Locke - Robo Wiki -= Collecting Robocode Knowledge =-

by Vic Stewart
News - Chat - /OldDiscussion

Description

Locke is a robot to test a targeting method I've been thinking about for a while. I won't be happy with it until it enters the RoboRumble top 15.

How does it move?

It uses Raiko's movement.

How does it fire?

It uses a SelfOrganizingObservationLog? gun. When a wave hits, the Log records how far and in what direction the enemy has travelled since firing the wave. Along with that Observation, a number of situational parameters are stored. The Log is ordered in such a way that similar Observations will become neighbours. When aiming, the Log searches for such a neighbourhood of Observations and uses these to calculate the most likely future position of the enemy.

How does it dodge bullets?

Well...ehm... ask Jamougha :-)

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

Melee? What's that?

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

What does it save between rounds and matches?

Between matches: Nothing. Between rounds: the SOOL?.

Where did you get the name?

From Orson Scott Card's book Ender's Game. Locke is the pseudonym of Ender's brother Peter.

Can I use your code?

Sure, just give the authors due credit, according to the Wiki License.

What's next for your robot?

Just making the new SOOL gun work properly.

What other robot(s) is it based on?

Raiko

Version Log

best rating: 1868

v0.7.5.5   2004-08-28   RR:1857   radical tweaking of weights, removed 'towards wall, near corner' category

v0.7.5.4   2004-08-27   RR:1857   reverted to 0.7.5.2, added FrontWallRatio and RearWallRatio dimensions

v0.7.5.3   2004-08-17   RR:1856   removed no walls category special weightings

v0.7.5.2   2004-08-17   RR:1868   reverted to 0.7.5, increased blind man's stick accuracy by taking velocity into account

v0.7.5.1   2004-08-09   RR:1860   reverted to 0.7.4, different weights only for no walls category

v0.7.5     2004-08-06   RR:1863   different weights for each category

v0.7.4     2004-08-03   RR:1862   added blind man's sticks and Category dimension. Decreased TimeSinceLastVelChange weight.

v0.7.3.1   2004-07-22   RR:1855   reverted to 0.7.1.2, very radically changed weights of dimensions

v0.7.3     2004-07-22   RR:1838   reverted to 0.7.1.2, doubled weight of TimeSinceLastVelChange dimension

v0.7.2.1   2004-07-22   RR:1841   segment size 9

v0.7.2     2004-07-19   RR:1843   reverted to 0.7.1.2, number of bins increased from 75 to 97

v0.7.1.4   2004-07-19   RR:1842   segment size 17

v0.7.1.3   2004-07-19   RR:1839   segment size 25

v0.7.1.2   2004-07-18   RR:1849   segment size 19

v0.7.1.1   2004-07-17   RR:1839   back to original search loop size, segment size reduced from 49 to 11

v0.6.9     2004-06-26   RR:1843   slightly more accurate search loop, completely removed post round rebalancing of the log

v0.6.8.9   2004-06-26   RR:1843   Bulletpower 2.0

v0.6.8.8   2004-06-25   RR:1842   Bulletpower 1.9

v0.6.8.7   2004-06-23   RR:1835   Bulletpower 1.8

v0.6.8.6   2004-06-22   RR:1847   stop firing when <1 energy except when distance<140

v0.6.8.5b  2004-06-21   RR:1842   undoing 0.6.1 tweak that cost me 9 points

v0.6.8.4   2004-06-21   RR:1840   getting rid of slowbot predicate

v0.6.8.3   2004-06-20   RR:1845   conserving firepower when me or enemy are almost out of energy

v0.6.8.2   2004-06-19   RR:1838   changed power 3 distance from 180 to 140

v0.6.8.1   2004-06-19   RR:1837   reverted to 0.6.6, Bulletpower 2.0

v0.6.7     2004-06-18   RR:1832   added MyHeading segmentation

v0.6.6     2004-06-18   RR:1839   reduced RelativeHeading weight from 100 to 10

^ without MusashiTrick
-------------------- MS difference: 50 points exactly
v    with MusashiTrick

best rating: 1890

v0.6.6     2004-06-17   RR:1889   reduced RelativeHeading weight from 100 to 10

v0.6.5     2004-06-17   RR:1889   reverted to 0.6.3, at the end of each round now re-inserts the oldest 1000 observations

v0.6.4     2004-06-16   RR:1882   small tweak in log ordering: added some randomization to avoid 'bad streaks'

v0.6.3     2004-06-13   RR:1890   reverted to 0.5.10.8, increased search loop size, fixed design error in log re-ordering algorithm

v0.6.1     2004-06-11   RR:1879   reverted to 0.5.10.8, fixed design error in log re-ordering algorithm

v0.6.0.1   2004-06-11   RR:1881   fixed two small bugs in new log searching algorithm

v0.6       2004-06-11   RR:1877   new log searching algorithm

v0.5.10.8  2004-06-10   RR:1888   the [[PEZ]] branch: restored the RelativeHeading segmentation axis

v0.5.10.7  2004-06-10   RR:1876   the [[PEZ]] branch: fires waves every tick

v0.5.10.6  2004-06-10   RR:1867   the [[PEZ]] branch: removed RelativeHeading segmentation dimension

v0.5.10.5  2004-06-09   RR:1876   the [[PEZ]] branch: added lastVelocity segmentation dimension

v0.5.10.4  2004-06-08   RR:1879   the [[PEZ]] branch: added Bullet Power segmentation dimension

v0.5.10.3  2004-06-08   RR:1877   the [[PEZ]] branch: replaced TimeSinceLastDecelleration with TimeSinceLastVelocityChange dimension

v0.5.10.2  2004-06-08   RR:1877   the [[PEZ]] branch: fixed small bug introduced in 0.5.10.1

v0.5.10.1  2004-06-07   RR:1877   the [[PEZ]] branch: reverted to 0.5.8; firepower = 1.9 except when d<180 fp=3

v0.5.9.2   2004-06-05   RR:1850   trying fixed segment size = 149 (was 49)

v0.5.9.1   2004-06-05   RR:1871   trying fixed segment size = 15 (was 49)

v0.5.8     2004-05-31   RR:1870   reverted to 0.5.4, fixed bug ETA differed from ATA, realigned waves (as in 0.4.1)

v0.5.7     2004-05-29   RR:1863   reverted to 0.5.4, added Close Range fixedETA bulletpower calculation

v0.5.6     2004-05-29   RR:1864   reverted to 0.5.4, increased firepower against weaker enemies

v0.5.5     2004-05-28   RR:1864   time_since_last_decelleration segment parameter squared, decreased range to 70

v0.5.4     2004-05-28   RR:1870   reverted to 0.5, fixed a small bug, wall/corner/last_dec segment params now rooted

v0.5.3     2004-05-27   RR:1866   reverted to 0.5, fixed a small bug and now fires and collects waves every tick

v0.5.2     2004-05-27   RR:1859   reverted to 0.5, BulletETA and RelativeHeading dimension weights now 2 and 4 respectively

v0.5.1     2004-05-27   RR:1860   increased weight of BulletETA dimension, again aligned waves

v0.5       2004-05-26   RR:1868   updated to Raiko 0.43 movement, fixed the broken MusashiTrick

v0.4.1     2004-05-18   RR:1813   fixed bug in wave alignment.

v0.4.100   2004-05-11   RR:1820   increased weight of RelativeHeading dimension

Chat

I guess summer has struck again. Why robocoding when you can do fun stuff outside in the sun, right? Me too, but also I've been a little busy with work lately. Mind you, I have by no means retired.... I have some stuff up my sleeve yet! :-) --Vic

Version 1.7.5.2 is going good. Are you nervous? -- PEZ

No, not really. I am expecting at most a slight improvement. Like you, I also noticed it started out real good, but I saw that it caught a Scruchi-pu match and many top bot matches early on, which always boost my ratings. 58% against the current king does feel good I must admit :-) --Vic

Can you describe some how the Observations are compared? Are some situational parameters more important than others? How "deep" is a situation? And such. =) -- PEZ

Ok, I'll give you a sneak preview (I had planned to write a detailed desciption when I am happy with the gun):

The gun can basically be split in two major parts:

filling the Log with data
aiming

Filling the Log goes like this:

a wave is fired every tick
- along with the wave situational parameters are stored
  - an array of Situational parameters is called a Situation
  - one situational parameter is called a Dimension
waves that hit the enemy are processed and removed from the wave manager
- the path the enemy travelled since firing the wave is stored in a pair of doubles:
  - distance travelled
  - angle travelled (0: straight forward, +-180: fully reversed, 90: 90 degreees clockwise, etc.)
- the Situation and the distance/angle data are combined into an Observation
- the Log searches for the index where the corresponding Situations match the Observation most closely
- the Log inserts the Observation using that index

Aiming goes like this:

the current Situation is assessed
the Log searches for the index where the corresponding Situations match current Situation most closely
the Log determines the positive and negative offset boundaries (resulting in a small subset of the Log)
a GuessFactor array is prepared
every Observation in this subset is processed for Multiple Choice using the GF bin:
- if the distance/angle travelled takes the Observation outside the battlefield it is discarded
- the distance/angle travelled is converted into a GuessFactor
- the GF is added to the corresponding GuessFactor bin (if the botwidth spans multiple GF bins, these will be filled as well)
  - closer (more similar) Observations get a higher weight in the multiple choice
the winning GF bin is converted back into a firing angle and returned

Searching the Log goes like this:

an outer loop iterates through the Log in a maximum (currently 50) number of iterations
- in each iteration the Observation is compared with the given Situation
  - the compare function returns a value: lower is more similar
the closest Observation found by the outer loop is used for a finer search
- this finer search is done by an inner loop that iterates through +- 300 (currently) adjacent Observations

Comparing Situations goes like this:

weights for all Dimensions are determined
a loop iterates over each dimension
- the difference between the comparer and comparee (squared) is multiplied by the Dimension weight and added to the grand total
the grand total is returned

Currently I am using 10 Dimensions, and I'm planning to add at least three more very soon. One of the advantages of this system is that there is practically no limit to the number of Dimensions you can use.

--Vic

Thanks! I had a hunch about the basic scheme it seems. I think my next gun will be in this style. Resin failed, but it has some similarities and might work as a start. Now, I guess I'll have some reading up to do on the MultipleChoice issue. I take it the Situations are built on state at the time of fire? -- PEZ

Yes. About your next gun: it's great that you may build something similar. That way we can share experiences. --Vic

What are blind man's sticks? --Ph

It's a BlindMansStick. -- PEZ

Tomorrow morning I'm going on a three week holiday :-) To the sunny country of Italy! Hopefully I'll return relaxed and with a few good ideas to help Locke get to 1880+ points ;-). Secondly, I hope to really get started on my new movement system after this vacation. Thirdly, I'll be thinking about the 'other' targeting algorithm we've been busy with in the last few weeks and hopefully come up with something useful. See you then! --Vic

Fijne vakantie! -- Jonathan