Skilgannon

I'm a 2nd year Mechanical Engineering student in South Africa. Real Name: Julian Kent

My Goal: To get a bot in the top 10 of each RoboRumble group.

-DrussGT is at no. 1 in the main rumble -Cunobelin is at 3 in the MiniRumble? -Toorkild is no. 1 in the MicroRumble?

See the new wiki for more info.

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I've been to South Africa. I was in Pietermeritzburg. Are you anywhere around there? I also spent a little time in Umtata. -- Simonton

No, I'm in Cape Town. I moved here 5 years ago from Santa Cruz, CA. -- Skilgannon

Hey, just to let you know - I clicked on your name on the Changes page and then realized you've got some extra letters in it in your preferences ;) Just thought you should know. By the way, good to see you are running a RoboRumble client (you can check with [this link]), it seems not as many newcomers do that these days. (Though I'll admit the setup wasn't always as easy as it's starting to be with Fnl integrating it.) -- Voidious

I was editing it on another computer, and I was in a rush...you get the idea :-). Yeah, I'm running Linux, so command line stuff is second nature to me, as well as the whole 'community chips in' idea. I've been running quite a bit of RoboRumble, but before was putting the name as my real name, now changed to my handle. That script is cool, nice to see who's giving back to the community. Take a look at the MicroRumble?, do you think that anybody has got to 3rd place after a month in Robocode ? =) -- Skilgannon

Yeah, I saw that, impressive ;) Not sure what the records for such things are, but I know Simonton shot up pretty quick. Legend has it Jamougha rose to dominance pretty quickly, too, but that was before my time. -- Voidious

I got to 3rd place in microrumble in 32 months, is that a record too? ;-) Anyway, congrats on your third place, you really are a quick learner. I still intend to take it back though. -- GrubbmGait

So, what took you to South Africa from California? And yes, quick learner is right; I peeked into Decado, it's well done. --Simonton

Thanks guys =). My mom's from SA, my dad from the US. We moved here partly for a change, and partly to be with my grandparents more. @GrubbmGait - I'm aiming on second now, so you'll have to take 3rd from Raiko :-p ;-) --Skilgannon

Well, I think it is safe to welcome you in The2000Club, megaDruss has a rating of 2036 after 629 battles. Just wait that it hits 1000 battles and you're in. You did an impressive job in a short time, congratulations! -- GrubbmGait

It's amazing what 6 pixels can do to your precise prediction. =) And to think that the gun doesn't even have rolling averages. -- Skilgannon

• I think it's common for people to benchmark against the top bots (I know I did and still do!), but it really is the other 500 non-adaptive moments that are most important to your rating. Against them, you don't want or need to roll your gun stats, anyway. Now you might have the pleasure of taking your time, adding a flattener and an AntiSurfer gun, and watching your PL score skyrocket. =) -- Voidious

Welcome to the newest member of The2000Club! See you soon in The2100Club? =) --David Alves

• Either that or The2000Club/Micro! A multiple choice pattern matcher might be just the thing =) -- Skilgannon

Hey, why don't you list the ratings on your "version history" pages? How am I supposed to know what ideas to copy if I can't see what the rating delta was? =) -- Voidious

Some stuff is just too secret to tell about =). You can always check the details page :-p I guess I'm just too lazy.... -- Skilgannon

However, if you want the reason (I think) that my micros are the best, I can say that it's just like the big bots: When you can beat the weak bots better than anybody else, you get a higher score =). And, also like the big bots, there are more points in movement than in gun =). The Connovar/Waylander? experiment proves that fairly conclusively. -- Skilgannon

• Well, I have no doubt you get a ton of points from your dodging of simple targeters, but comparing your bots and Thorn to my best version of Jen, it's actually more the mid-range bots where you two are so much stronger. In fact, Thorn's biggest advantage over Jen seems to be against the hardest 25% of the field! That's why I am thinking my RandomMovement just ain't flat enough, for starters... -- Voidious
• Wait... things look a little different if I sort results by how your bots do instead of by the average of our scores against each opponent. Still, the middle of the field is where I'm losing the most points. -- Voidious
• You're stuck in the megabot mindset =). In micro, many of the mid range bots do have simple targeting, or at least LT/CT. They made the choice of having a strong movement. Anyways, how about adding NanoAndrew/DoctorBob? and RaikoNano to your micro testbed....thats where my biggest improvements come from. -- Skilgannon

Man, you must hate me for not doing this sooner. =) Ain't it about time we officially handed that crown over? I'd like to post one more rerelease of Dookious 1.573, just to get a baseline comparison, but I have little doubt it's all yours. Do you guys mind me posting a version w/o running a client, and/or want me to wait until your versions settle down? I'm not sure if the latest versions' RR support will work smoothly on the Mac (I had some problems starting in the 1.4.x versions onward).

The reason I'd hesitated before is that the rating drift and fluctuations just seemed so extreme that I wanted to rerelease before doing it, but Robocode has gotten less of my focus in recent weeks/months. Anyway, it's about friggin' time we got it resolved!

-- Voidious

Go ahead and post it! There's plenty of rumble power, it might just take a while. If there's problems on 1.5.x on Mac I'm sure Fnl would be interested to know =). How about 1.6? It seems we already uncovered one bug, being able to print to the console from the bot constructor thread in the rumble. -- Skilgannon