Ascendant/History

Ascendants version history (newest entry on top)

best version so far: Ascendant 1.2.26 - current rating: 2089 (2006-10-16)

• version 1.2.27 (October 16 2006) - rating: ?
  • wave surfing will not consider bullets that are passing by when up vs advanced targeting
• version 1.2.26 (September 10 2006) - rating: 2089
  • trying again the bullet detection of 1.2.24, after having found and fixed three minor issues, that might have affected the rating
• version 1.2.25 (August 30 2006) - rating: 2085
  • back to the old bullet detection of 1.2.20 but keeping the change in movement
• version 1.2.24 (August 27 2006) - rating: 2077
  • minor bugfix and further changes to bullet detection
• version 1.2.23 (August 13 2006) - rating: 2075
  • improved bullet detection
  • changed danger calculation in wave surfing to something more clear and less volatile
  • added velocity segmentation to fast learning buffer of wave surfing
• version 1.2.22 (May 07 2006) - rating: 2071
  • experimental change in the algorithm that decides about going left or right, when surfing a wave
• version 1.2.21 (May 03 2006) - rating: 2073
  • change to distance segmentation in movement
• version 1.2.20 (May 01 2006) - rating: 2079
  • velocity segments in movement overlap now too
  • some refactoring and some code optimization
• version 1.2.19b (April 30 2006) - rating: 2076
  • bugfix in wall segmentation, the overlapping wall segments did not work as intended
• version 1.2.19 (April 25 2006) - rating: 2078
  • uses overlapping wall segments in movement
• version 1.2.18 (April 20 2006) - rating: 2068
  • added very basic wall segmentation to movement
• version 1.2.17b (April 15 2006) - rating: 2071
  • another experiment with flattening (combining 1.2.16 and 1.2.17 in a sense)
• version 1.2.17 (April 13 2006) - rating: 2069
  • changed the code that activates the flattener roughly to what it was in 1.2.6 (which still happens to be the best version so far)
• version 1.2.16 (April 09 2006) - rating: 2067
  • changing again the method to determine when the curve flattener is to be activated (there are obviously guns in the rumble, that are able to hit Ascendant in non-flattening mode, but do hit even more when flattener is activated)
  • disabling wall segmentation (will try that again, but maybe not vs all opponents)
• version 1.2.15b (April 08 2006) - rating: 2067
  • adding wall segmentation to movement
• version 1.2.14 (March 31 2006) - rating: 2072
  • back to 1.2.12 and tweaked the code that decides when to start curve flattening
• version 1.2.13 (March 25 2006) - rating: 2064
  • uses the more successful surfing style first, after the flattener has been switched on
• version 1.2.12 (March 23 2006) - rating: 2060
  • rollback to 1.2.8
  • rewrote the code that decides when to start flattening: flattener should kick in alot sooner when up vs a decent gun
• version 1.2.11 (March 18 2006) - rating: 2070
  • movement also considers to stop moving when surfing waves
• version 1.2.10 (March 14 2006) - rating: 2075
  • rerelease of 1.2.6 (exactly the same source code)
• version 1.2.9 (March 12 2006) - rating: 2071
  • reintroducing the movement code i removed in 1.2.7 (so this version should be equal to 1.2.6 in its behaviour)
• version 1.2.8 (March 11 2006) - rating: 2074
  • redoing the refactoring of 1.2.7, fixing a minor bug there
• version 1.2.7 (March 05 2006) - rating: 2072
  • some refactoring in movement
  • removed some movement code i did not understand (fixing bugs i hope)
• version 1.2.6 (February 08 2006) - rating: 2081 (changed to 2079)
  • i think i made some changes shortly after the 1.2.5 release but forgot completely what it was; so this is just to show me, what i have to compare future versions to
• version 1.2.5 (February 20 2005) - rating: 2085 (changed to 2081)
  • some changes in flattening (movement)
• version 1.2.4 (February 10 2005) - rating: 2078 (changed to 2077)
  • minor bugfix and a minor change in virtual gun management (should be more like 1.2.2 now)
• version 1.2.3 (February 02 2005) - rating: 2072
  • major refactoring in targeting and minor change in virtual gun management
  • increased accuracy of gun alignment
• version 1.2.2 (January 04 2005) - rating: 2079 (changed to 2077)
  • refined virtual gun management
• version 1.2.1 (December 31 2004) - rating: 2073 (changed to 2070)
  • removed a bug in the virtual gun array that affected the accuracy measurement for the different guns
• version 1.2 (December 30 2004) - rating: 2071
  • added a second gun that should do better vs wave surfers
  • is definitely stronger in long battles, but still not beating Shadow

• version 1.1 (December 10 2004) - rating: 2083 (changed to 2080)
  • uses the gun of AscendantRRGC 1.0.6 along with a very minor bugfix in targeting
  • some refactoring
• version 1.0 (November 19 2004) - rating: 2085 (and king in general 1 vs 1 again), dropped to 2079 by now
  • uses a new array based guess factor gun

• version 0.9.9 (November 08 2004) - rating: 2064
  • minor bugfix in guess factor calculation in targeting
  • better wave handling in targeting and movement
• version 0.9.8 (November 02 2004) - rating: 2065
  • using high bullet power for easy targets (credits to Axe)
• version 0.9.7 (October 29 2004) - rating: 2068
  • basically equal to 0.9.3 + the optimizations from 0.9.6
• version 0.9.6 (October 28 2004) - rating: 2064
  • back to 0.9.2 with slightly modified bullet powers
  • some optimizations in code (making the bot slightly faster)
• version 0.9.5 (October 24 2004) - rating: 2065
  • back to old fighting distance
  • slight modification to bullet powers
  • segmenting on distance (instead of travel time) in targeting now
• version 0.9.4 (October 21 2004) - rating: 2060
  • trying to fight at higher distance
• version 0.9.3 (October 19 2004) - rating: 2069
  • just have to try another bullet power scheme (reducing bullet power even further for higher distances)
• version 0.9.2 (October 18 2004) - rating: 2070 (and king in general 1 vs 1 :-)
  • using 1.9 as default bullet power as suggested by PEZ (was 2 before)
• version 0.9.1 (October 09 2004) - rating: 2067
  • added acceleration segments to movement; shows strength in my tests (especially in long battles)
• version 0.9c (September 28 2004) - rating: 2053 (maybe affected by the rebuild of the ranking)
  • orbits the origin of the nearest bullet unless the opponent is close
• version 0.9b (September 27 2004) - rating: 2051
  • orbits again the origin of the nearest bullet, just to see how much this specific change influenced the rating of 0.9 (judging by my tests i expect a drop of at least 15 points)
• version 0.9 (September 26 2004) - rating: 2063 (2058 in the new ranking)
  • prefers now to move in a circle around the current position of the opponent instead of the bullets origin (may still switch to the latter to confuse advanced targeting methods)

• version 0.8.7 (September 21 2004) - rating: 2035
  • removed the bot width awareness in movement (shouldnt have mixed up important bugfixes and changes in one release)
• version 0.8.6 (September 20 2004) - rating: 2033
  • fixed a problem in movement that could cause Ascendant to get stuck in a corner
  • more precise prediction for future position
  • fixed a small bug in segmentation of enemy waves
  • accounting for bot width when dealing with guess factors in movement
• version 0.8.5 (September 17 2004) - rating: 2034
  • improved bullet detection
  • some refactoring in knowledge management (little bit faster now)
• version 0.8.4 (September 14 2004) - rating: 2037
  • updating guess factor bins in targeting weighted by distance to the middle bin
  • taking bot width into account when selecting the guess factor to fire at
  • finally found and changed a piece of code that might have caused exceptions, this could explain the bad results for some pairings the versions 0.7.7 and 0.8.2 got
• version 0.8.3 (September 10 2004) - rating: 2032
  • tampered with flattening once again and simplified some things there
• version 0.8.2b (September 07 2004) - rating: 2029
  • except for some minor refactoring a rerelease of 0.8.2
• version 0.8.2 (September 05 2004) - rating: recalled (invalid results)
  • reworked the code that decides when to start flattening (includes removing a bug there) and a minor change in the way the flattening works
• version 0.8.1 (August 31 2004) - rating: 2032
  • rolling movement stats slightly slower when hit and faster when not hit
• version 0.8 (August 26 2004) - rating: 2032
  • some refactoring
  • changed the movement when there are no waves to surf

• version 0.7.7c (August 14 2004) - rating: 2027
  • uses 47 guess factor bins again (just forgot to change this in 0.7.7b)
  • fixed a small bug in targeting that was introduced after 0.7.1 (but no way that this was the reason for the strange results the other 0.7.7-versions got)
• version 0.7.7b (August 13 2004) - rating: recalled (still invalid results)
  • rerelease of 0.7.7, since 0.7.7 got some invalid results i could not reproduce (i tested extensively)
• version 0.7.7 (August 11 2004) - rating: 2016 (discarded due to some invalid results in the details sheet)
  • almost the same as 0.7.1 (just to check whether 0.7.1 score was a fluke :-)
• version 0.7.6b (August 11 2004) - rating: 2004
  • same as 0.7.6 but uses now 27 guess factor bins (as CassiusClay does)
• version 0.7.6 (August 10 2004) - rating: 2004
  • only updating a single guess factor bin per wave in targeting (according to a suggestion from PEZ)
• version 0.7.5 (August 10 2004) - rating: 2021
  • back to old guess factors (targeting)
  • minor change in handling waves (targeting)
• version 0.7.4 (August 08 2004) - rating: 2018
  • rollback to 0.7.1
  • increased maximum number of segments the gun uses
  • account for bot width when calculating angles for guess factors 1 and -1
• version 0.7.3 (August 01 2004) - rating: 2023
  • back to rolling average in the gun (as in 0.7.1) but using a more precise guess factor calculation
• version 0.7.2 (July 30 2004) - rating: 2020
  • same gun as before but using a simple visit count gun (int) instead of a rolling average
• version 0.7.1 (July 29 2004) - rating: 2026
  • the gun no longer uses relative heading for segmentation
  • some gun tweaking
• version 0.7 (July 23 2004) - rating: 1999
  • removed the virtual gun stuff
  • uses now a guess factor gun with dynamic segmentation
  • in the tests the new gun outperforms the old guns, it is weaker vs some stronger bots but hopefully makes up for this in the other battles

• version 0.6.3 (July 02 2004) - rating: 2001
  • removed a minor targeting bug
  • slower rolling average in the GuessFactor gun
• version 0.6.2 (June 26 2004) - rating: 1991
  • removed LinearTargeting and PatternMatching guns
  • tried to tweak the two remaining statistical guns to complement each other better
• version 0.6.1 (June 16 2004) - rating: 1978
  • minor movement changes and a small refactoring (actually no change in score expected, this release is just to check whether all those changes followed by rollbacks introduced a bug somehow)
• version 0.6 (June 10 2004) - rating: 1977
  • tweaked the statistical guns: playing around with segmentation, firing waves every tick now
  • quite thorough refactoring of the targeting system (might very well be broken somehow now, since the improvement of the guns did not really improve overall performance in the tests)

• version 0.5.1 (June 06 2004) - rating: 1959
  • a lot of medium and minor movement changes that may or may not have made things better (at least the bot is certainly slower now :-)
• version 0.5 (May 31 2004) - rating: 1938
  • initial release