Jormungand

Jormungand

the giant World Snake. He was a child of Loki and the giant Angurboda, and the brother of Fenrir and Hel.

How does it move?

See Fenrir.

How does it fire?

My first implementation of a simple GuessFactor gun. This implementation is based on Kawigi's GuessFactorTargeting/Tutorial and PEZ's implementation of waves using custom events.

How does it dodge bullets?

See Fenrir.

How does the melee strategy differ from one-on-one strategy?

See Fenrir.

How does it select a target to attack/avoid in melee ?

See Fenrir.

What does it save between rounds and matches?

See Fenrir.

Where did you get the name?

Fenrir not only had a sister Hel, but also a brother... Meet Jormungand!

Where can i get it?

http://www.robocoderepository.com/BotDetail.jsp?id=2058

Can I use your code?

Of course, the source is in the package. But it's messy and buggy...

What's next for your robot?

After some study of the possibilities, better segmentation for my gun.

What other robot(s) is it based on?

Fenrir and miniWodan.

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Comments :

At first I didn't recognize the name. I have always called it Midgårdsormen (striaght translation would be "The Midgard Snake"). I like that I keep learning about non-robocode stuff on this wiki too. -- PEZ

• yes, so do i :-). And now that i learned the swedish name for the world snake i think it sounds more poetic than 'Jormungand', which doesn't sound right in Dutch. Maybe if i get the bug out of the GF-gun i will rename it. --Loki
• It seems the English alternative name is "The Midgard Serpent". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jormungand What's the difference, if any, between "snake" and "serpent" in English anyway? I think that in Swedish we only have one word - "orm". -- PEZ
  • b.t.w., have you looked at the Dutch description of Jormungand at the wikipedia site (first select 'English', than 'Nederlands' if you start with 'Svenska' as your language)? i was looking for the name 'Jormungander' as i though that was the correct name as i knew it, but couldn't find that anywhere on the internet. Now it's here under 'Jormungand' with the Dutch language! Great! Further if you switch languages, 'Tor' is automatically translated with its German/Dutch? synonym 'Wodan'. This is realy a great wikipedia!!! --Loki
  • Yes, I also read the Dutch definitions and was amazed that I almost understood it. But wasn't Wodan a name for Odin? BTW, "Donar" means "thunder" in Dutch? -- PEZ
  • a typo on this page, i meant to write "Donar" (to much 'Wodan' on my mind lately..). And yes, the Dutch word for 'thunder' is 'donder', derived/changed over the ages from Donar. The fourth day of the week is called 'donderdag' (thursday), after the god Donar (in addition, we have 'dinsdag'/'tuesday' named after Tyr, 'woensdag'/'wednesday' named after Wodan and 'vrijdag'/'friday' named after Freya). So the old gods are still very much alive after over 1000 years of Christianity ;-) --Loki
  • b.t.w., nice that you can understand the Dutch text. Have you read the Danish text. Is that easy for you to interpret? I myself have less trouble with the Danish texts than with the Swedish texts, altough when you compare them they are more similar than Dutch and Danish is. Obviously must be due to a divergence in the spelling over distance --Loki
  • Oh, yes, no problem at all reading Danish. Apart from a few words, Swedish, Norweigian and Danish are almost the same languages. Norweigian and Danish being even closer to each other. -- PEZ
• in Dutch we can use both "slang" and "serpent" for "snake"/"serpent". Nowadays "serpent" isn't used much anymore, it's an archaic form with the same meaning as "slang". For eaxmple, it's often used in Bible translations. When "serpent" is used in modern literature it often has an negative meaning, while "slang" has a more neutral meaning. Maybe it's the same in English? --Loki
  • the wikipedia also gives an answer to this question: "Serpent is a word of Latin origin (serpens, serpentis) that is normally substituted for "snake" in a specifically mythic context especially, in order to distinguish such creatures from the world of biology." So more or less the same explanation as with the Dutch usage of 'slang' and 'serpent'. --Loki
  • OK, well, in Swedish the word "orm" goes for both the biological and the mythical incarnations, with no risk of confusion to my experience. Our name on this particular serpent shows that pretty well. =) -- PEZ

Simply porting the GF-gun from miniWodan did not work: none of the segments are updated and i eneded up with a GF-gun that always shoots head-on... Well, it's rating is 1681.85, beating mini.Fenrir with the PM-gun. Maybe i shouldn't complain --Loki

At least you have recognized the bug. The scary thing with head-on bugs is that head-on often is such an effective targeting strategy... PEZ

• yes, it is. A quick test against miniWodan showed almost equal bullet damage which does have a working GF-gun (although i think it needs some tuning on the segments). B.t.w. have you ever looked at the data in the different segments? I found mine to be very sparse, containing not much more than zero's, even after 250 matches. --Loki

• Maybe you are segmenting too heavily? I have checked the data in my segments a lot. That's what graphing is all about. I fire waves every tick also, maybe that's your problem? If you are firingwaves only when you acually fire your gun you can't segment as heavily at all. Mostly zero's after 250 matches can't be good anyway. -- PEZ

• I have found the problem with Jormungand: i am recreating my guess factor array each scan instead of using a 'pointer' to the existing array :-\ As with the sparse data in miniWodan's guessfactor statitics; I will remove all segments from miniWodan and start increasing segments one by one starting with the distance segment. See where it goes wrong. --Loki