From: rars-d-request@lysator.liu.se Subject: rars-d Digest V97 #32 X-Loop: rars-d@lysator.liu.se X-Mailing-List: archive/volume97/32 Precedence: list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/digest; boundary="----------------------------" To: rars-d@lysator.liu.se Reply-To: rars@lysator.liu.se (Rars mailing-list) ------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain rars-d Digest Volume 97 : Issue 32 Today's Topics: Re: Pooling information. Re: Race Results for 3-16 A new RARS racing saries! Re: Race Results for 3-16 Re: A new RARS racing saries! Re: A new RARS racing saries! Re: Pooling information. Re: Pooling information. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 19:43:58 -0500 (EST) From: rscott@NetUSA.Net (Ralph Scott) To: rars@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: Pooling information. Message-Id: Content-Type: text > One thing that's sprung to my mind recently - exactly which version > of RARS is used in the race? I know that it says "a modified 0.64", > but for which platforms is this modified version available? I still Good question. THe change is not significant, so I never considered the idea of standardizing it somehow. > run all of my stuff on 0.65b, DOS version, and I don't know how > different that is. I *think* the most significant difference is the collision handling. The damage distribution is massively distributed to the rear driver. The other difference is with visibility of one car from another. Someone else can probably fill you in more on that difference. ---ralph ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 01:51:05 +0100 (MET) From: bm321465@muenchen.org (Henning Klaskala) To: rars@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: Race Results for 3-16 Message-Id: <199703260051.BAA00436@henkhost.muenchen.org> Content-Type: text Ralph Scott wrote: > > The latest drivers on the FTP site in /rars/Robots are from August 96. > > I think the races would be more interesting if source code would be > > exchanged as soon as possible. Evolution could be much faster. > > Yes, and if certain peoples drivers could actually work on more > than 2 or 3 tracks, then more complete testing could be performed. Oh, you mean some of my old drivers? The drivers I wrote in the last 5 months all work on much more tracks, but unfortunately no drivers were uploaded although I always tagged mine "public". For example here's my driver from the November 17 races: #include "car.h" con_vec hk(situation&s) { my_name_is("hk"); con_vec r={(40-s.to_rgt-s.vn)/9, s.dead_ahead?.9*s.vc:60+s.to_end/4}; stuck(s.backward,s.v,s.vn,s.to_lft,s.to_rgt,&r.alpha,&r.vc); return r; } Actually I used 3 copies of the same robot on that race day. The only differences were the names and some whitespace added so they could run in all three size classes. You can use it as a demo robot. It demonstrates how easy it is to win a race with a very simple robot. On adelaid2 the triple won place 1, 2 and 3 and on brazil place 2, 3 and 4! ;-) Henning ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 13:04:10 -0400 From: Maido Remm To: rars@lysator.liu.se Cc: mremm@ebc.ee Subject: A new RARS racing saries! Message-Id: <3.0.1.16.19970326130410.18ef8d66@tamm.ebc.ee> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi, While watching RARS for two years now, I still have not made a well-working robot. Even now when I have taken time to learn programming, I feel that designing a good universal robot is too difficult. BUT, people who feel the same could meet in BORS - Beginners Oval Racing Series. Designing an optimal path around race track is one thing, following that path is other thing. I think that these two tasks can be separated. Finding an optimal path is easy on ovals, thus these types of tracks are good starting point. If you are interested, read on. ____________________________________________________________________________ ____ BORS-Beginners Oval Racing Series OVERALL This series is intended for newcomers, but experts are welcome as well. The source code of all robots will be PUBLIC. Even more, I encourage of writing clear commented code that can help others. The whole RARS community wins from that. The series will be run on 7 oval tracks, find them on my WWW pages (http://www.ebc.ee/~mremm/rars/rars.htm). SCHEDULE I am planning to run races at Thursdays, every other week. The deadline for submissions is Wednesday, 8.00 AM GMT. I strongly suggest submitting one-two days before deadline, then we have time to clear out errors that could appear. No late submissions are accepted after the races are run, whatever the reasons could be. Submit robots as a source code to mremm@ebc.ee. The same address is valid for information. Tentative racing schedule: 10.04 Oval2 100 laps/race oval2.trk 24.04 Milwaukee 100 laps/race mlwaukee.trk 8.05 Indianapolis 50 laps/race indy500.trk 22.05 Nazareth 100 laps/race nazareth.trk 5.06 Phoenix 100 laps/race phoenix.trk 19.06 New Hampshire 100 laps/race loudon.trk 3.07 Michigan 125 laps/race michigan.trk RULES As you can see, I am running only one track per race event. Cars will start in qualifying order. I will run solo qualifying with every car on that track for 2x10 laps. The best average speed of the two will count as car's qualifying speed. If robot cannot finish 10 laps at least once it will not allowed to race. Race event itself is run as 3 consequtive races with the same starting order (to avoid randomness of results). Points are awarded in PPG IndyCar style* and are accumulated to find an overall winner of the race event. SUBMISSIONS I accept more than one robot per person, but you have to mark their positions in your team by #1, #2, #3 and so on. If we will have more than 16 qualifyers, I discard slower #3 or #2 robots to give everyones #1 car a chance to participate. In unlikely case of enourmously big number of participants, I will run a second league for slower cars. All submitted robots will continue to participate at following events until removed by author. SOFTWARE A version 0.65b of RARS will be used. Most likely I will compile in DOS with BC4.5. AN IMPORTANT CHANGE TO THE PROGRAM will be an adjustment of car size. I have reduced constants CAR_LENGTH and CAR_WIDTH in car.h to 12 feets and 6 feets accordingly. This reduces damage during longer races and gives everybody more chanche to pass. It seems more reasonable size for racing car than current 30 feet monsters. The influence of that to car's behaviour in track is minimal and you can keep default values in your own computer. However you might want to adjust your anti-collision code accordingly. All current bots have been working fine with my new settings. RESULTS will be published in the mailing list as soon as possible, hopefully next day. The bots will be available through WWW. I am trying to put out the used rars.exe file as well, if there is interest. Then, if you have access to DOS, you can repeat races yourselves and you do not have to recompile the whole system. I am not planning to make movies. THE WINNER OF BORS will be the person whose robots earned more points in series. In case of tie, the number of wins or better positions is considered. NB! If you have submitted two or more robots, only the best of your robots in each event is scoring points for you in the overall BORS contest of seven race events. (*)In IndyCar 12 first finishers get points (20,16,14,12,10,8,6,5,4,3,2,1). No pole or most laps led bonus points will be awarded in BORS. ____________________________________________________________________________ ____ Maido Remm, mremm@ebc.ee ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 07:12:11 -0500 (EST) From: rscott@NetUSA.Net (Ralph Scott) To: rars@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: Race Results for 3-16 Message-Id: Content-Type: text > Oh, you mean some of my old drivers? The drivers I wrote in the last > 5 months all work on much more tracks, but unfortunately no drivers > were uploaded although I always tagged mine "public". Well, I'll upload them. I think I meant the ones with the weird data string. > You can use it as a demo robot. It demonstrates how easy it is > to win a race with a very simple robot. On adelaid2 the triple > won place 1, 2 and 3 and on brazil place 2, 3 and 4! ;-) Thats funny, my idea for ralph2 was to show how easy it was to win as well. Of course, yours are simpler than mine. ---ralph ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 08:00:13 -0500 From: "Eric M. Lutz" To: rars@lysator.liu.se (Rars mailing-list) Subject: Re: A new RARS racing saries! Message-Id: <3.0.32.19970326080012.009352a0@tsegw.tse.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 01:04 PM 3/26/97 -0400, you wrote: ____ >BORS-Beginners Oval Racing Series > >OVERALL >This series is intended for newcomers, but experts are welcome as well. The >source code of all robots will be PUBLIC. Even more, I encourage of writing >clear commented code that can help others. The whole RARS community wins >from that. The series will be run on 7 oval tracks, find them on my WWW >pages (http://www.ebc.ee/~mremm/rars/rars.htm). Interesting idea. For those racing rars, I don't know how they will react. I assume they will feel "the more the merry". I similar interesting series could be one mapped to karting. - small 8 foot long, and 4 foot wide vehicles - stick like crazy to the pavement (2.5 g's) - nice acceleration due to 50+ hp and 300-400 pound weight - front and rear damage ok - due to the fact that it is open wheel => any side damage is could lead to spinout or flip out of the race - there are many variations as well - dirt track - sprint (oval and small tracks) - enduro (full courses like mosport and silverstone) This karting premise could lead to quick aggressive car code. Just a thought. FYI, I am working on getting my car working in VC++ 4, I plan to try this Kart concept when I get everything going. RARS is a great concept and when I get a good car going I will join in. Keep racing, Eric Lutz ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 14:39:48 -0500 (EST) From: rscott@NetUSA.Net (Ralph Scott) To: rars@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: A new RARS racing saries! Message-Id: Content-Type: text > BORS-Beginners Oval Racing Series > > AN IMPORTANT CHANGE TO THE PROGRAM will be an adjustment of car size. I > have reduced constants CAR_LENGTH and CAR_WIDTH in car.h to 12 feets and 6 > feets accordingly. This reduces damage during longer races and gives > everybody more chanche to pass. It seems more reasonable size for racing > car than current 30 feet monsters. The influence of that to car's behaviour I thought this was a problem too. The reason the cars were made large was so that they would show up better on the display. It has the unfortunate side effect of making it harder to pass. What I did for javarars was to make the actual size 20x10 but the display size 30x10. This means that sometimes the cars overlap but usually they are well clear of each other. I probably should make the cars f1 size which is about what you have. Another factor affecting passing is the drawn car angle is really the cars wheel angle. I was tempted to draw the car exactly perpendicular to the motion, and somehow indicate the angle of the 'one' steering wheel. Again, the problem is resolution. Javarars lets you zoom in and have several 'views' of the track, but even this isn't enough. I am tempted to put a special mode in where you designate a car and the view always adjusts to keep the car in sight. ---ralph ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 23:16:23 +0000 From: Robert Wilderspin To: rars@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: Pooling information. Message-ID: <859421967.107838.0@feverish.demon.co.uk> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT [On 25 Mar 97, rars@lysator.liu.se spake thusly] > > One thing that's sprung to my mind recently - exactly which version > > of RARS is used in the race? I know that it says "a modified 0.64", > > but for which platforms is this modified version available? I still > > Good question. THe change is not significant, so I never considered > the idea of standardizing it somehow. Version 0.65b has the crossing-the-line addition already, unless I changed it months ago and forgot about it, so why not just set a date to use that for the races instead? Is there anyone out there whose OS hasn't already got 0.65b for it? > I *think* the most significant difference is the collision handling. > The damage distribution is massively distributed to the rear driver. > > The other difference is with visibility of one car from another. > Someone else can probably fill you in more on that difference. Maido's fantastic new RARS site had a description of the changes (pretty much what you've said there). Frankly, I still don't bother checking for cars ahead of me, let alone to the side, so that's not going to affect me at all. :-) rob. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Mar 1997 20:59:02 -0500 (EST) From: rscott@NetUSA.Net (Ralph Scott) To: rars@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: Pooling information. Message-Id: Content-Type: text > > Version 0.65b has the crossing-the-line addition already, unless I > changed it months ago and forgot about it, so why not just set a date > to use that for the races instead? Is there anyone out there whose > OS hasn't already got 0.65b for it? Other than me? > Maido's fantastic new RARS site had a description of the changes > (pretty much what you've said there). Frankly, I still don't bother > checking for cars ahead of me, let alone to the side, so that's not > going to affect me at all. :-) I was sort of rebelling against this feature a little while ago. I have mellowed since then. ---ralph -------------------------------- End of rars-d Digest V97 Issue #32 **********************************