Ignoring path finding and using collaborative diffusion

[Darhuuk]

[bluegaspode]

If there are within attack range, they switch to the combat code.
Sometime I just mark one direction as "don't go there, you might die" which still leaves three fields to choose by diffusion values.

Sometimes the battle code also takes over completely.

[tmseiler]

I put the entirety of my combat code inside of my move_to_goal() method. I'm using field-based combat, so it's kind of like another type of hill climbing that isn't diffused -- just safe or unsafe when attempting to move to a particular scent.

[pkmiec]

[codetiger]

[tmseiler]

I'd say you're definitely making a good hill to climb, but it doesn't look like it's actually diffusing because you're never subtracting or rounding out the difference between squares. When I first started, my formula was very additive. It made good hills, but it also resulted in values getting way too large ("smelly") or decaying too fast like you're showing there. When I finally fixed it, the results were very nice.

Here's the source to my diffusion bot, which has wound up around rank 100:

https://bitbucket.org/tmseiler/ants/src

[utoxin]

Here's my bot, which uses this methodology for everything it does.

https://github.com/utoxin/AIChallenge-Ants

It's currently doing decently in the finals, hovering around 500 rank at the moment. Considering it's my first Python code, and my first AI project, I'm quite pleased.

[katebus]

@tmseiler, well that code convinced me - I am starting to learn python today, it looks good, as a code and as a language. At least I can understand parts of it, which is not always easy.

[flux_w42]

My bot is using collaborative diffusion, the source
Here are some gifs that shows an example of the diffusion maps:

Coverage:


Enemies:


Food:


Scouting:


And the mix of the previous maps. This is the actual map that's used for my ants if they're not raiding a hill

[zaphod]