Forums | Admin Discussion Forums: open-discussion Start New Thread Nested Flat Threaded Ultimate Show 25 Show 50 Show 75 Show 100   By: Bryan Kennedy RE: New features [ reply ]   2005-12-21 16:09 1) new event 'explosion' with coordinates -> I think explosions would only be useful to know if they had a blast radius that persisted for a number of ticks; so you can avoid it. Otherwise I think it would be at least a nice graphical touch. Although if you caused the explosion and it resulted in the death of a robot, be nice to know if you had a confirmed kill. 2) event 'got_hit' could get energy and source attribte ->I think it should only give you the damaged inflicted and the direction it was fired from. However you shouldn't be able to know who fired it or how far away they are. 3/4) new events for hitting walls / other robots | Hitting walls or robots hurt -> I like this idea. Specifically that you can't go overtop of another robot. If possible I think it would be cool if damage was inflicted, amount by relative speed, as well as the robot slowing or stopping completely. 5) vampire bullet, costs energy but gives double energy when hit -> I would suggest something a little more flexible. Bullet speed, damage ratio, heating ratio, and energy cost should all be taken into account. Where you could increase or decrease a specific value, and the rest would be affected. Fast bullet? Greater heat. High damage? Slower bullet. You get the idea. You could also introduce different types of bullets with set values; and perhaps ammo limitations. The idea is nice, many possibilities. 6) let bots exchange max speed for life (only once in a battle) ->Hm, maybe; but if you add something like that you should make it cost more. For example: you have to be at a speed of 0 and have 0 gun_heat to start repairs. While doing repairs you cannot fire or move; everything is turned off (radar, engines, etc). You take double damage while doing repairs. Repairing will repair a certain amount of damage, take so many turns to complete, and there is a "restart" period after repairs are completed before you can move. 7) specialise in scanning: half weapon cooldown but ability to scan heading and speed of opponents ->There are a couple of special scanning modes you could give. - Figure out speed of robot. - Figure out heading of robot. - Figure out range of all robots, but no bearing. - Figure out range of all robots with bearing. As will all possible additions, you would have to consider which you will add and which will have secondary effects. - Gun cools slower. - Must be stationary. - Takes x ticks to perform task; no radar update while action is being executed. - Radar scanning range is limited during execution. - Energy cost. ----- Some other ideas that have come to mind you might want to think about. Most of these are thoughts to assist team-play. - A way to send msg to team. - A unique value, or callsign for robots so teamates know the difference between SittingDuck1 and SittingDuck2. - A way to send msg to specific robot by callsign. Or specific types of commands. - Transponder for teamates; gives other robots on team access to their current position (exact or within a specific range). - That customization idea mentioned I really like. There are tons of options for customization. (acceleration, top speed, damage ratio, bullet speed, gun cooling, energy, radar max range, gun max range, heading max range, robot size) - Alternative to customization is having pre-made classes of robots. - Different types of bullets, mentioned earlier. - Different types of scanning, mentioned earlier. - If you feel that some features greatly simplified things, you can always toss extra stuff in to throw AI's for a loop. Well... I think I've rambled on for long enough. I really think this is a cool little script here, I hope to use it to get better with ruby. By: Dave Burt RE: New features [ reply ]   2005-12-13 00:32 1) new event 'explosion' with coordinates Just for robot deaths? Sounds good. 2) event 'got_hit' could get energy and source attribte By "energy" I assume you mean power of bullet, and "source" being the name of the bot that fired it. Great, but also I want the bullet's heading. 3) new events for hitting walls / other robots Definitely. 4) hitting robots / walls hurts Definitely. 5) vampire bullet, costs energy but gives double energy when hit Interesting. Make it the default so you always lose energy when you fire. 6) let bots exchange max speed for life (only once in a battle) This is a great idea. You'd need to adjust handling along with speed - turning rate and gun turning rate. 7) specialise in scanning: half weapon cooldown but ability to scan heading and speed of opponents I don't like the idea of this trade-off. Another idea: instead of 6 & 7, give "customization points" which can be spent on speed, turn rates, life, weapon cooldown, max bullet power, etc. Regarding scanning, without costing extra, I want to see the bearing of a scanned robot so I don't have to calculate an inaccurate guess based on how far my radar has moved. Also I'd like the bot's name and heading. Speed and energy would be nice, too. A) Have a way to get a handle on the Bullet object when you fire. B) More event ideas: won, died, bullet_hit By: Ilmari Heikkinen RE: New features [ reply ]   2005-12-10 23:29 1/2: Maybe these could be combined? Like have explosions do radius damage and have them throw the bot around a little based on their position. Explosion/hit from right throws the bot a couple units to the left, etc. Then the information could be gleaned, but it wouldn't be that apparent. 3/4: I like, would be nice. 5/6/7: Would be handy for creating an add-on system. Gameplay effects would need testing. 7: Hmm, now it takes (after locking on) around 2 ticks to get a pretty reliable position scan, 4 ticks for velocity, 6 ticks for acceleration (3 points, 2 velocities.) So it would about double scanning speed. I ran a little test on Kite against a SniperDuck derivative, and ~85% of the time was spent waiting for the gun to cool. Maybe if the special scanner also told other info? Or have that points system for add-ons mentioned before.. By: Edwin v Leeuwen RE: New features [ reply ]   2005-12-10 20:45 I agree with sox box, I think you should be very careful about giving to much data, part of the fun is trying to predict where a robot is heading etc. 3/4 are good features to add though. By: sox box RE: New features [ reply ]   2005-12-10 16:43 I think it is important to keep it realistic. 1. a real robot should only be able to sense the explosions close to him, and should not be able to tell the source. I don't think this adds much to the game. 2. got_hit should contain the damage amount, but not the source for same realism argument. 3/4. Very good features. I considered doing this and submiting the source, but didn't have time. 5/6 Not realistic and a lot of work for little added game play. 7. This is realistic, sort of like doplar radar, but I like the challange of trying to figure out speed from succesive scans. I think you are about to start seeing bots with predictive traking, which gets the same results with current system. All in all, I think I just like it the way it is. I think 3/4 would be a great improvement. I also would like to see barracades that act like walls, and obscure radar. I could see in the far future a very large 2d maze, and your screen covers just the portion were your robot is. By: Evan James RE: New features [ reply ]   2005-12-10 14:42 1) Explosion event - Nice. I would like to see some kind of rocket or explosive bullet that lets your bot catch several bots in a fireball (perhaps including itself, if the explosion is too close). That would make for interesting strategy in team battles - trying to coordinate bots so they aren't too close together, while simultaneously attempting to box in the enemy for group annihilation. 2) More "got_hit" information - Sounds useful. 3/4) Wall / robot collisions, with events - Would you be able to win through ramming? If both bots take the same amount of damage in a collision, that would be a Pyrrhic strategy... regardless, having hit collision would be very welcome, since it looks pretty silly when two tanks overlap each other and start wildly spinning their radars to try and see who's stepping on their toes. 5) Vampire bullet - This sounds like a "Win More" kind of weapon. If you can reliably hit the enemy with your bullets, then using vampiric ones is a good idea... but if you can reliably hit the enemy with your bullets, you're probably winning anyway. Likewise, bots that can't hit anything will continue to lose whether or not they also use up some of their own energy while shooting. 6/7) Specializations and customizations - Letting bots customize themselves would be neat. Suggestion: At the beginning of a battle, each bot is given a number of 'points' to spend on extras; sometime during initialization or a special 0th-tick call, they must decide what to do with the points. I see two advantages with this. First, it would be a general and extendable form of customization - as new 'bot customizations are suggested, requested, and coded, the new stuff can simply be added to the list with a corresponding point cost. Second, the number of points each bot receives could become a command-line argument to RRobots. Then there could be different 'tournament leagues' to submit bots for, ranging from the 25-point Standard Division down to the 1-point Weeniemobile League and all the way up to the 300-point Earth-Crusher Battle Royale. One point I'd like to make on #7, though, about the ability to scan the heading and speed of an opponent... perhaps it would be a good idea to make that a basic function of the radar, avilable to all bots? It's already possible to write a bot that takes several readings and tries to calculate the velocity and heading of the target, and such a robot has already been written. Every robot is going to need to have some kind of targeting algorithm, and most of them are just going to copy that solution with minor tweaks. It isn't a question of strategy - just the same solution to the same mathematical problem. Instead of requiring that bot writers reinvent the wheel to find velocity and heading, I think those things should just be included in the radar scan. Plus, that would make the radar more useful in general; as it is, since you need to focus on one opponent constantly in order to get a firing solution, bots never have time to use their radar to look around and develop strategies for dealing with multiple opponents. By: Jannis Harder RE: New features [ reply ]   2005-12-10 12:04 Sounds cool... but it could get a bit slow. I was thinking of writing rrobots as a ruby c extension and syncing it to the ruby code (new features are applied to the ruby code... the c code is synced. Not the other way around) By: Simon Kröger New features [ reply ]   2005-12-10 11:34 I would like to see some opinions on features i'm thinking about: 1) new event 'explosion' with coordinates 2) event 'got_hit' could get energy and source attribte 3) new events for hitting walls / other robots 4) hitting robots / walls hurts 5) vampire bullet, costs energy but gives double energy when hit 6) let bots exchange max speed for life (only once in a battle) 7) specialise in scanning: half weapon cooldown but ability to scan heading and speed of opponents and maybe more....