Jekyl

By now you know the story. Jekyl is my best bot to date. I am constantly tweaking and adding things that I thikn will make things better. Sometime it works and sometimes it does not.

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/OldDiscussion /OldBulletinBoard /Questions

Bulletin Board

20 December, 2003 - No hype this time just a release. No MrHyde this time. I have corrected a small gun error in that I introduced in .65. This version has an untested movement system in it. I am too tired to actually test in beyond making sure that it actually worked without errors. I have no idea how it is going to work in actual practive so this should be an adventure. The new movement system is designed to be adaptive in a very simple fashion.

11 December, 2003 - Released the latest install of Jekyl and Hyde. This will be the last release of MrHyde too. I think he has served his purpose. I only release MrHyde here to compare with BlackPearl. I will remove MrHyde from the RR@H once he stabelizes and I can see where they end up relative to each other. It is my belief that they should end up very close together. Changes in this release:

• Moved to a gun using doubles and rolling averages for the visits
• Added a data compression routine to make data as small as possible
• Implemented Vuen's scoring module to make intelligent decisions in what to save. Currently the threshold is set at 70%
• Reverted movement to an older version as the tweaks since then did not seem to make things better
• Shorted the stand off distance significantly to see how well this works against enemies.

9 December, 2003 - I am cleaning up my wiki page as there seems to be a ton of content and I am tried of scrolling through it all. In development news, I have added a data compression algorithm to my data savings mechanism. I am getting a 4:1 to one or so compression before zipping the file. I am also almost through hacking in Vuen's scoring mechanism into place. After I get those through I am going to run some tests to see if it is worth while to release this version into the wild. After that I will not be working on targeting much as I think my movement is due for an overhaul.

11:00PM - Just a quick note to show that my guns are still in the same neighborhood after the new data compression algorithm was run. These are final results for 2 different TC Quick runs. I think the compression was a success =^>
Run: 1

Jekyl

Jim

74.74

89.36

99.98

97.56

75.03

83.94

90.05

84.64

96.56

86.09

87.80

Run: 2

Jekyl

Jim

74.25

86.20

100.00

98.33

73.31

86.17

88.97

85.71

94.03

84.92

87.19

11:45PM - I have finally hacked in Vuen's CalculatingScore into Jekyl now as well. With my new data compression, some intelligence on when to save, and some new found decision making on what to delete when I am at max capacity I finally feel like my data management is complete. I am running some test leagues tonight to see what the results look like. If all goes well it will be back to the movement labratory for me.

02:00AM - Can not believe I am still up this late. First round of testing with Jekyl went well. After 50 rounds vs. the whole RR@H Jekyl places third. While I know this is not an indication of where he would actually finish it is a strong indication that he will be a strong release. I am using Vuen's scoring modeule to determine which data to save. I had originally set the threshold for data saving at 60%. At that level, I only stored data on 60 bots (all in under 45 KB). Not quite up to SandboxDT standards yet but I think that my gunnery is finally coming around to the point where I think it should be. Jekyl seems to learn quickly too which is nice. I am running one more test, with the confidence factor raised to 70%, and I will see how it goes. I am about to declare the guns a success.

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Download and test if you like: [Jekyl]

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Currently on my todo list:

• Tweak movement.
• Research Pauls's suggestion to base my window size on number of observations.
• Develop a melee gun.
• Re-work the melee movement system to be a more effective melee participant.

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How does it move?

Target orbit in one-on-one. Antigravity in melee. All of my other movement ideas have been refactored out.

How does it fire?

Jekyl uses a Wave system to fire. I have also added a Kernel Density Estimator for smoothing the stats.

How does it dodge bullets?

It dodges now. If I have spoken with you about it, then you know how. If I have not, well if you ask I am sure I will tell you. It is really not that complicated an effort.

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

For melee it uses anti-gravity movement. For one-on-one it uses target orbit.

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

Who ever is closest.

What does it save between rounds and matches?

Saves everything it can for as long as it can.

Where did you get the name?

It is an anagram of first initials in my famlies names.

Can I use your code?

Not yet. Maybe some day.

What's next for your robot?

Everything I am working on is on the page above.

WhiteWhale

I am starting to get an extreem disliking for VertiLeach. I am not quite ready to declare it a WhiteWhale yet, but I must admit it is coming close. 26 Oct, 2003 - I am starting to search for Harpoons PEZ.

What other robot(s) is it based on?

It started life as SnippetBot (I skipped MyFirstRobot). I then used the Secrets of the Robo Code Masters to add in functionality. A lot of the ideas in Jekyl have also come from these pages and others just like it.

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Other people's comments:

Seems kind of weird that others might want to comment without being forced but you never can tell =^>

Come on dude. Release that new Jekyl now. Your subtle way of building its hype really works on me! -- PEZ

In my testing there seems a bug be a bug in new version of Jekyl and MrHyde:

Failed to load Poperties: java.io.FileNotFoundException: D:\robocode\.robotcache\jekl.Jekyl_.65.jar_\jekl\Jekyl.data\Jekyl.properties (ϵÍÕÒ²»µ½Ö¸¶¨µÄÎļþ¡£)
    at java.io.FileInputStream.open(Native Method)
    at java.io.FileInputStream.<init>(FileInputStream.java:103)
    at jekl.Jekyl.run(Jekyl.java:49)
    at robocode.peer.RobotPeer.run(RobotPeer.java:616)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:536)

-- iiley

• This will be fixed in the next deploy. I forgot to wrap the error in a debug check. Jeykl and MrHyde will perform normally without the file being there. I have added some switches for testing and debugging purposes and I did not want to leave the file around and face the same problems ABC had with Tron.

Watch out for "intelligent" descisions on what to save dude. =) Done right I am sure it can give an edge, done wrong it will lower your rating. -- PEZ

• Actually I am pretty sure that I broke the gun with a global search and replace I did just before deploy to remove some debugging code. I should have this fixed in short order. Right now I am pretty certain that the Jekyl and MrHyde that are in the rumble at the moment are using HeadOnTargeting :( -- jim