Wave Suffering

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In developing a Wave Surfing robot, many people go through that which is called Wave Suffering. This is usually caused by all the minuscule details that need to be gotten right for it to score well. This term was coined by Axe.

Common Pitfalls

Energy Drop Detection

Wrong:

public void onBulletHit(BulletHitEvent e) {
    lastEnemyEnergy = e.getEnergy();
}

The caveat of this is: if they fired a bullet at the same time ours hit them, it may not be detected. We should do the math.

Correct:

//When our bullet hits them, they lose energy.
public void onBulletHit(BulletHitEvent e) {
    lastEnemyEnergy -= Rules.getBulletDamage(e.getBullet().getPower());
}

//When we get hit by the enemies bullet, they gain energy.
public void onHitByBullet(HitByBulletEvent e) {
    lastEnemyEnergy += Rules.getBulletHitBonus(e.getPower());
}

Wave Creation

• Waves should have the enemy position from last turn, and the fire time should be last turn.
• Waves should use the absolute bearing and direction from 2 turns ago. That is the turn before last.

Prediction

• Incorrect/inaccurate precise prediction. For this there are a number of open source precise predictors.
• Not including the distancer or other heading/velocity information in the precise prediction. That is to say the robot does things differently in actuality then what it does in the precise prediction.

Driving

• Bad set back as front or goto implementation.
• Problematic Wall Smoothing that either is too harsh or not harsh enough.
• Poor distancing that either causes it to go too close or too far in some situations.