FloodMini

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FloodMini
Author(s)	Kawigi
Extends	AdvancedRobot
Targeting	GuessFactor Targeting
Movement	SandboxFlattener
Current Version	1.4
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Background Information

FloodMini is like FloodMicro with some of the movement from my test bot, SandboxFlattener put back into it (and alas, some removed again), and a somewhat effective deviant GuessFactorTargeting gun. This is probably my first all-around effective bot. FloodMicro was somewhat good at beating good bots and bad at beating bad bots, and of course it lost to most elite bots. FloodNano was almost stupidly simple, and lost to a lot of really basic bots, but it also beats a lot of really good bots (actually, among these bots that it beats is FloodMini, I'll come up with some way to hit him, though... maybe...). FloodMini is both hard to hit and hard to consistently dodge, so it should beat less advanced bots fairly handily and it also beats a lot of more effective bots.

What's special about it?

Kawigi originally said: Call it a hunch, but I think we can consider this "Kawigi's official first good bot". FloodMini was not the first bot to implement traditional GuessFactor Targeting (GuessFactors + VisitCountStats + Segmentation), but it played an influential role in evolving and popularizing its use, because it was both very successful and open source. It also brought a lot of attention to the concept of curve flattening, as its (non-adaptive) movement was designed to create an extremely flat movement profile.

How competitive is it?

In my tests, it does very well. It saves data between matches, too, which makes it more competitive over a bunch of short spurt-like rounds. It's not too slow to learn, either, and it's a good early-round robot (due to its movement).

Strategy

How does it move?

See FloodMicro. The movement is based on SandboxFlattener, my test bot. It is less tweaked than FloodMicro, which I think is good - the test bot was pretty well tweaked, and a few of the things I added or changed going to FloodMicro were just not worth keeping.

How does it fire?

A sort of deviant version of GuessFactorTargeting. Someone (it might have been Nano) told me that some Duelist bots do this, too - I have my stats divided on distance (which is pretty standard) and the absolute value of their LateralVelocity. I have distance factors segmented every 100 pixels (10 of them, I just make one segment for 900 and further), LateralVelocity divided into 3 segments. And then I have 31 guess factors ranging from asin(-9/bulletv) to asin(9/bulletv). I take all the stats using power 3 wave-style bullets, but my opinion is if the guess-factor is translated into an angle using the bullet velocity as I just said, the stats are valid for other powers of bullets, at least at reasonably close range. All stats are also taken relative to the sign of the bots lateral velocity (or last sign of it if the enemy's lateral velocity is zero). I believe that SandboxDT does it this way too, and logically, it should help it learn twice as fast against most competitive opponents.

As of version 1.2, the statistics are also segmented on the opponent's relationship to the wall - one segment if they will hit the wall if they continue at their current velocity and direction for something like 10 turns, and another segment if they won't. Almost every bot except SandboxDT (1.81 and later) is weaker in this segment, and it was enough to get me to start beating some generally better bots like Cigaret.

As of version 1.3, the statistics are segmented on acceleration - I use actual change in velocity instead of change in lateral velocity for this, because I just felt like it. One segment for staying at roughly the same speed, one for accelerating, one for decelerating. I think this gives the LateralVelocity segments more meaning, and helps me tell a real story, especially when the opponent only slows down when he's changing directions.

For the sake of size, and because I've found it a little unstable, I've never used rolling averages in FloodMini. I also fire a wave every turn and laugh at all the top bots who don't react to bullet fire the way I do and allow me to learn about 16 times faster against them. FloodStationary only fires a wave when he fires a bullet, so as to be a better diagnostic tool.

How does it dodge bullets?

It reacts to bullets being fired by its opponent by changing direction and speed. It doesn't react to every bullet like FloodNano, but it should react to about the same number as FloodMicro. The movement does have some weaknesses, which may be fixed by a future attempt at a similar movement, but it is (in general) strong, and it is meant to particularly be aimed at making GuessFactorTargeting less effective. This is ironic, since it uses GuessFactorTargeting itself, and it is probably less effective at hitting itself than it needs to be (run it a few rounds against the other Flood series, GouldingiHT, or MakoHT to see what I mean).

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

I have not made it work intelligently in Melee, so I expect its primary strategy would be to lose, whereas its OneOnOne strategy is to win.

Just a note about using it in melee battles - it will load up data from one bot, and if it doesn't crash every battle with an exception (which it may, starting with version 1.3), it will possibly corrupt that data. Of course, it won't save over the data unless it actually wins a round.

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

I suppose it would aim at guess factors on the very edges of the range and always hit someone other than who it's looking for if it hits at all.

What does it save between rounds and matches?

It saves its guess factors and its DynamicDistancing factors. I'm not sure if I've ever read up on another bot that saves defensive information between matches. Can anyone think of one?

Additional Information

Where did you get the name?

Just like FloodMicro, but twice as big :-p The test-robot for this basic movement concept was SandboxFlattener, named as such to flatten out that SandboxLump into a beach to make it hard to hit by GuessFactorTargeting. What flattens out a pile of sand like nothing? A flood, of course...

Can I use your code?

Sure. Especially if you're working on Wave or GuessFactorTargeting, check out MiniBullet and how I use it in FloodMini - it's a fairly effective wave-style virtual bullet class that could easily be applied to either and could also be easily made more versatile. I thought about only including that in the source, but then I realized that half of a class is in how its used externally (especially if you keep cutting down code). If you are making deviants of it (I didn't comment it very well), the 1.41 that is hard-coded in is supposed to be an estimate for asin(10/11), my internal max firing angle offset.

What's next for your robot?

After I see how it does for a little while, I may tweak it a little, or I may leave it alone. Or I may find a bug. I almost uploaded it a day earlier before figuring out that somewhere in my code-trimming I created a bug, which I luckily finally found today.

Does it have any WhiteWhales?

I like to think that they're all problem bots, and I'm the WhiteWhale. Realistically, I think that FloodMini 1.3 is capable of beating any current robot except for SandboxDT, and will probably beat most robots most of the time.

What other robot(s) is it based on?

SandboxFlattener, FloodMicro. I suppose SandboxDT, since I borrowed some aiming concepts from Paul Evans, but not in actual code. I was originally actually going to make this a pattern-matcher, but I had a bug in the MiniBullet class that I didn't figure out until after I converted it all to statistical targeting.