I will still do all tests, But want to so long prep my strategy (Just do not have the free time to push my bot now. )
If I travel at a speed of 15, and hit mud on say the 9th tile, Do I still travel the next 6 tiles or do I also have some kind of Movement penalty.
One reason I asked this is also to leave it open for discussion. I know we do not want to mess up with the difficulty for event 1 too much, but I do feel it could be good to have some kind of mud hitting penalty on your actual end tile.
I guess it does not make a difference which way it leans. Event 1 will be amazingβ¦
It looks like everything is calculated only once for the turn, so your movement speed doesnβt change until the next turn after hitting mud (or oil).
It seems like everything in the game is done like this: the car takes a big step the size of its speed, then the things that it hits are counted up (and some seem to be missed - see other threads).
I wonder if it wouldnβt be better to do the movement step by step rather than in one bug jump? This might solve the problems that are showing up in the other threads. But then in this case, youβd end up with fractional blocks being traversed. Say youβre going at 15 speed, hit mud on the 9th tile. Then your speed goes to 9, but youβve already used 9/15 of your turn. So you go 9* 6 / 15 = 3.6 blocks further? This would have to be rounded as there arenβt fractional blocks.
I also suspect that as the game currently is, a bot that just accelerates every round is unbeatable by any other strategy - would be interested to hear if anyone else has a strategy that disproves this. If they fix the issue of only one mud hit counting this might change but it also might not!
Since you only ever lose 1 speed in the current state (A bug to be fixed),
You can attain and keep max Speed from the moment you hit it. MEaning even moving left or right (block penalty are useless.)
There are small situations where you can still get wins or losses depending on Start and Finish. But for now we need to wait for the bugfixes. Once that is sorted the game will get plenty of life.
The One mud hit will change the strategy a considerably. Its not always best to accelerate to keep best momentumβ¦
yes there is currently a bug where items collided with (obstacles or pickups) per turn only have their effects applied once per turn. We are looking to resolve this soon.
with regards to the tick-based logic, the primary reason for this decision was so that powerups and obstacles have equal opportunity to affect a players state. It would be unfair, for example, if mud could slow you down during your current tick but you have no way to use a boost just after hitting that mud spot. Restricting the logic to be tick-based and determining the effects after the fact yielded the fairest way for the game to operate.
I canβt go dig around in the docs now, so please forgive me if it is explained clearly thereβ¦
But is player score ONLY considered in the case where both players reach the finish line at the same time (or no one reaches the finish line) ?
It would seem that it would make sense to always consider score - that way, the always-accelerate bot should not necessarily win, since score is penalized for hitting things you should not hit.
For example, a player can simply drive at their slowest and avoid all obstacles. Rack up score that way.
In the scenario where you want to add a bonus score for speed, then the car to cross the line first will almost always win on score regardless.
I feel that the best play is to go by who wins. Otherwise the lines blur a bit. I do feel score matters though, I honestly believe that it will be the determining factor for the winner in Event 1.
Also once the mud bugs are sorted, the game will be very well balanced.
For my understanding, if this is fixed and I come across >1 mud/oil blocks, will my speed slow down by that amount of mud/oil blocks, need to build this in if this is the case.
Currently, docs does not really give much info on that.
Hitting mud will penalize your score (by 3), and slow your car down (by unspecified amount).
Thatβs pretty much it.
Probably best to wait for the bug fix to be released before trying to code anything for it.
Hello all, a new release has been published which fixes the bug where hitting multiple objects of the same type in one turn only applies their effects once.
@demaniak with regards to the effect of hitting mud (or an oil spill) it will slow your speed down to the previous speed state (but not lower than 3). The speed states are (0, 3, 6, 8, 9, 15). More detail on these can be found in the readme. Hope this helps
So to play devilβs advocate here, Iβm unsure on the behaviour of landing on a boost/oil tile, would I get 2 boosts/oils if I land on of these along with the related score twice for this or would this be one turn?
Iβm answering my own question here, I see the behaviour is that I get it twice, is this expected behaviour?
If this is the case, can the game rules be updated for Boost/Oil/Oil patch/Mud patch to reflect this behaviour?
Definitely looks like an off-by-one error here, where a mud/oil/powerup is counted both at the end of the one turn and then again at the start of the next turn.
