Some more tools for debugging in the contest would be nice. I would really like to draw a path on the grid for example. That would make it a lot easier to see the options my AI is considering.
At the moment a solution can only output one line per turn. Either X Y or BACK N.
You could extend that protocol and allow multiple PATH COLOR X1 Y1 .. XN YN lines before that.
Of course the path(s) of my AI should only be visible to me, like the error stream.
That’s a very interesting suggestion but I think that’s too late for the current contest. We are only fixing the bugs, we don’t add new features.
I will share your post with the person who have developed the viewer anyway.
To be fair, it is possible to set that up as a function/object/whatever set up with inside your own software as a bit of internal functionality of your bot.
Yes, the out put would be merely be X Y or BACK N… and for various real life purposes that is likely a better way to handle things.
Inside your bot would handle all kinds of weird things.