WaveSurfingChallenge

Introduction

The WaveSurfingChallenge gives you a way to measure your bot's ability to avoid getting hit by very simple targeting systems in long battles. The WaveSurfingChallenge/FastLearning pits you against the same bots in 35 round battles like the ones in the RoboRumble@Home. You may also want to check out these other movement challenges:

• WaveSurfingChallenge/FastLearning - Another version of this challenge, with short battles.
• MovementChallenge - A measure of your bot's performance against a wide variety of bots.
• MovementChallenge2K6 - An updated version of the MovementChallenge with more advanced challenge bots.
  • WaveSurfingChallenge2K6 - A component of the MovementChallenge2K6, similar to this one but adds a circular targeting bot.

Directions

Here's how you run a WaveSurfingChallenge:

• Get the reference bots here: https://davidalves.net/robocode/WaveSurfingChallengeBots.jar
• Bot A fires with HeadOnTargeting, Bot B fires with LinearTargeting. Source code for both bots is included.
• Run 1000 rounds against each of them, or 30 seasons of 35 round battles for the /FastLearning version of this challenge.
• Arena size 800 x 600
• Everything else set to Robocode defaults
• You are not allowed to fire any bullets

Your bot's score is average amount of life you had at the end of each round. 100 means that the reference bot never hit you. You calculate your score like this:

 100 - (reference bot's bullet damage score / 1000)

Results

Bot Name	Author	Type	Score vs. Bot A	Score vs. Bot B	Overall Score
Phoenix 0.30.1dev	David Alves	WaveSurfing	99.952	99.548	99.75
Ascendant 0.9	Mue	WaveSurfing	99.664	98.92	99.292
CassiusClay 1.9.9.77	PEZ	WaveSurfing	99.948	98.304	99.126
PowerHouse 1.5e	wcsv	WaveSurfing	99.68	98.16	98.92
Pear 0.61.4dev	iiley	WaveSurfing	99.115	98.285	98.7
PulsarMax 0.5.20	Pulsar	WaveSurfing	99.76	97.2	98.48
DarkHallow	jim	WaveSurfing	99.637	96.288	97.963
Crusader 0.1.2	trab	WaveSurfing	99.904	94.56	97.232
Dookious 0.65	Voidious	WaveSurfing	98.660	95.128	96.894
SilverSurfer 2.44	Axe	WaveSurfing	99.972	91.765	95.8685
Cyanide 1.65	Alcatraz	WaveSurfing	99.32	91.644	95.482
GrubbmGrb 1.1.3	GrubbmGait	Stop&Go	85.536	94.396	89.966
Squirrel prerelease	Bayen	Oscillating	79.33	96.528	87.929
Chalk 1.01	Corbos	WaveSurfing	98.684	53.234	75.959
Freya 0.62ws2	Loki	MR/ WaveSurfing	75.36	33.3	54.37
Evader 1.1	Starrynte	S&G	71.581	35.139	53.36
SandboxDT 1.91	Paul Evans	RandomMovement	41.929	37.738	39.834

Results for SandboxDT 1.91 are included for reference, it has one of the best non-surfing movements.

---

Chat

Great score David! -- PEZ

Cant believe that Shiva only scores around 89% overall. Hope i did something wrong when testing :((( --deathcon

Just about everyone was scoring lower than that at first. What are your individual scores vs. A and B? --David Alves

Not only that. It doesn't seem to matter much for the real life performance of a bot. Some of the bots scoring sub 90% before and 97+% today have about the same RR@H score anyway. Shiva is probably alright man. =) -- PEZ

One problem that axe had was that his anti-ramming code was kicking in on rounds where the WaveSurfingChallenge bot was facing SilverSurfer. Something similar perhaps? --David Alves

Yeah, the anti-ramming is important in WaveSurfingChallenge, Pear did this not good, sometimes round begin, he is very close to enemy, but he cannot escape soon(I cannot find a good way to improve this all through), so it get low score here. -- iiley

But... I dont think SilverSurfer has this problem, if he/she has, he/she cannot get as high as 99.9+ score vs BotA?. -- iiley

Not any more, Axe fixed it. I was saying that deathcon might have some problem like that in Shiva. --David Alves

Yeah..., maybe he has the same problem with me, now i'm tring to fix it. But it's hard for my movement. Any way maybe can fix out a little better way. -- iiley

Details:

 1st: davidalves.Phoenix 0.27                 60001  50000  10000     0  0  1  0  1000     0  0
 2nd: wiki.challenge.WaveSurfingChallengeBotB  1144      0      0  1144  0  0  0     0  1000  0

 1st: davidalves.Phoenix 0.27                 60000  50000  10000    0  0  0  0  1000    0  0
 2nd: wiki.challenge.WaveSurfingChallengeBotA   164      0      0  164  0  0  0     0 1000  0

--David Alves

Cool down, David, did you did your surfing a especial to simple enemies as CC did?(if been hit times lower than x, then did especially). -- iiley

My surfing code doesn't have any special cases. --David Alves

Which means you don't have any visit flattener I guess? CC only activates its flattener when the enemies hit rate goes beyond a certain level. Other than that CC prepopulates its unsegmented hit stat buffer with one GF0 hit before the fight. -- PEZ

Exactly. I have a flattener but it makes Phoenix a horrible SlowBot so it's turned off for now. I'm not sure it helps anyway... it's probably buggy. --David Alves

Details:

1st: pez.rumble.CassiusClay 1.9.9.77              60001	50000	10000	0	0	1	0	1000	0
2nd: wiki.challenge.WaveSurfingChallengeBotA 1.0  52	0	0	52	0	0	0	0	1000

1st: pez.rumble.CassiusClay 1.9.9.77              60000	50000	10000	0	0	0	0	1000	0
2nd: wiki.challenge.WaveSurfingChallengeBotB 1.1  1696	0	0	1696	0	0	0	0	1000

-- PEZ

Although GrubbmGrb is in noway a WaveSurfer, the sole purpose of it's Stop&Go movement is to avoid simple targeters. Therefor I entered it here, and it doesn't do it that bad. --GrubbmGait

I know Dookious is still a ways from being the ideal WaveSurfer, but I figured it couldn't hurt to add his scores here. -- Voidious

Details:

1st: cjm.Chalk						60010	50000	10000	0	0	10	0	1000	0	0
2nd: wiki.challenge.WaveSurfingChallengeBotA 1.0	1316	0	0	1316	0	0	0	0	1000	0

1st: wiki.challenge.WaveSurfingChallengeBotB 1.1	58763	7500	1500	46766	2996	0	0	150	850	0
2nd: cjm.Chalk						51019	42500	8500	0	0	19	0	850	150	0

If a good score doesn't guarantee real-life performance, does a bad score come with guarantees? :) Yuck. --Corbos

Well, it is always nice knowing that your tank is doing well *despite* disappointing challenge scores :) One thing that comes to mind off the bat is that you might not have your EnemyWave segmentation actually in sync with what they are seeing before they fire... There's some good stuff on that EnemyWave page that's worth checking out about which tick's data to segment. (Basically, 2 ticks before the energy drop.) Just a thought, I gotta get back to work... -- Voidious

Also, this is just a tool to perfect your movement against the two simplest (of many) targeting methods. It just means you will score say 95% against a lineartargetter instead of the possible 99.x%. On the other hand, I've read somewhere that you rating will be influenced noticably if you could pump up you score from 95% to 97%. No calculations at hand to prove this though. -- GrubbmGait

I started work on a combined MinimumRisk and WaveSurfing/ShrapnelSurf type of movement for my melee bot Freya. My first attempt obviously works reasonably well for HOT, but fails miserably for LT... I still have a looooong way to go. But that is part of the fun :) --Loki

1st: davidalves.Phoenix 0.30.1	                60000	50000	10000	0	0	0	0	1000	0	0
2nd: wiki.challenge.WaveSurfingChallengeBotA	48	0	0	48	0	0	0	0

1st: davidalves.Phoenix 0.30.1	                        60000	50000	10000	0	0	0	0	1000	0	0
2nd: wiki.challenge.WaveSurfingChallengeBotB 1.1	452	0	0	452	0	0	0	0	1000	0

Beat that. ;-) --David Alves

Loki, is that bvh.mini.Freya or bvh.fry.Freya? --David Alves

It's bvh.fry.Freya. I can't get WS working in a megabot, let alone in a mini :) But i am still working on it. I have slightly better results against BotB?... But i have broken something against BotA?... B.t.w. i showed the wrong version in the results above, the Freya entered in Melee at this moment doesnot use WS at all. --Loki

Well I was going to offer to take a look at the code and see if I could spot any problems... but then I opened up the java file and saw ++beweging.aantalBotsingenMetWand;... Might take a while for me to understand what's going on in your bot... =P --David Alves

thanks for the offer! I will struggle some more, keep coding my bots using a combination of Java and Dutch and if i get really stuck, you can always enter the code in Altavista's Babelfish :) It gives 'comprehensible' translations like "++ movement.number collision with partition;". At least 4 out of 5 words are correct! --Loki

Evader is failing miserably...due to it's bad WallAvoidance...I'll upload new results once that's fixed --Starrynte

• Lol, in one of my testing, it 'accidentally' (not) WallSmoothed right into the BotA? (when it was disabled) and killed it - free points --Starrynte