Talk:Main Page

For old discussion, see Archived talk:Main Page 20110903.

Can I save data between rounds in the static variables of other classes other than my main robot class?

Yep. Anything that's static will stick around in any class.

Personally, I model most of my stuff so the main robot class has objects that are static (gun, movement, etc) and then everything else is non-static in those classes, but you can model it however you'd like.

Yes.

How is the while (true) loop actually broken down? Does robocode executes the code there 1 iteration per turn? Or..?

Generally, yes - when you call execute(), the Robocode engine processes one tick, including firing all the events on your bot, and then your run() method continues executing. So most of us have an infinite loop that calls execute() at the end, and each iteration is one tick.

But there's no magic to it - you could have a run method that goes:

public void run() {
  turnRight(20);
  ahead(100);
  fire(3);
}

And that would be perfectly valid. Or you could call execute() every third iteration of your loop. In Dookious, my run method used to have a loop that was while (notWonYet) ..., then a victory dance.

The timing thing for me is very confusing...

For example, if i want to fire at a certain angle, i have to rotate to it.. by the time i do.. i have another angle... which requires more rotation.. etc..

Same thing for turning the robot and going ahead.. I never know how to correctly time them. (Effectively stuck)

For gun aiming, see Robocode/Game_Physics#Firing_Pitfall. This can cause your aim to be a tick behind. I think most robots don't worry about it. But if you do worry about it, what I do is predict robot positions 1 tick into the future and use that for aiming. It's not exact, but works well enough for me.

Just installed LiquidThreads... Hope we all dig it. =)

We might!

Liquid threads are kind of better, but still not ideal. My main concern is that this still requires you to go to different pages, some are difficult to get to (have to know it specifically or get refered). For example, if someone were to ask a question/start a discussion on certain type of targeting etc.

Personally I think a forum works the best, as it can break things down into different categories and list everything out in a manageable fashion.

The Facebook group is good, but it lacks the community involvement, in my opinion.

Google+ seems cool, but I can't sign up for it with my Google Apps account..

... and who uses yahoo? :P

That's what the Special:RecentChanges is for - you can see modifications made anywhere on the wiki. Questions can be asked on the person's homepage and moved later, if necessary.

It will take a while to get used to. But there is no need to diff the discussion pages anymore. Neither convert local times to UCT every time I write something. Nice work.

Just doing 4 tildas (~) will automatically do a UTC timestamp, plus signature.

I have only one complain. LiquidThreads is polluting the Recent Changes page.

Ultimatebuster: With regards to a forum, personally the problem I would have with a traditional one, is that conversations are often with regards to a specific concept that either has or should have it's own wiki page anyway. The tight linkage between pages and talk pages encourages cross-pollination between the two sides, with discussion inspiring wiki pages and wiki pages inspiring discussion. Plus, I feel that the categories that would be created in a normal forum would be too broad for robocode and cronological sorting within such large groups too limiting.

A forum would be much more open for beginners to ask questions though. you shouldn't try to put everything into categories but just leave it to different threads in topics. --Peltco 06:15, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Maybe it would make sense to have a page using liquidthreads which is specifically for asking questions when a specific page is not known? Perhaps do something like prominently link it from the main page, or even embed it?

Well, although beginners may not know, but I believe with our not-so-large community you can ask questions on almost any talk page, and if it seems inappropriate, someone will move the conversation to the right place. I really think we should have a bot that post welcome message to user, since IIRC it tells that you can ask question on your talk page.

Basically reduce the amount of data from the post that is set in the recent changes area. Lots of it has been wrapping, and that makes it harder to read. If possible half of what it has now. If possible even a "ABC has replied to thread XYZ". ;)

Personally, I think with the LiquidThread installed, every talk from old wiki should be put into the Archived talk namespace, or discussion header. My main reason is that discussion from old wiki would be uing old-style link, and I don't know how to programme a wikibot to edit a LiquidThread (plus my old converting code would work with the discussion header without modification)

I don't like leaving conversations in the discussion header, since it pushes the LiquidThreads stuff way down the page and I don't think that's what he header is for. I think moving to Archived talk is appropriate in most places, and you can just link to it in the header (like I did in Talk:Main Page).

I'm not sure how to deal with current conversations on the new wiki. I don't want them in the header. Archiving them is OK in most places, and maybe we could do it with a bot, but it feels pretty drastic to do it across the whole wiki. I wish I could just convert them to LiquidThreads conversations...