Mad Pod Racing - Puzzle Discussion

Puzzles
#1

Feel free to send your feedback or ask some help here!

7 Likes
Coders Strike Back Use Boost
Coding Games and Programming Challenges to Code Better
Code Strikers Problem
#2

Spotted a small typo in the hint (wood 2 league)

thurst -> thrust

24 Likes
#3

I feel like there might be too large of a step between leagues silver and gold. You spend a lot of time in the lower leagues with only tiny changes in rules and just a better boss - like in bronze vs. silver IIRC: there are collisions in bronze, but you can only shield in silver. I know I didn’t even have to adjust my code for collisions to pass from bronze to silver, so this addition seemed kind of pointless. Yet from silver to gold, not only do you get the brand new parsing, but you now have 2 pods, so the strategy is completely different. That’s a lot of changes at once.

So, my suggestion is:

  • introduce the shield rule in bronze league
  • introduce almost all of the new parsing in the silver league: each player still has only 1 pod, but for this pod, they get the 6 integers to parse like in gold, and also the number of laps and checkpoints and the checkpoint coordinates.
  • and then in gold, you get 2 pods, which leads to only small changes in parsing, but potentially big changes in strategy.

(If you don’t like this, you can imagine a hybrid solution, like already getting in silver the speed and angle of the pod, but temporarily retaining checkpointX, -Y, -Dist and -Angle, or the reverse…)

43 Likes
#4

It will be very helpful to have an ability to draw something (line, dots) on the game screen. I am trying to implement trajectory prediction and it’s quite difficult to debug such things (e. g. when I want to trace approximate trajectory for the next 20 steps).

31 Likes
#5

I have a question, I’m not sure why it happens. Why are there some races that as soon as they start, they end and show a winner?

Example: https://www.codingame.com/replay/129340262

The race never ends, it just went to step 3. What’s the problem with this ones?

1 Like
#6

MrAmericanMike timeout the 1st frame here.

1 Like
#7

I’m not really sure what “beat the boss” means. I know I am supposed to get a better score, but I don’t know what that means. How is the score calculated? Bronzie here, btw!

7 Likes
#8

SaiksyApo you mean my pod didn’t print an output on the first interaction?

Also, I have seen some pods print information in a box next to them, unless I missed it on some tutorials, I’m not sure… How you do this?

Thanks again for the help.

1 Like
#9

Yeah, your program crashed or didn’t input in time.

You can display message in the player while printing :
“x y thrust message”

#10

Thanks a lot. It’s weird, not sure why the timeout happens, I just had that problem on a race against the Boss and when I clicked “Replay in same conditions” it didn’t do that again.

#11

I see you are coding in Java – I have seen the server fail to start the JVM randomly every once in a while, probably due to heavy server load. It sucks, but there are usually enough games played to make it so the random failure should not impact your scoring much.

Keep in mind some bots (including maybe yours) use randomness to play, which means replaying the same game might give a different result regardless (though right at the start makes it more likely to be what I described above).

…or maybe there is a real bug in your code. :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes
#12

Thanks. Yes I saw today on the console some error about that, so that’s probably the problem :wink:

#13

I noticed when using javascript occasionally the first set of data wont contain checkpoint coordinates and the precreated parsing code explodes.

1 Like
#14

I don’t seem to get promoted to Bronze league. It said, I’d be promoted yesterday and nothing happened. Is there anything additional that needs to be done?

#15

Hello,

Can someone explain me how to use the Boost keyword cause I am not understanding it. btw, i am using C#

3 Likes
#16

Console.WriteLine(“x y BOOST”) in plain text instead of Console.WriteLine(“x y thrust”)

#17

Wow, the jump from Wood to Bronze… too much for me till now. Can’t beat the boss regularly, he always throws me out of my targets and I finish second every time. Seems better to go second and close to the first, to beat him, but we don’t have enemy info…

Really interesting this puzzle.

4 Likes
#18

How do I use the boost in Java for wood league 1?

#19

System.out.println(“x y BOOST”);

#20

And one day after this… I did it. 3rd place in Bronze league, jumping to Silver right now.

Love this game and how makes me struggle my mind…

2 Likes