Revision as of 03:42, 14 July 2011

XanderCat
Author(s)	User:Skotty
Extends	AdvancedRobot
Targeting	GF / Linear / Circular / Anti-Mirror
Movement	WS(Go-To) / Anti-Mirror / RamEscape
Released	2011-5-20 (v 1.0)
Best Rating	#49 (v 5.1.1)
Current Version	6.x
Code License	None
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Introduction

MegaBot based on my "Xander" robot framework with pluggable guns, radars, and drives. XanderCat is the flagship of my robot fleet.

Versions up through 2.1 and from 3.1 onward are handcrafted without borrowing code from other robots. Version 3.0 uses a variation on the Wave Surfing drive from BasicGFSurfer, but a wave surfing drive of my own design is used in version 3.1 and beyond. XanderCat could be made smaller by removing unused Xander components and taking advantage of some of the newer classes like Rules, but it's so far above the next smaller weight class that it doesn't really matter.

Best against: Any robot that spends too much time standing still, going straight, going in circles, or doing basic mirroring.

Worst against: Always seem to have trouble with BlackHole 2.0gamma

Past Version Notes: For information on versions prior to the current series, see the XanderCat/History page.

Drive Tree:

               Ram Escape Selector
          /-------------^-----------\
  Ram Escape Drive         Anti-Mirror Selector
                      /-------------^-------------\
            Anti-Mirror Drive         Active Bullet Waves Selector
                                 /----------------^--------------\
                     Ideal Position Drive              Leadoff Drive Selector
                                                         /-------^--------\
                                          Simple Targeting Drive    Advanced Stat Drive

Gun Tree:

         Opponent Disabled Check
       /-----------^------------\ 
 Head-On Gun         Bullet Shield Protected Wrapper
                                  |
                         Ram Escape Selector
                         /--------^--------\
                   Head-On Gun       Anti-Mirror Selector
                                     /--------^----------\
                         Anti-Mirror Gun            Virtual Hit Ratio Selector
                                        /-----------/----------^-----\--------------\
                                 Linear Gun     Circular Gun      Stat Gun*     Advanced Stat Gun

Version Notes

Version Ranks

Note: Best Change and Worst Change are the change from previous version against the given opponent.

Version	1-on-1 Rank	Top	Best Change	% Score Change	Worst Change	% Score Change
1.0	~475 / 805	59%	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
2.0	386 / 806	48%	mld.Wisdom 1.0	4.18 -> 76.13	SuperSample.SuperCrazy 1.0	61.97 -> 37.00
2.1	320 / 805	40%	dz.MostlyHarmlessNano 2.1	20.90 -> 63.01	jf.Dodger 1.1	78.98 -> 41.10
3.0	148 / 805	18%	gg.Wolverine 2.0	41.08 -> 94.57	xiongan.Xiongan 1.1	100.0 -> 74.39
3.1	145 / 804	18%	zyx.nano.RedBull 1.0	53.4 -> 85.3	pulsar.PulsarNano 0.2.4	89.3 -> 64.2
3.2	116 / 806	14%	ags.polished.PolishedRuby 1	28.5 -> 83.5	rsim.micro.uCatcher 0.1	91.7 -> 31.8
3.3	115 / 806	14%	nat.Samekh 0.4	24.9 -> 64.9	simonton.micro.GFMicro 1.0	62.2 -> 39.2
3.4	85 / 806	11%	dsx724.VSAB_EP3a 1.0	67.2 -> 93.4	intruder.PrairieWolf 2.61	65.6 -> 48.4
3.5.1	94 / 805	12%	rsim.micro.uCatcher 0.1	21.3 -> 96.4	nat.BlackHole 2.0gamma	69.2 -> 42.5
3.8	81 / 805	10%	synapse.rsim.GeomancyBS 0.11	36.5 -> 49.8	mn.Combat 1.0	80.1 -> 60.8
3.9	75 / 805	9.3%	pez.mini.ChironexFleckeri 0.5	42.2 -> 64.9	rsim.mini.BulletCatcher 0.4	57.7 -> 7.0
4.0	92 / 805	11%	rsim.mini.BulletCatcher 0.4	7.0 -> 72.1	nat.Samekh 0.4	73.3 -> 45.2
4.1	74 / 805 (73.66 APS)	9.2%	nat.Samekh 0.4	45.2 -> 75.7	staticline.whiskey.Whiskey 0.6	75.5 -> 57.5
4.2	74 / 805 (73.73 APS)	9.2%	mladjo.iRobot 0.3	53.8 -> 69.9	jcs.AutoBot 4.2.1	60.1 -> 35.1
4.3	74 / 805 (73.92 APS)	9.2%	kc.mini.Vyper 0.311	33.0 -> 53.0	positive.Portia 1.26e	60.0 -> 36.2
4.4	71 / 805 (74.11 APS)	8.8%	pez.frankie.Frankie 0.9.6.1	45.9 -> 62.8	fromHell.CHCI3 0.1.4	74.4 -> 55.7
4.4.1	71 / 805 (74.11 APS)	8.8%	brainfade.Fallen 0.63	45.7 -> 65.5	jam.micro.RaikoMicro 1.44	64.0 -> 49.8
4.5.1	71 / 805 (74.25 APS)	8.8%	spinnercat.CopyKat 1.2.3	51.6 -> 69.3	synapse.rsim.GeomancyBS 0.11	54.4 -> 38.6
4.6	71 / 805 (74.35 APS)	8.8%	deo.virtual.RainbowBot 1.0	54.8 -> 69.1	jab.DiamondStealer 5	80.6 -> 61.7
4.8	57 / 803 (76.46 APS)	7.1%	ar.QuantumChromodynamics 1.2.1	69.2 -> 90.5	nat.BlackHole 2.0gamma	60.8 -> 42.0
5.0	70 / 805 (74.37 APS)	8.7%	deo.FlowerBot 1.0	53.4 -> 84.6	kcn.unnamed.Unnamed 1.21	79.1 -> 58.0
5.1	49 / 815 (78.59 APS)	6.0%	ary.SMG 1.01	35.5 -> 90.3	nat.BlackHole 2.0gamma	54.4 -> 33.0
5.1.1	49 / 815 (78.75 APS)	6.0%	rz.Apollon 0.23	69.6 -> 94.0	nat.Samekh 0.4	72.7 -> 53.6

Series 1.x

This series of robots was released while work on the Xander framework was still ongoing. Targeting and drive strategies were somewhat simple. No surfing or guess-factor targeting.

Series 2.x

This series introduced my earlist concept on guess factor targeting. Drive strategy was still simple.

Series 3.x

This series introduced wave surfing, and improvements to the guess factor gun. Version 3.0 used a modified version of the BasicGTSurfer wave surfing drive as a reference point, with all later versions in the line using a wave surfing drive of my own design. Towards the end of this line, I introduced virtual hit ratios, where all guns would provide aiming information for every shot to determine whether or not their aims would have hit the target or not.

Series 4.x

This series focused largely on drive improvements, including improvements to the wave surfing drive, dive protection, and a new Ram Escape drive. This series also improved how fire power is selected.

Series 5.x

This series focuses on using a new strategy for calculating factors in guess factor guns and wave surfing drives, surfing multiple waves simultaneously, paying more attention to robot width, improving wall avoidance, and improving segmentation selection and processing.

Version 5.0

Changes from the previous version:

Fixed bug in code that selects whether to proceed clockwise or counter-clockwise when surfing a new wave. It was looking at clockwise/counter-clockwise from the 0 factor, when it should have been looking at clockwise/counter-clockwise from the current factor at time wave surf begins.
Original dive protection replaced by new means for calculating danger in each orbital direction (see next two bullet points).
Whether or not XanderCat chooses to go clockwise or counter-clockwise now takes robot "factor width" into account when calculating danger in each direction.
Final choice of whether to go clockwise or counter-clockwise now goes by factor of least danger first, unless the difference clockwise vs counter-clockwise is less than a certain percent, in which case the average danger in each direction is used (and if those are close too, direction is randomly chosen).
XanderCat now surfs up to 2 waves at once. When surfing 2 waves, the closest wave is weighted at 75%, with the second wave weighted 25%.
Fixed issue with enemy bullet firing not being detected when it happens at same time enemy is hit by bullet.
Take robot width into account for determining when enemy bullet waves hit and when they are passed.
Distancing maximum "retreat angle" increased from 45 to 60 degrees (helps maintain distance when robots are moving parallel to each other).
Relative Direction Segmenter now treats holding still as it's own segment.
For kicks, I now use fire power 1.95 on FlowerBot.
Added option in advanced stat drive to paint the factor arrays for all dimensions (segment combinations) for the current enemy bullet wave.

Tuning Parameters for 5.x / Where To Improve?

I fully expect 5.0 to faire worse than 4.8, but this is due mainly to insufficient tuning, as I am a firm believer in the improvements for the 5.x line. Some tuning parameters include:

Factor array initialization. Version 4.8 weighted head-on rediculously high for most segment combinations, whereas 5.0 weights them more along the lines of the original intent (base initialization equivalent to 3 hits head-on for every segmentation combination). However, I suspect the heavy weighting in version 4.8 is part of the reason behind it's success in climbing the ranks as high as it did. As such, I will likely boost the base initialization, but to what extent, I do not yet know.
Surf wave weighting. Version 5.0 weights the next wave to hit at 80% significance, and whatever the wave is after that at 20% significance. This was a gut feeling choice and likely needs tuned.
Implicit dive protection. Version 5.0 relies on taking robot width into account to avoid diving too close to opponents, but I'm not yet convinced it is doing a good enough job, as it still gets closer than I'd like. It may need some adjustment.
Segmentation. I think there is still room to improve here. I can run all kinds of different segmenters in combination, I can exclude various combinations I feel are not valuable...all the core functions are there. But I do not yet feel as though I have found the best combinations to utilize, and I'm still not sure what the best way is to pick a particular combination (right now it just chooses the highest/lowest factor of any non-excluded combination of segmenters). Perhaps there is a way to better detect which combinations have patterns and which are just static. And I've been interested in trying segmenters that take my own robot's state into consideration (rather than the opponent's state), something I have never tried before. And I've also debated letting segment hits bleed over into neighboring segments (could be a good idea if there are a lot of segments, though would likely be processing intensive)
Rolling history. I've built rolling history support into the drives, guns, and other statistics like hit ratios, but I've never really tried to tune them. Right now, the drive and gun history rolling is set very high, such that it is not much different than not rolling at all. Might there be an identifiable type of opponent where it would be beneficial to roll history to different amounts?
What haven't I thought of? Some top robots have scores against other robots that seem almost magical. It could be some type of segmentation that works well that I haven't tried. What else could it be? Maybe I will have an "a-ha" moment that will give me new insight.

Version 5.1

Changes from the previous version:

Changed how factor indexes are calculated to take bullet speed and surf direction into account. This is more in line with how most wave surfing drives operate. I believe this should be superior to my previous approach.
Removed Relative Direction Segmenter, as relative direction is now built into the factor processing system.
Temporarily disabled ability to surf 2 waves at once. Given the changes to the factor processing, this feature needs a good shakedown before I put it back into service.
Fixed issue where opponent position was not predicted into the future when calculating distance to opponent at different factors. This means taking robot width into account for things like implicit dive protection was partially broken.
Fixed problem with matching bullet waves for bullet-hit-bullet events.
Fixed bug in code that calculates factor range for robot width.
Implemented danger increasing multiplier when robot is at close range.
Switched from "Go To" surfing which updates only when a enemy bullet wave enters or leaves the scene to updating every 2 ticks (or when a enemy bullet wave enters or leaves the scene).

Version 5.1.1

Changes from the previous version:

Fixed bug where robot width was not taken into account when predicting how far a robot could travel before bullet wave hits.
Ram escape drive is now triggered at greater distances the more the ram escape drive gets utilized.
Ram escape drive now uses linear gun instead of head-on gun at close range.
Ram escape drive now waits for bullet wave to be fully passed before changing dodge direction.

Version 5.2

Changes from the previous version:

Auto-flattening enabled again. This time it activates after round 4 if opponent's hit ratio exceeds 17%.
Trying out distance segmenter in place of bullet travel time segmenter for drive.
A few various updates to things involving simple targeting, though not expecting much change from any of them. Some of them only effect extreme corner cases that generally only come up under artificial testing scenarios.
Various changes and additional features for testing and experimentation added, though none of them are turned on. Nevertheless, with the changes in the code base, there could be some bugs or unintended side effects.

Version 5.2.1

Changes from the previous version:

Seeing what happens when I use absolute bearing and surf direction from 2 turns ago instead of 1. This little test is prompted by information on the Wave Suffering page.

Version 6.x

XanderCat series 6 focuses on taking everything learned so far and evolving it into a new set of components, or at the very least, cleaning up old components or features that did not work out. Series 6 introduces the new Evolution Drive, an updated Wave Surfing drive, and new ways of handling factor arrays. Series 6 may also see some gun changes, and if I have the time, maybe a first debut into the melee arena, but that is a secondary goal.