Version 12.1

Fragment of a discussion from Talk:XanderCat
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I'm also surprised how much it helped. I also think there might be scope for the opportunity to open up a shadow enough to completely hide in it with regular surfing, rather than just have a separate mode. And to get the full magnitude of the improvement, I think this diff is more relevant, and even more impressive. Never mind 91APS, 92 could be a possible target.

Skilgannon09:18, 14 February 2013
Edited by author.
Last edit: 21:26, 14 February 2013

Speaking of bullet shadows, I think active shadowing could be possible in a 1000/1000 field. It could be used in Melee endgame duels to great effect. First, check if a full shadow is possible, if it is, then fire a low power bullet to create the shadow and move accordingly. If a full shadow is not possible, then just surf and fire normally.

Sheldor19:22, 14 February 2013

One problem I could see with this is that you might not gain any energy by firing 0.1 bullets, because at long distances in endgame, 0.1 bullets are pretty regular. Also, with the enemy also shooting low power, you won't have much advantage in distance ratios to get a wide shadow because of bullet speed differences, but with enough distance that shouldn't matter that much I guess. Hmm. Food for thought...

Skilgannon20:41, 14 February 2013
 
Edited by author.
Last edit: 19:42, 14 February 2013

I'm not sure that's true (edit: active shadowing more effective on larger fields). Being far away means the shadow has had time to grow, that's true. But another key to creating big shadows is for the bullet/wave intersection to happen as soon as possible after the enemy wave is fired. The farther away you are, the harder it will be to do that with any precision. It might be more effective to stay close and create accurate shadows than to gamble from far away.

Edit: Sorry, my argument kind of misses the point. With Robocode accel/decel, it's more about giving yourself enough time to get there. So I think you're right.

Voidious19:31, 14 February 2013

/me suddenly wonders if he's re-tuned his distancing since adding Bullet Shadows... =)

Voidious19:37, 14 February 2013
 

I don't understand, I thought as long as there was a 36px area within reach that could not possibly be hit, a bot in that area would be completely safe.

Sheldor19:42, 14 February 2013
 

You're right, I was being dumb.

Voidious19:43, 14 February 2013
 

I wonder if this full shield idea is applied in teamrumble. 1200x1200 battlefield and 5 simultaneous shots which can be coordinated to create huge shadows.

MN20:12, 14 February 2013

It isn't, but it sounds promising. It could also work in twin duel: take out the weak enemy then have your two bots shadow/shield each other until the enemy leader runs out of energy.

Sheldor21:30, 14 February 2013
 

This would be tough in Twin Duel with the code size restriction. But I think MegaBot 2v2 would be interesting at this point.

Voidious21:59, 14 February 2013
 

Not necessarily. Make both bots instances of the same class, give them Waylander's gun, fire 3's at the enemy grunt until it's 1v2, then have them hide in corners and shield each other every time the enemy fires. I believe Rednaxela was planning to try something like this. Let's beat him to it! :)

Sheldor22:27, 14 February 2013
 

In team battles, there is the added complexity (and fun) of needing near perfect team radar locks to make bullet shield viable.

Provocative movement, which owns bullet shield, is also a greater threat in team battles than it is in 1v1.

MN02:22, 15 February 2013
 

Neuromancer does 'bot-shadows', where if a wave passes over an enemy, the section that the enemy covered is marked as safe. Unfortunately it didn't help in terms of score, I suspect that my wave locations and firetimes aren't accurate enough. Also, if the wave was fired far enough away that it passed over another bot it probably wasn't weighted very highly anyway.

Skilgannon20:26, 14 February 2013
 

In the old days of robocoding, 'bot-shadows' were called bomb sheltering.

MN20:48, 14 February 2013

Ah, I knew I didn't come up with that idea independently...

Skilgannon20:44, 15 February 2013