Contest: Animal/Bot Coding (AI)

[Zen]

Thanks, that worked. (I thought I had tried it, but must have messed up)

Anyway, doesn't dynamic_cast throw an exception when it fails? I've heard exceptions are slow (?) (not that it matters all that much)

btw: sorry for messing up this thread

[oliver]

hello, this contest sounds really fun.( i just stumbled upon it searching an unrellated topic ). anyhow, i feel like an idea i had kind of abuses the system, lets say an animal of mine sees another, it can now remember the animal's reference, so it can tell the other animal which direction and distance it moved no matter how far apart they are, and the animal can have a kind of radar on all animals of its species that it's bumped into. thanks for any help with this issue.

[Zen]

Welcome!

No, you couldn't. Check DirectionOf and DistanceTo. The distance is beeing checked in both. (If you didn't had another clever way of doing it? (in that case pm me ))

[Beer Hunter]

Thanks, that worked. (I thought I had tried it, but must have messed up)

Anyway, doesn't dynamic_cast throw an exception when it fails? I've heard exceptions are slow (?) (not that it matters all that much)

btw: sorry for messing up this thread

Dynamic_cast to a pointer type will result in a null pointer if it fails. Dynamic_cast to a reference type will throw std::bad_cast if it fails.

[oliver]

what i meant is one animal (A) decides to move north by 5 units right? so he tells another animal (B), then moves. the animal (B) knows that (A) just moved 5 units north relative to himself. so if say (B) moved south by 5 units, he knows that (A) is 10 units north of himself... do you get what i mean? (B) keeps track of where (A) is moving to figure out the distance... i think that makes sense right? i could be wrong (it's happened before)... but anyway, maybe only allowing communication between animals to occur in a specific say() and hear() kind of functionality might solve this? (where the functions only work over a given range? does all this make sense?

[r4nd0m]

he would know that only while the animal is visible to him. if an animal is over a certain distance away, you can't see him anymore, and can't track his position [you can still track your's relative to his, but you will lose total track of him].

[oliver]

yeah, i guess it's probably no big deal anyway, being able to talk to far away animals, that is. i guess the issue i had was probably more philosophical than practical. i mean in theory, you could maybe have some guys go in all directions and scout out the map, or something like that, to get some kind of a picture of things... or maybe a weak guy calls for some backup from far away, or something... but realistically, if i entered this contest, my creatures would just walk in random directions and get wiped out... greenpeace would call it a disaster

[Corsix]

Zen: Check the function AnimalGroup() - it should return AGHerb or AGCarn .

[Guest]

As I understand it, all the header files will be included into the same virtual world, a number (20) of each animals spawned and then.....MAYHEM!!!!!!

Correct

So we must have 5 (different) animals? It wouldn't be nice to fight 20 of my only species against 5*20 of another creator.

[exomo]

Sorry, the above was mine.

I hope my animal(s) will do a good job. But I fear they are killed very fast.
I think there is no breed-restriction yet, so what if my animal accidentaly breeds too much? (I managed to double my animals every round).

Sorry for all these stupid questions, but I#m still not sure about the contest.

[Corsix]

I hope my animal(s) will do a good job. But I fear they are killed very fast.
I think there is no breed-restriction yet, so what if my animal accidentaly breeds too much? (I managed to double my animals every round).

Breed restriction: None - how can it breed too much?

You can submit upto 5 animals . So you coudl submit 5 or 1 or 2 or 3 or 4.

[exomo]

I hope my animal(s) will do a good job. But I fear they are killed very fast.
I think there is no breed-restriction yet, so what if my animal accidentaly breeds too much? (I managed to double my animals every round).

Breed restriction: None - how can it breed too much?

You can submit upto 5 animals . So you coudl submit 5 or 1 or 2 or 3 or 4.

Too much would be if your computer cant get it any more. My computer takes several minutes for every round at round 40 (so imagine round 1000)

What if I have only 1 animal and another one has 5?

[Darobat]

Wow! Congrats to Corsix on a 10 page topic. lol!

[r4nd0m]

Then, theoretically, the other guy would have a better chance of winning. However, if all his species blow, and your's is godlike, you'll prolly be number one!

[Zen]

Too much would be if your computer cant get it any more. My computer takes several minutes for every round at round 40 (so imagine round 1000)

Yeah, I know. It will take a month to run the contest (if all animals breed well)