or a collectable bonus that adds a BOOST to a pod
6 Likes
As a relative noob to both coding, the coding game and AIs, I have had fun, but you have some serious pitfalls.
I spent longer simulating/reverse engineering your environment then I did coding the AI. then you change the rules and the inputs, and made me wait for the whole day to get to the next league. I am a noob so the bosses were just hard enough, but getting my head around the problem and the maths was hard enough without changing the rules, I had a big messy thing to memorise the checkpoints, then later you just give them to us, I spent far too long working out the friction, the turn rate, the angles, the enemy ship, then you just give them to me. It would have been nice if I could compete against no opponent while doing this, or coding my own place holder to test some things like the shield. (I could have done this with a second account but that would be against the rules)
I could have gone to the forum earlier or google, but didnāt as I trusted you wanted to learn, but it was not a particularly pleasant experience, and in hind site I should have sort out help earlierā¦
I think the leagues are great as it gives you a mark to beat, while still staying a little interesting with someone to compete against. I think it is fine to give us all the inputs, in the lower leagues you can comment them as place holders, not available till whatever league, and either send the info anyway or send out of bounds values, this way a properly written program should work anyway. You already have the ability to fold code sections, if you had a way to make them folded by default then most inexperienced people would barely even see them. (It would also help me as the one file rule means I have large chunks of code I need to hide each time I open the page the codingame.) You should also give us all the rules at the start, just hide them in folded sections of the instructions with a warning saying they are for whichever advanced league, this is easy as it can be done in html/css. That way the advanced people can look, the scared noobs can ignore them.
The league idea is great but the transition path must be smooth, both with the people that have existing bots and the ones starting from the bottom. Other things that arenāt acceptable are the waiting time after upgrading leagues. Also you should remember my best bot, when I found this site you made it sound fun for learning, which it is mostly, but to learn you need to encourage experimentation, by not retaining my best bot, you make it less likely I will make big changes that might be required for a poorly written program (like mine). this way I can also track if my program is actually improving, after all the entire league could be getting better.
TLDR: complete info from the start, hidden but available in the lower leagues, No lag time to change leagues, retain our best bot, let us code our own opponent,
5 Likes
As a workaround, you can submit a dummy AI and then choose your āarena AIā as an opponent.
The problem is that there is no good way of automatically deciding what your ābest botā is, precisely because of your last point. What you can do however is recover your older AIs in the āhistoryā menu and try submitting them again to see how well they are faring against the current state of the league.
I could have done this with a second account but that would be against the rules
u could submit an empty AI and play in ide your ide code VS your code in arena to reverse the physics
what if uād had simplified inputs only in the wood league with very nooby bosses? and then since the bronze league uād get full inputs and expert rules - would it be cool for ya?
Oh god, i totally love this idea
2 Likes
Iām with him. Yes, please!
1 Like
Yay, and some shells and bananas.
2 Likes
I guess I will try that next time. I didnāt realise we could recover the old submissions either, thanks Skywalker.
If the simplest levels were different I guess it would be ok, but it would have to be fairly trivial to solve even for a new person, of course the problem then becomes the 12 hour waitā¦
I see there is a big compromise between keeping the inputs simple for beginners, and not wanting to change the inputs for higher leagues because code needs revising
But why not have the same full list of inputs available at all levels, but they only get activated as you progress?
For example, in Wood league you are told āHere are 6 inputs for you to read in, and then 20 zeroes that you read and ignore. As you progress to higher leagues you will unlock new inputs to use.ā
Thatās not confusing, especially if the input reading is already automatically provided, and slightly exciting. No code revision is needed by contestants, but you can still change inputs/rules how you like. You could even reserve an input for future use if you want to leave your options openā¦
1 Like
That doesnāt change the problem that if you want to use, say, the ordered list of checkpoints in silver league, you have to write code to store it during the first lap, and then throw this code to the garbage when entering gold league.
1 Like
i already solved that, the solution is to make simplified inputs only in wood leagues with very nooby bots, so u wonāt need to store an array of checkpoints by yourself
and to make this wood league skippable
can you unban eyelessjack20000 he did nothing wrong if so show me
I cant get how to start the bot ā¦ Everytime , I change the code the bot does not move properly.
Please guide me , since I am very much new to this field.