Ants is over!

[stupidquestions]

Sooo... When's the next contest gonna be?

No, seriously, has anything been mentioned about that?

Edit: BTW, this was great, I wouldn't be asking for the next contest it it wasn't.

[franperuzzi]

KonaEarth's story just hit me close to home. I just watched my first game in the finals, and realized I seriously messed up my combat with my final release. That's what I get for making changes right up to the last minute.

[jurifoll]

Thanks for orgonizing such a great contest!

Unfortunatly i started only a week ago and haven`t yet implemented all desired features and fixed some bugs. Should be any further ant competitions for revenge?

[Frantic]

Oh, I wouldn't say it was "over". This is just the closing stage, where all our hard work is being put on the test.

This is where we where working to. It's really over when the final results are known.

Regards,

Frantic.

[zarkon]

Where do we report bugs?

http://aichallenge.org/visualizer.php?g ... 0&user=331

The game ends with reason "food not being gathered", which is obviously wrong (the game ends on turn 150, one of my ants gathered food on turn 147 and a new ant was spawned on turn 148). It's true that the opponent doesn't gather any food, but I don't think that's a good enough reason not to give me a chance to finish him off.

This seems to be consistent with the "food not being gathered" cutoff described on http://aichallenge.org/specification.php
, but that seems a little wrong. Maybe my bot doesn't gather food in the best way, but it's certainly not a starter bot (it did manage to blunder its way into top 100 a few times).

Maybe the rule for this cutoff should be a little more dynamic (no food gathered at all for 50 consecutive turns)? I admit it would be risky (impossible?) to change rules at this stage. However, there is a large percentage of starter bots in the competition and this cutoff rule poses the threat of many games ending prematurely.

Anyway, this was/is a great contest and great fun. Many thanks to the organizers for their hard work! Many thanks to the people who set up TCP servers!

[KonaEarth]

Where do we report bugs?

http://aichallenge.org/visualizer.php?g ... 0&user=331

The game ends with reason "food not being gathered", which is obviously wrong

It is disappointing to not have a chance to crush the enemy but it was obvious that your bot was going to win that game since the enemy was just a starter package that did nothing but walk repeatedly into a wall. I suspect that you got credited with the win. As long as my bots win, I don't really care how they accomplish it. Well, I do care because I probably noticed a mistake or two along the way, but a win is certainly better than a loss.

Imagine if that "food not being gathered" rule wasn't in place. Then you'd have to search the entire map. For that game in particular, it might take awhile. Your bot seemed to be doing a decent job of exploring but some bots would have a very difficult time traversing every single area of such a complex maze. It's like looking for that last little two-spot boat in Battleship. I'd prefer that the game just be over already so I can get on to crushing the next opponent.

[boring]

My bot just timeouted for the first time ever. I have code in loops for checking remaining time, so it's really weird. Here's the game:

http://aichallenge.org/visualizer.php?g ... &user=9994 (my bot is "Boring", there's another timeouted bot)

Is this server showing any signs of abnormal behaviour like unusually high timeouted bot count? Is there any point in reporting such totally unexpected timeouts, can you filter out such games? It's so dissapointing to see this, because competition is not that long and every single game counts..

[ulysses]

Hi,

Just like to start with: A great competition! It's generated lots of interest in our office, some might say too much

Anyway I was wondering what happened with this game:

http://aichallenge.org/visualizer.php?g ... &user=9762

The bot version for apakanati doesn't appear to be the latest, is this a known issue?

I'm not complaining, after all my skill increased and it looks like I'd have been beaten by the other bots anyway, just wondering if there's an issue with how the bot versions are queued.

Cheers.

[zarkon]

Imagine if that "food not being gathered" rule wasn't in place. Then you'd have to search the entire map. For that game in particular, it might take awhile. Your bot seemed to be doing a decent job of exploring but some bots would have a very difficult time traversing every single area of such a complex maze. It's like looking for that last little two-spot boat in Battleship. I'd prefer that the game just be over already so I can get on to crushing the next opponent.

I don't think I got credited with the win (we are both displayed as "#1" in the game results). Oh well.

I don't question the utility of the rule, I just think that the criteria for the rule could have been chosen better. I also see that the space maps x cutoffs x player strength is far too large to test effectively, so my proposed criteria for the "food cutoff" may be actually worse than the one in place.

Anyway, I hope I won't get paired with many other starter bots

[decaz]

My bot just timeouted for the first time ever. I have code in loops for checking remaining time, so it's really weird. Here's the game:

http://aichallenge.org/visualizer.php?g ... &user=9994 (my bot is "Boring", there's another timeouted bot)

Is this server showing any signs of abnormal behaviour like unusually high timeouted bot count? Is there any point in reporting such totally unexpected timeouts, can you filter out such games? It's so dissapointing to see this, because competition is not that long and every single game counts..

Same thing happened in my game. Looks like my bot didn't even run? No report of crash or timeout. I as well have timeout code built-in. This has never happened in the 400+ games I played with this bot.

http://aichallenge.org/visualizer.php?g ... user=13376

and also foodnotbeinggathered when I am clearly gathering food and about to cap another players hill adjacent to mine?
http://aichallenge.org/visualizer.php?g ... 376&turn=1