Editing revision 4 of Fractal/Description

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Here's Fractal's description.

==== What's special about it? ====
Pretty much nothing. Maybe the fact that it can draw movement curves with RobocodeGLV014 at runtime as it fights, so it may be useful to people who want faster feedback than using other graphers. Future versions will no longer support this, and may not support the movement grapher (sorry!)

==== Great, I want to try it. Where can I download it? ====
Right here: http://www.robocoderepository.com/BotDetail.jsp?id=1579

==== How competitive is it? ====
It's currently #64 on the [[RoboRumble]]@Home current standings (it just dropped 10 positions in the last 8 hours!)

==== How does it [[Movement|move]]? ====
I looked over my movement algorithm a couple days ago after not having really worked on it much in about a month, and I tested a couple situations, and realized that all the math behind my movement is completely BOGUS! Its wall avoidance is a jumble of absolutely no sense, and it's extremely predictable to pattern matchers (which is why all the [[PatternMatching|PM]]/[[NeuralTargeting|Neural]] bots, such as [[Tron]], ScruchiPu, CigaretBH, etc are all ProblemBots for [[Fractal]]. However, it's very well tweaked for curve normalization, which is why it performs well against [[Wave/GuessFactorTargeting]] bots. Right now its movement is so iffy that just about anything I do will break it completely, so since its gun is more fun right now I'm going to work on that before I do a complete movement overhaul.

==== How does it fire? ====
Version 0.32 uses [[Wave]] aiming [[SegmentedData|segmenting]] only on distance; I'm currently building a TopSecret AutomatedSegmentation gun that should allow me to segment on much more than distance without taking too much learning time. I'm also have in the works a new kind of gun manager to see if I can replace VirtualGuns, but this concept is still on the drawing board. Once the gun manager is built I'll start looking into pattern matchers (but that's looking months ahead).

==== How does it [[DodgingBullets|dodge bullets]]? ====
Currently, Fractal only dodges the very first bullet of every round. You'll see it sit perfectly still until the very first bullet has almost reached it, and then just barely jump out of the way. This doesn't really work most of the time, since most pattern matchers know it's going to dodge and fire right beside it. meh. Other than that, it doesn't directly react to bullet fire, only using general enemy firing data to vary its movement. I may just get rid of this in the next version.

==== How does the [[Melee|melee]] strategy differ from [[OneOnOne|one-on-one]]  strategy? ====
Only [[OneOnOne]] right now (oddly enough version 0.32 rarely actually starts moving in a melee). It will eventually be equally suited for melee and one-on-one, and it will use the same gunning and a similar movement strategy. I'm currently building the backbone of its TopSecret AutomatedSegmentation gun fully melee compatible so that it will be ready for melee when I bring [[Fractal]] into the melee arena.

==== How does it select a target to attack/avoid in [[Melee|melee]]? ====
I've had some ideas lately to use an indirect form of anti-gravity for target selection; I'll try them out to see if they work. I may also experiment with PackHunting; we'll see.

==== What does it save between rounds and matches? ===
Nothing yet. I have various new algorithms for data compression on the drawing board right now, some which should allow me to compress the main streaks and peaks of whole movement graphs down to a few dozen bytes; making these compatible with arbitrary-dimension data tables will be the trick.

==== Where did you get the name? ====
Um... I was sitting in algebra class one day trying to think of a name (I'd been pondering over this for months), and the lesson was on recursive algorithms and such. There was a nice picture of some triangle thing called a fractal, and it hit me that that might be a cool name for a robot.

==== Does it have a color scheme? ====
NO, IT DOESN'T! HELP! You have to help me find a cool color scheme that goes with the name. You see other bots with completely original color schemes, and people recognize them right away. Eerie and intimidating colors adorn the most powerful of robots on the rumble; people look at them and shake, thinking 'Yup, that's SandboxDT', or 'Yeah, that's Tron'. I WANT THAT!!!
Update: It now has a crappy orange color scheme. I'm still looking for a better one...
* A lot of people render complex fractals using an HSB-Transition sort of color schemes.  Maybe you should have it like bright red, yellow and green (the first three major colors in the HSB cycle).  If you don't know what I mean, look at my complex fractal generator at http://students.cs.byu.edu/~kawigi/showapplet.cgi?Complex+Fractal+Generator and select the "HSB Fast" color scheme and hit "Redraw".  It's generated with the maximum Saturation and Brightness, and the hue based on the iterations to escape (black if they don't escape).  And that may not make sense to people.  Oh, well.

==== Can I use your code? ====
Not at the moment.

==== What's next for your robot? ====
Currently on hold while I complete the beta CoopRobot project. After that, its TopSecret AutomatedSegmentation gun.

==== Does it have any [[WhiteWhale]]s? ====
Yes. In fact, to test out the newest version, I deleted every other bot than [[Fractal]] in my robots folder, and then I went through it's scorechart on the <a href="http://rumble.robowiki.dyndns.org/servlet/Rankings?version=1&game=roborumble">current rankings</a> and grabbed all of its ProblemBots to use those to test against. This will force me to improve its performance against these bots. Hopefully [[Fractal]] will be a better contender against these bots in the next version.

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'''Questions / Comments Welcome!'''

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