Oh man, it sounds like you guys are having so much fun. I hope the compiler issues are fixed soon...

|.dev-c++.|.the gimp.|.seti@home.|.dbpoweramp.|.torn.|.=w=.|

hey guys, thanks for posting your bots! i will post mine tomorrow. then i''m gonna take a break at least ''till the wall and the tree line-of-sight bugs are fixed (i predict that when this happens, we will see a huge explosion in our bots potentials! we can actually start doing navpoint systems and stuff!)



A headache, ancillary; an hourglass auxiliary.

"something witty, blah, blah, blah"
--That One Witty Guy (remember? that one dude?)

You don''t want to use ObjDirection...

To lay it out clearly : at each moment, you see the enemy at an angle A. You want to fire on that moving enemy, so you need an angle B so that when you fire, the enemy is at a (-B) angle.

Now, you''re expecting to hit him, so you need the enemy to move from (-B) to 0 while the shot is travelling toward him. So he has to run over B degrees in a (Distance/ShotSpeed) time.

What you''re looking for is B, and you have a relationship between B, Distance, and Shot Speed. But that''s not enough. You also need angular velocity, so that :

B = AngularVelocity * (Distance/ShotSpeed).

Of course, you can''t predict exactly what the Angular veolocity of the enemy will be, but you can calculate it each update, like this:

AngularVelocity = Delta(A) / Delta(Time).

Since we get the data each update, we might use Update == Delta(Time), so this becomes:

AngularVelocity = Athisupdate - Apreviousupdate.

This seems correct since Apreviousupdate + AngularVelocity * 1 = Acurrentupdate.

Now, if AngularVelocity stays constant over a time, there are chances it will stay so. We will therefore take into account angular velocity when shooting.

Then, for aiming purposes, always act as if the enemy was at angle (A + AngularVelocity * Distance / ShotSpeed) instead of A, and fire.

ToohrVyk

Heh, I just played Devious 1.8 with real-time taunts enabled (v2, debug mode). Love the animation It has inspired me to change my alternately flashing "BRING" "IT" "ON" to a scrolling text field

In the beginning, I didn''t wait for it to be constant, that is I was coputing it each frame. But when I played against leftie, who frantically switches strafe direction each update, I was constantly shooting too far (it''s moving left, so I''ll shoot left, but then it immediately starts moving right, etc...).

I doubt that Vicious (Devious 2.0) will use prediction. It appears that the 1.9 system ( that''s my 2.0 beta) does not work against HappyBot ( 0% kill rate), but will move a slightly different way which I''m quite proud of

It all came from a bug in my code, and Devious 1.9 began doing funny things. The kind of things that make you say "oh, dirty evil bastard"... So I serialized it, and it became apparent that usually bot''s aren''t coded to react correctly to that situation - unfortunately, while he was better, 1.9 didn''t do it very well either, so he eventually lost himself and happybot was faster in finding him again...

ToohrVyk

quote: Original post by particleG
I have also removed prediction from my code (just gave up on it). It still didn''t work and I am suspecting VC.NET is at fault. The prediction worked a bit but then for no reason my bot turned to the left or right so that the enemy was at the edge of my FOV (with constant angular velocity). I could never figure out why it did that so it is now gone. I still liked it for long ranges but forcing my bot to turn around scanning for the enemy while the enemy had it in its FOV was killer.

Trying to figure out this prediction has left my bot, well nuetered. I removed so much of the code trying to track that bug that all my bot does now is run up (keep some distance) and attack. No strafeing, no hiding or anything. The FSM is left with 2 states (search + attack_0) when before it had 7. I wish I had a backup of the original.

I dunno if I am gonna fix up my current bot or wait until this contest moves from beta. Too damn much work and I am not looking forward to it.

Sounds like possible LOS issues. That will be resolved in the next update. You may be more interested in it.. lots of defect fixes.