Talk:Chalk

The return of Corbos!

Oh my! Corbos returns with an update to Chalk! Salutations to you Corbos! Chalk has been a good testbed bot for me and will be interested to see it evolve more :) --Rednaxela 05:58, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

No, Corbos returns with a massive RoboRumble uploads =) » Nat | Talk » 10:59, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Good to be back. We'll see if anything productive comes of it - Chalk's been stuck for a while. I've got a few ideas but they may simply ruin my performance enchancing bugs versus make Chalk more competitive. See you in the Rumble! Corbos 14:01, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

License

Hey, which license do you use? "Open Source" is not a license. Or you publish this robot under Public Domain? » Nat | Talk » 13:35, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Nice catch. I changed the license to public domain. Corbos 14:01, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Thrashed by PolishedRuby

Hey Corbos! I just looked here and it seems that Chalk gets thrashed by PolishedRuby but has a close battle and wins against RougeDC. Given the size of the difference I wouldn't write it off as random noise either. Since PolishedRuby is just a simple mirror movement with RougeDC's fancy gun ontop, that would indicate to me that your gun probably neeeds more work than your movement does, at least against top-range bots... Maybe this will help lead Chalk to a rise? :) --Rednaxela 12:43, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

If PolishedRuby keeps beating up on top bots, I might demand it get its own page. :-P --Voidious 15:39, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's not like it quite beats Diamond... though Diamond does worse than the 'benchmark' of RougeDC vs PolishedRuby... (To explain why I call that a 'benchmark': since both use the same gun, and one is mirror, it gives a picture of how much disadvantage the mirror has due to poor movement when first getting to the mirror point and one-tick-offsets) --Rednaxela 15:51, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, Chalk doesn't fair well against other Mirrors as well. I have a few theories:

1. Chalk's gun kinda sucks
2. Chalk's movement is tuned to Chalk-like guns so it imparts the benefit to the mirroring bot
3. There's something strange going on

I'm not sure which I believe most. #1 doesn't feel right because his gun seems to hit other tough movements (he holds his own against some tough bots). His competitiveness may be mostly from movement; but to be honest, I've never thought of his movement as particularly strong. #2 seems unlikely because I don't even consider Chalk's gun when I work on movement. He's certainly not in his own testbed. Who knows though, maybe it reflects the way I think, so the movement is unintentionally tuned.

That leaves #3. I've noticed Chalk's performance is more erratic than the top bots. He'll take 70% of the points on a battle and then turn around and lose the next. Maybe I'm imagining it. I guess every bot scores better than expected against some bots and worse against others. Still, it feels like there's a bad assumption or bug hidden away. Time for some objective testing. Thanks for the feedback. --Corbos 17:37, 27 May 2009 (UTC)