Parallax

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Revision as of 06:35, 16 June 2022 by Slugzilla (talk | contribs) (fixed another link)
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Parallax
Author(s) User:Slugzilla
Extends AdvancedRobot
Targeting Rolling-averaged Linear Gun
Movement Random Movement
Released 2022
Current Version 0.1
Code License RWPCL
Download
Source

Background Information

What's special about it?
  • It's one of the only top bots using a rolling-averaged linear gun.
  • It features a unique gun, long-range random movement, wall avoidance, and energy management, all in a nanobot!
  • It eats all of the pattern-matchers for breakfast! In tests, it's gotten 60% to 70% scores against some of the top random-movement pattern matchers.

How competitive is it?
We'll see. I'm expecting that it will place somewhere around 10-20 in the NanoRumble, since it only has one movement mode. The really exciting part will be the PWIN score. It can beat almost all of the pattern-matchers, and I think the movement is good enough to edge out most of the simple targeting bots, so I'm hoping for somewhere in the top 3 PWIN.

Strategy

How does it move?
It uses random movement, taken and modified from RaikoNano. It tries to stay as far away from the enemy as possible, and reverses direction randomly, or when wall-smoothing would bring it close to the enemy. The real strength of this movement is the wall-avoidance. The lack of wall-damage and energy management allows it to stay alive much longer than other nanobots, which usually end up disabling themselves. It just sits around and waits for the decay timer. Not the flashiest strategy, and kind of lame, but hey, it wins :)
How does it fire?
It fires using a rolling-averaged linear gun. The rolling average allows it to hit orbiting, oscillating, and random movement, and I'm super excited since I think this type of gun has the potential to be a mainstay in the NanoRumble. It can hit every type of movement with reasonable consistency (except adaptive oscillating movement!), which was the major factor holding head-on targeting and linear targeting back from the top ranks, and only costs a few more bytes than the standard linear gun. It's weaker than the pattern guns all the top bots seem to be using, but much, much smaller in codesize, so I can explore a lot more movement options. I assumed a lot of bots would be using this type of targeting, but the only remotely similar ones I could find were NeophytePRAL, NeophyteSRAL, and some randomized-linear guns, which aren't really the same.
How does it dodge bullets?
Most of the bullets are dodged by chance, with random movement. It also constantly moves away from the opponent, and the distance makes effective targeting fairly difficult for most nanobot guns. The constantly changing distance is also extremely effective against the standard nano pattern matchers, since they don't take into account advancing velocity when making matches, so even if they perfectly predict my bot's movements, they still have a chance of missing because of the distance change.
What does it save between rounds and matches?
It saves the averaged velocity for the gun between rounds, nothing between matches.

Additional Information

Where did you get the name?
I checked out Dsekercioglu's Robot Names You Can Use page, and thought it sounded like a space alien.
Can I use your code?
Yep, feel free to extract it from the .jar file. Licensed under the RWPCL
What's next for your robot?
  • Improve performance against adaptive oscillator movement
  • Improve performance against mirror bots
  • Improve performance against the other long range bots, like Acero and RaikoNano.


Does it have any White Whales?
It HATES adaptive oscillator movement! Fuatisha, C22H30N2O2S, and Pugio really smoke it. They always end up moving at some sort of frequency that completely dodges all of my bullets :(
What other robot(s) is it based on?
Movement is based off of RaikoNano, and targeting is based off of the Linear targeting page.