Ants is over!

[judeling]

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

I had been away from programming since the mid-nineties. And found I had misread my re-learning curve so my bot never really got beyond stage one. But what I did find is a rekindling of my interest and an incredible amount of enjoyable side trips down both old paths with new insights and new paths with familiar shapes.

I personally plan on picking at this problem for a bit longer. With some of the the better bots likely to release their code I will have a chance to expand on what I learned and get an even wider view. I expect that I will be in a much better place for the next challenge.

[MountieBot]

I'll add one more round of thanks to the organizers and the sponsors. It's been a long time since I've done any real programming. This was a fun opportunity to learn a more modern programming language, brush up on some programming skills, and tackle a challenging problem.

[Zaph]

[KonaEarth]

Once upon a time, there was a group of programmers making a computer game. They coded and coded, making the game better and better every day. As the deadline approached, things grew more frantic. The "unimportant" features were removed from the to-do list, followed by the "important but too difficult" features, followed by the "really pretty important" features until only the absolutely vital stuff was left.

Right before the game shipped, an unexpected bug appeared. This wasn't a minor bug, it was a major but that had to be fixed or the game wouldn't work at all. Of course the bug proved to be extremely elusive. The programmers grew frantic, combing over the code trying to figure out what could possibly be going wrong. Then, right at the last possible moment, they found and fixed the bug. The game shipped without a minute to spare.

Too exhausted to think straight, the programmers went home for some well earned sleep. Then, much to their horror, the news arrived that the game was broken. "What?!" they exclaimed "It was working when we left! What went wrong?"

It was an easy mistake, anybody could have made it. In the last minute panic, the programmer in charge of the combat system had flipped a switch which enabled debugging but disabled combat in the process. This switch had never been flipped back. The game shipped but all combat was disabled. The game was playable, it just wasn't any fun.


That is all a true story. It wasn't me but I was somewhat involved with the project. A patch went out immediately but it was too late, the damage had already been done. Sometimes shit happens.

I was reminded of that story when shortly after the Ants submission counter reached zero, I realized that my freshly submitted bot was losing every battle to a previous version bot. Oh well, it was a fun experience anyways. Maybe there will be a version 2 or a rematch or something. At least my final submission actually runs.

I wasted far too much time on this silly contest. And I'd do it all again.

[amstan]

[Zaph]

[dimkadimon]

[amstan]

[salar2k]

Only 3 servers! What happened to rest of them?

[Nutter]

Thanks for a fantastic and interesting challenge!

Sadly I only came across the competition on December 7th but managed to submit a bot on Dec 15th which got to around 1000 ranking.

Wish I'd had more time, I can see plenty of areas for improvement but still it was great fun to do and that's what counts.

Thanks for organising it!