to be sure and Flamma stuffs it but good!

At home on V2.37 it was the other way around. Flamma was hardly able to compete at all.

I think there may have been some bigger changes between 2.36 and 2.37 than we realized

I haven't upgraded my version at work yet because I can't seem to get 2.37 to run stable whereas 2.36.7 ran happily all weekend without a hiccup.
At home 2.37 crashes every couple of rounds. I had to run the league manually cuz it wouldn't run long enough to finish it.

To be honest I prefer 2.36.7.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Numsgil on August 01, 2005, 01:57:56 PM
I'll compare 2.37 and 2.36 to see all the code changes.  Most changes into 2.37 were relatively small things that shouldn't effect running the simulation.  There's obviously something very wrong.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Unc on August 01, 2005, 02:46:07 PM
Huh.  That's bizzare.

On 2.6.1 Prax crushes Purple Flamma.

All these different versions are getting confusing   :lol:
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 01, 2005, 03:23:52 PM
OK I have solved part of the problem.

Unc went and changed Prax versions on me so that explains a lot of the difference.

Purple flamma defeats Prax mkI but Prax mkII is much stronger.

Incidentally it should not be possible to overwrite an existing bot in the beastiary.  :(

I will go and fix that right away.

I still have non functional bots in 2.37 though. I venia and Equalite just sit there and never move. I will check out 2.37 on this PC to see if it happens here too.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 01, 2005, 03:29:09 PM
Hmmmm.

It would appear that there is no way for admin to disable a member's rights to edit his own posts in one forum without applying the same restrictions to all of them.

That sucks.  :(

I will just have to ask you to not do it again please. In the mean time I will repost Prax mkI as it is still quite a decent bot.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Unc on August 01, 2005, 03:36:00 PM
Oops.  Very sorry.  I was unaware it was against the rules.  I just figured I'd replace the old version with the substantially better one.  Won't happen again.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 01, 2005, 03:41:29 PM
Not so much against the rules as supposedly impossible.

Looks like you found a bug in our forum  :D

My only other option would be to restrict posting priveleges in the beastiary to admin only and you would have a new place to actually submit the robots. Then Moderators would move them to the right slot in the beastiary after running them through the correct leaugue(s)

Might actually work better that way with a separate stable for bots waiting to be entered.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Unc on August 01, 2005, 03:45:20 PM
That doesn't sound like such a bad idea.  Would make it easy to see which bots still need to be run through, and would prevent mishaps like mine from occuring.   :P
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 01, 2005, 03:51:00 PM
I venia still doesn't work in 2.37 or 2.36

I just checked its code and by the looks of it the bloody thing could never have worked.

Yet it clearly did  :blink:

check this gene out
Code: [Select]
cond
  *.refshoot 0 =
  *.refup 0 =
start
  1 60 store
stop

Sets 1 into mem(60) if its refshhot and refup are both equal to zero. Since these are not refreshed each cycle, the only way it will ever not set 60 to 1 is if it sees something that has a shoot or a move gene.

That neatly counts out veggies!

Later on in the genome it requires that mem(60) is equal to zero before it is allowed to shoot or move. Only the fact that mem(60) is set to zero at the start of each cycle allows this thing to work ever.

Basically if this bot is sitting alone in the middle of a field full of veggies, it will do absolutely nothing.

WTF is going on. This thing used to be the top bot at one time and now it won't even move to save its life.

Have I got an infestation of DNA fairies or something?  :blink:
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 01, 2005, 03:56:31 PM
The problem with equalite is just that it totally sucks (sorry Henk)

I can't get it to survive as a species even without competitors. They just orbit the veggies until they run out of juice. Then it's all over!.

I can hear that fat lady singing from here.

Oh wait! That might be that other fat lady who sang with Freddy Mercury in Barcelona. "Montserat Cavalier" or some stupid name like that.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Numsgil on August 01, 2005, 03:59:33 PM
Quote
Not so much against the rules as supposedly impossible.

Looks like you found a bug in our forum  :D

My only other option would be to restrict posting priveleges in the beastiary to admin only and you would have a new place to actually submit the robots. Then Moderators would move them to the right slot in the beastiary after running them through the correct leaugue(s)

Might actually work better that way with a separate stable for bots waiting to be entered.
Sounds like alot of work to me.  Just add a sticky instructing people to inform the community and clearly label any upgrades of their bots.  Sometimes small updates to a bot are useful.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Unc on August 01, 2005, 04:01:43 PM
Heh.  Weird.  Really Wierd.  I wonder if the other couple of bots that sit arround doing nothing have the same problem?
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 01, 2005, 04:06:35 PM
Quote
Sounds like alot of work to me. Just add a sticky instructing people to inform the community and clearly label any upgrades of their bots. Sometimes small updates to a bot are useful.

Ah quit being a lazy bum Num. (ooh that rhymes :D )
You don't manage a league anyway.

Face it how often have new bots been posted in the beastiary lately?

I guess we could just apply it to the leagues.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 01, 2005, 04:08:16 PM
Quote
Heh. Weird. Really Wierd. I wonder if the other couple of bots that sit arround doing nothing have the same problem?
Which ones would that be?

Sometimes a new version with a minor change stuffs up one or two bots that used to use a specific "feature" of the old version. It's usually pretty obvious though.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Unc on August 01, 2005, 04:11:52 PM
Hmm.. Nevermind.  For some reason, I though Equalite also had the problem.  But I just ran him, and he moved fine.  I must be going crazy  ;)

Hmmm.... And Prax is acting weird when fighting Ymir.  Maybe I should give Prax a good looking over.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 01, 2005, 04:13:04 PM
He did have that problem when I ran him at home yesterday on 2.37. I made a note of it.  :wacko:
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Unc on August 01, 2005, 04:14:35 PM
Alright, so it's not just me, then.  Heh.  I'll try to fix that and make other improvements.  Heck, if I can improve him enough, maybe he could beat Hunter 2.3.

 :lol:
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Numsgil on August 01, 2005, 04:19:48 PM
Ymir has some tricky tricks in its bag of tricks.  It was my first bot, and I had too much fun screwing around with features.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 01, 2005, 04:27:53 PM
But you had one or two advantages with Ymir.

Namely that you had just joined the programming team and thought up a few nice new tricks that could be programmed into the game.
Then you added the new code and designed a really great bot to make use of them.
Needless to say Ymir more or less took the leagues by storm with his dogfighter style. There are still only a handful of bots out there now that have mastered the technique. Hunter 2.3 being one of them.

It's about time you grabbed that top slot back. It's lonely up there on top of the league.  :lol:
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Numsgil on August 01, 2005, 04:33:50 PM
Quote
It's about time you grabbed that top slot back. It's lonely up there on top of the league.  :lol:
Everytime I come out with a top bot, everyone else decides that they want to make a bot too :lol:

I think I've held it for a total of maybe 2 weeks.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Botsareus on August 02, 2005, 04:18:50 PM
Quote
Great start Unc. It's not often that a newbie come in and stuffs the top bots.

I must agree with PY on that one. Good Job.



Don't be changing the bestury too mutch because I wont know were to post my bots. (I do, I do post bots sometimes :)
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Endy on August 09, 2005, 11:02:36 PM
Nice bot :)

Funny story about Prax and Canth, even during routine tournaments, evolution turns up.

Just out of curiosity does the .51 work correctly? I thought it had to be just a number... :unsure:

Not sure anymore what works and doesn't, Nums made the dna way more lenient than it was back in the day :D
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Numsgil on August 10, 2005, 02:50:21 AM
Pretty sure it still needs to be .label and (no dot) number, but someone write up a test bot and let's find out.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 10, 2005, 08:48:57 AM
dot number (.67) would be kind of pointless since the presence of a dot at the left of a DNA entry just lets the parser know that the following string is a label.

.67 would logically return zero since no label by the name of 67 exists.
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Light on August 15, 2005, 05:51:53 AM
Quote
Quote
It's about time you grabbed that top slot back. It's lonely up there on top of the league.  :lol:
Everytime I come out with a top bot, everyone else decides that they want to make a bot too :lol:

I think I've held it for a total of maybe 2 weeks.
well when you go and create such damn good bots its a great challenge to try and beat it  :)
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Numsgil on August 15, 2005, 05:54:04 AM
Quote
Quote
Quote
It's about time you grabbed that top slot back. It's lonely up there on top of the league.  :lol:
Everytime I come out with a top bot, everyone else decides that they want to make a bot too :lol:

I think I've held it for a total of maybe 2 weeks.
well when you go and create such damn good bots its a great challenge to try and beat it  :)
Flattery will get you everywhere ;)
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Botsareus on August 15, 2005, 12:03:38 PM
Run Time Error 13: Ran out of Stack space for all the Nested Quotes  :P (I dont know what this is all about reading now)
Title: My weird A_Praxidikae
Post by: Botsareus on August 15, 2005, 12:12:16 PM
o ic;

Don't worry about it , my FirstBot simulations are promesing , I will hold top in like a month or so (as long as they dont add killer new sysvars) , then if someone manages to beat me I just evolve it until I am on top again. (If you do add new sysvars , the mutations promised must be as good or better then the old once, otherwise it will be a pain to write a hybrid old new darwinbots)

Update: How does a FirstBot brake a birth tie (warning: robots lost this ability soon afterwards)

Robot

<----

^

They move with .up again sliding past each other

<--------