User talk:PEZ

Facebook told me that this is your birthday. Happy Birthday! --Nat Pavasant 00:23, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, saw this now. Thanks! --PEZ 15:16, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Spring cleaning

I love the battlefield sketches. =) Any idea what year that was? Seems like those should be in a Robocode Museum... --Voidious 16:03, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Interesting stuff. I've had some similar experiences, finding various sketches when cleaning. Also glad to see you haven't forgotten about Robocode entirely ;) --Rednaxela 16:13, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, all my sketches went to bin immediately after I converted them to text files. If I clean now, I probably find my kindergarten works =) [well, there is some in my all-purpose notebook(s)] It seems that all ideas in that is the basic off melee now. --Nat Pavasant 16:25, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

How long ago for those Melee doodles? I found them on the backside of a shopping list containing x-mas food and such. I seem to recall trying to keep my daughter from wrecking the store. And that I was just beginning to learn Robocode ... It might be eight years. I found lots of more sketches. Might decorate my page with some of them in the future. Funny how, after all these years, many of the drawings still make sense to me. --PEZ 07:08, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

If it was when you are just beginning to learn Robocode, it is exactly eight year =) [quote: January 6 2003 - I've been Robocoding for a year now.] --Nat Pavasant 10:24, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Good find! =) I think I started Robocoding in late 2002 (autumn). That would make it a year after Robocode was released? Funny, I remember feeling that I was a real latecomer and thinking about those before me as "The Ancients". --PEZ 13:38, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, if I have to divide the Robocode timeline, I would do it like:

• Sep. 2000 - Feb. 2001 : Stone Age (Prehistory) first developing
• Feb. 2001 - Jul. 11, 2002 : Bronze Age (Prehistory) first release until 1.06
• Jul. 11, 2002 - Jan. 20, 2003 : Iron Age (Prehistory) 1.06 until Wiki started
• Jan. 20, 2003 - Feb. 28, 2005 : Antiquity (History) until 1.07
• Feb. 28, 2005 - Jun. 14, 2006 : Dark Age where there is no maintainer =(
• Jun. 14, 2006 - ? : Renaissance
•  ? - ? : Modern
•  ? - present : Contemporary where there is a lot robocoder reunite and significant invention (for example, Diamond, Porria, Glacier, etc.)

Sadly, the Robocode's history around '06-'09 are not well recorded, so I'm not sure. But I believe that there is a time when there are only small robocoders who are still active on the wiki around the beginning of '09, and that is about the time when the old wiki was becoming obsolete, yet all links point there which confused me at that time. --Nat Pavasant 16:40, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure everyone sees it their own way. For instance, your "Dark Age" was a very exciting time for me. And tons of stuff happened in 2006-2009, even if it's not well summarized on the wiki. For me, I kind of remember it like this:

• Nov. 2002 - Jan. 2003 : Confused Age - Robocode existed, but it was very confusing
• Jan. 2003 - Oct. 2005 : Non-existent Age - Robocode ceased to exist
• Oct. 2005 - Present : The Voidious Era!

=) --Voidious 17:23, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

LOL! I'm just trying to match Robocode's history with world history =) --Nat Pavasant 06:39, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Re: "Escape angle is everything?"

To reply to your picture upload comment: Nah, gun accuracy also matters. Plus, if one is optimizing for score rather than just survival, then factors like energy levels, enemy hitrate, and expected enemy firepower matter significantly. In this area, I think Midboss goes further than anything before it, doing a detailed statistical simulation of how the battle could play out at different firepowers, considering the various score bonuses etc. ;) --Rednaxela 14:39, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

It was Escape Angle in the context of Bullet Power selection. =) Really cool that there are rocket surgery going on in the bullet power area! Still, have you tried releasing a version of Midboss which always fires power 2? --PEZ 04:35, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, early versions of Midboss used RougeDC's bullet power selection, which was also somewhat adaptive to hitrate but not in nearly as depth. I had one point measured RougeDC's bullet power selection to be improved over 'traditional' always 2, and I'm pretty sure Midboss's bullet power selection also improved from the old versions that were like RougeDC. You're right though, it would be good to do a fresh comparison. Perhaps what I should do... is 1) re-release the current version of Midboss (because it got some bad results in there), and 2) Release a version that copies Diamond's bullet power selection, for a known-good-reference. I'm pretty sure that Midboss makes some interesting gains in edge cases when enemy hitrate is extremely high or low, or when energy is getting low, but would be nice to give a more clear demonstration of that. Funny that you refer to it as "rocket surgery", because really, the detailed statistical simulation code is really tricky to debug. In part because it contains both a 'simulation' component that simulates the ways future hits/misses could play out up to a certain depth, then an 'estimator' part that is active when the depth limit is reached, and checking both to make sure both behave 1) correctly, and 2) approximately the same, can get tricky. --Rednaxela 05:00, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Sounds fun though! --PEZ 05:40, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Time for CassiusClay 2sigma! =) --Voidious 14:27, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Are you really planning a comeback? That means I can say farewell to my top-10 place. :-( But it is really really nice that you are back, even if it just for tasting if that old feeling can come back. Hope we have guarded your legacy well.

Yeah, very cool! I hope you can strike the right balance and stick around. :-)

Hmm, maybe you should start here. :-P And about your RoboRumble client issues, did you start with the "superpack" at RoboRumble/Starting With RoboRumble? That might help.

Robocode and balance... I will have to try! =) Interesting find there with GeomancyBS. I will start there. How would the "superpack" help? I couldn't download it yesterday, btw. And the Roborumble client had problems downloading a few bots too. Maybe that is fixed now, because I don't think I saw any download problems now when shutting down the rr@h client (my MacBook needs a rest). I prepared a zip with many of latest participant versions, here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3259215/robocode/roborumble/rrath_111031.zip I'll try to make a more complete zip tonight.

Huh, apparently my server that's hosting the superpack had a little domain name glitch... I'll try to fix that... I should get a proper domain name some day instead of the silly dyndns one... I mean... it is a server with a static IP and all...

(domain name fixed now, though I really should update the superpack some time)

What is the contents and purpose of the superhack? (I might have created it myself... =)

It's basically a ready-to-go RoboRumble install (correct Robocode version, correct URLs in the RR config files) with a fairly recent set of bots.

Heya, cool to see you show up with an update to CC :)

Makes me want to get back to robocoding... but sadly class has an unexpected stranglehold on me this year...

Thanks all! I have had this idea for CassiusClay in my head for several years and I guess it's time I try to implement it. We'll see if I succeed and if it's worth any ranking points (or if it'll cost me ranking points). GrubbmGait, I wouldn't worry about top-10 yet. Remember my mini-comeback a few years ago, it left CC a bit weaker. And I lost the drive when I couldn't squeeze any improvements out of my poor old bot.

looks like we need a huge warning "Robovirus can not be cured" at main page:)

Robovirus is a bot from spinnercat. Pretty funny. It's also a real virus that is transmitted by rodents.