PerceptBot

PerceptBot was my creation, and the very first bot released specifically as a PerceptualBot (although SpinBot, MyFirstRobot, TrackFire, and most HaikuBots also qualify as PerceptualBots). PerceptBot 1.0 was a horrific entity that used my own jury-rigged linear prediction and horrible movement. The current incarnation, PerceptBot 2.3, is very aggressive for a survivalist bot and has a very finely tuned movement system that uses a tactic employed by many bots that I call "pseudo-dodging". That is, it synchronizes its movements to its enemy's firing pattern, trying to always move just before the next bullet would hit it. This tactic is moderately useful against perceptual bots, which can't use pattern matchers.

PerceptBot 2.3 also has a firing strategy that is, I believe, entirely my own. He only fires in one of four scenarios, based entirely off of the enemy's velocity and his approach angle. The first strategy is the innovative one: if the enemy's velocity is between 4 and 8, I assume he is slowing down, and I assume he is going to stop and eventually reverse, and I feed those assumptions into a predictor that moves the enemy bot forward in time based on those acceleration assumptions. Then the more mundane firing strategies: if the enemy bot is moving away from or towards me at a +/- 30 degree angle or less, I fire using a linear predictor. If the bot is very close to me, I fire using a linear predictor. And the last firing strategy, added to gain an obscene amount of wins against Winkie and TrackFire, is a small random chance of firing every so often at bots whose velocity is < 2.

Even though Pandora 1.2 and PerceptualDuelist 1.5 have traded spots with PerceptBot the last three times on the PerceptualSurvivalistLeague, PerceptBot is still #1 in my mind until someone comes along and crushes him completely. ;)

-- nano