Fractal

Sub-pages:

News - Movement - Grapher - Calculating Score

Fractal
Author(s)	Vuen
Extends	AdvancedRobot
Targeting	Visit Count Stats
Movement	Adaptive Random Movement
Current Version	0.55
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Background Information

What's special about it?

Pretty much nothing. Maybe the fact that it can draw movement curves with RobocodeGL at runtime as it fights, so it may be useful to people who want faster feedback than using other graphers. Future versions will no longer support this, and may not support the movement grapher (sorry!).

How competitive is it?

It's around 250 in RoboRumble General 1v1.

Strategy

How does it move?

11/2003: I looked over my movement algorithm a couple days ago after not having really worked on it much in about a month, and I tested a couple situations, and realized that all the math behind my movement is completely BOGUS! Its wall avoidance is a jumble of absolutely no sense, and it's extremely predictable to pattern matchers (which is why all the PM/Neural bots, such as Tron, ScruchiPu, CigaretBH, etc are all Problem Bots for Fractal). However, it's very well tweaked for curve normalization, which is why it performs well against GuessFactor Targeting bots. Right now its movement is so iffy that just about anything I do will break it completely, so since its gun is more fun right now I'm going to work on that before I do a complete movement overhaul.

How does it fire?

Version 0.32 uses Wave aiming segmenting only on distance; I'm currently building a Top Secret Automated Segmentation gun that should allow me to segment on much more than distance without taking too much learning time. I'm also have in the works a new kind of gun manager to see if I can replace Virtual Guns, but this concept is still on the drawing board. Once the gun manager is built I'll start looking into pattern matchers (but that's looking months ahead).

How does it dodge bullets?

Currently, Fractal only dodges the very first bullet of every round. You'll see it sit perfectly still until the very first bullet has almost reached it, and then just barely jump out of the way. This doesn't really work most of the time, since most pattern matchers know it's going to dodge and fire right beside it. meh. Other than that, it doesn't directly react to bullet fire, only using general enemy firing data to vary its movement. I may just get rid of this in the next version.

How does the melee strategy differ from one-on-one strategy?

Only One on One right now (oddly enough version 0.32 rarely actually starts moving in a melee). It will eventually be equally suited for melee and one-on-one, and it will use the same gunning and a similar movement strategy. I'm currently building the backbone of its Top Secret Automated Segmentation gun fully melee compatible so that it will be ready for melee when I bring Fractal into the melee arena.

How does it select a target to attack/avoid in melee?

I've had some ideas lately to use an indirect form of anti-gravity for target selection; I'll try them out to see if they work. I may also experiment with Pack Hunting; we'll see.

What does it save between rounds and matches?

Nothing yet. I have various new algorithms for data compression on the drawing board right now, some which should allow me to compress the main streaks and peaks of whole movement graphs down to a few dozen bytes; making these compatible with arbitrary-dimension data tables will be the trick.

Additional Information

Where did you get the name?

Um... I was sitting in algebra class one day trying to think of a name (I'd been pondering over this for months), and the lesson was on recursive algorithms and such. There was a nice picture of some triangle thing called a fractal, and it hit me that that might be a cool name for a robot.

Does it have a color scheme?

NO, IT DOESN'T! HELP! You have to help me find a cool color scheme that goes with the name. You see other bots with completely original color schemes, and people recognize them right away. Eerie and intimidating colors adorn the most powerful of robots on the rumble; people look at them and shake, thinking 'Yup, that's SandboxDT', or 'Yeah, that's Tron'. I WANT THAT!!!

Update: It now has a crappy orange color scheme. I'm still looking for a better one...

• A lot of people render complex fractals using an HSB-Transition sort of color schemes. Maybe you should have it like bright red, yellow and green (the first three major colors in the HSB cycle). If you don't know what I mean, look at my complex fractal generator at [1] and select the "HSB Fast" color scheme and hit "Redraw". It's generated with the maximum Saturation and Brightness, and the hue based on the iterations to escape (black if they don't escape). And that may not make sense to people. Oh, well. -- Anonymous
  • This is an interesting idea. However, I was looking for a more obscure color scheme; mainly a body color that stands out. I am most definitely interesting in creating some contrast though; I'll see what I can do. Nice applet by the way :D -- Vuen

Can I use your code?

Not at the moment.

What's next for your robot?

Currently working on its Top Secret Automated Segmentation gun.

Does it have any White Whales?

Yes. In fact, to test out the newest version, I deleted every other bot than Fractal in my robots folder, and then I went through it's score chart on the current rankings and grabbed all of its Problem Bots to use those to test against. This will force me to improve its performance against these bots. Hopefully Fractal will be a better contender against these bots in the next version.