MSmits: Marchete are you there?
MSmits: I found another example where you can see mikla does not even finish endgames properly and here he loses because of it:
MSmits: https://www.codingame.com/replay/569610594
MSmits: (frame 97)
MSmits: he should have just taken all 4 boxes and he would have won 24-25, instead he gives them all to me as he is just using a heuristic to play endgames
MSmits: it almost never matters because control almost always gives you the win, except in close games like this
MSmits: my bot does not adjust it's expected score to 25-24 because it only does so after a search and my bot didn't need one
opitt: Do you know if/where coc puzzles are stored? I want to redo my code but forgot the test cases …
MSmits: you can view them in contributions if you have done enough clashes
MSmits: not sure how many you need
punter147: MSmits what do you use for solving dots and boxes?
punter147: mcts?
MSmits: negamax
MSmits: mcts is good for solving in general, but I don't think it would work very well here
MSmits: you need transpositions
MSmits: ab pruning + TT still makes my head hurt
MSmits: I generally just mess around with it until a 100 million sample produces no errors
punter147: oh i see. transpositions is like a dynamic programming approach, in which you dont calculate the answer to already seen state again and again...
MSmits: yeah, which is easy without ab pruning
MSmits: but ab pruning makes it so that you dont finish the exact calculation but still want to store the result
MSmits: so you use upper and lower limits in the TT
MSmits: which is where my head starts to hurt
punter147: lol if your head would hurt, a lot of things will hurt on my side :joy: . Just kidding, thanks for the tip MSmits i will start studying ab pruning and transposition tables.
MSmits: D&B makes it even weirder because the same board can occur from player 1 and from player 2's perspective
MSmits: https://homepages.cwi.nl/~paulk/theses/Carolus.pdf
MSmits: best source for ab + TT
MSmits: it has good pseudo code
MSmits: i adapted it for D&B though, because of the symmetry I just mentioned
punter147: aah yes D&B does not distinguish among the lines right, unlike chess positions which are distinguished by the color and the rank of the piece...
MSmits: exactly, and not just that, but because you can have multiple lines in 1 turn because of what you choose to do, the same board can occur at turn 56 or at turn 58 and such
MSmits: mmh not sure i said that correctly
MSmits: I should say, it could be player 1's turn or player 2's turn at the same frame and board, depending on what happened before
MSmits: because you get another play if you're the one finishing a box
MSmits: and sometimes you can finish 2 boxes at the same time but get only 1 extra turn, which switches the parity
punter147: yes you are right MSmits, i was just looking at D&B plays, once you finish a box, you get another chance, again if you make another box, another chance and the party continues...
MSmits: exactly, it's quite messy to code a bot for but mathematically really interesting
MSmits: if you want to practice negamax and such, dont do it here really
MSmits: i mean not in D&B
Marchete: are you using minimax?
MSmits: negamax yes, same thing i guess
MSmits: with ab/tt
punter147: MSmits oh, are there any games simple enough to get our feet wet in negamax?
MSmits: pre-end game a move is a line, in the end game, a move is offering a full string/chain or when offered, it's the choice between doubledealing or not
MSmits: punter147 yes many
MSmits: find a simple board game you know you can simulate properly
MSmits: not sure which is easiest, people tend to go for ultimate tic tac toe even though mcts works better there
Marchete: I mean not MCTS
MSmits: nope not mcts
MSmits: TT is extremely strong here because of the colorless board
MSmits: using TT with mcts is not very effective most of the time
Marchete: do you think he just randomly put lines until a certain moment?
MSmits: I think he has a chaincounting negamax running until he solves the chaincount result
MSmits: and if he doesnt solve, he randoms
Marchete: so no avoiding complex chains?
Marchete: or loops or whatever
MSmits: I don't think so. Avoiding them doesn't really help either player specifically. It just makes the game easier to solve
MSmits: but that goes for both sides
MSmits: I have been considering doing a complexity mcts
MSmits: where i try to get the most complex connection of short chains and such in the end game
MSmits: so that mikla cant deal with it :)
MSmits: it would lead to funny endgames i think, but its a lot of work
MSmits: I am trying to get those sacrifices into my solver now
MSmits: hard to detect them without building a graph
MSmits: i think it can be done with bitboards but not easily
Marchete: early game give bonus for number of chains
Marchete: or whatever target the enemy can't deal
Marchete: I'd say daisy chains are hard
Marchete: or whatever it was called
Marchete: 3-way loop + ground chain
MSmits: well that makes sense, but it's not the current number of chains that matter, it's the amount at the end of the game
MSmits: so if you have half finished structures and empty spaces, you're not gonna know how many chains are gonna be there
Marchete: if you play with that target
Marchete: more than with pure random
MSmits: you can do mcts and randomly rollout until the end game happens, then analyze
MSmits: but thats what i was planning to do already :)
MSmits: except with negamax
MSmits: but i might do it with mcts later. I just don't think it'll be better
MSmits: the problem is that there is no neat progression from a "bad state" to a "good state" by several good moves
MSmits: they are separated by 1 wrong line
MSmits: so my sense is that you need a full solve to make any prediction
MSmits: in games like chess and such you can make your boardstate progressively better or worse with good or bad moves. That's just not the case here
MSmits: it's a coin you can flip between loss and win, except you have no idea which way it is facing before you flip. So it becomes in effect a totally random coin flip
MSmits: I suppose mcts might still give *some* improvement if you pick moves that are more likely to lead to a beneficial flip
Marchete: I was thinking like I said
Marchete: trying to have better patters (like chain types and similar)
Marchete: and try to reach them
Marchete: but as you say
Marchete: going from win to loss is really near
Marchete: but I still think
Marchete: if enemies can't handle daisy chains easily
Marchete: it will be harder for them to solve
MSmits: i dont think you should call them daisy chains
Marchete: I can't remember its name
MSmits: no, thats fine, but you'll get jacek all excited with that term :P
jacek: shackles
Marchete: :D
MSmits: dont you just mean loops?
Marchete: I mean a loop
MSmits: ah ok
Marchete: with a ground chain attached
Marchete: like a flower
MSmits: oh that's called a dipper in literature
Marchete: ahh
MSmits: you always capture the attached chain first
MSmits: then it becomes a loop
Marchete: yes
MSmits: doesnt have to be grounded either
MSmits: the string can be connected to something else
MSmits: it will still be better to do the string before the loop
MSmits: there's a lot of little rules like that that makes the solving faster if you put them in
Marchete: but you need to detect it
MSmits: yes
MSmits: if (joins[0] == joins[1])
{
if (joins[0]->ActiveLinks() == 3)
return false;
MSmits: joins[0] == joins[1] finds a string that is connected to the same join ( a loop)
MSmits: if the join happens to have exactly 3 strings connected, then it's a dipper
MSmits: so i disallow the doubly connected string to be played in that case
swapbee: hello
Marchete: but all the 3-way chains are hard to evaluate, and maybe promoting it in the eval is positive
Marchete: as the enemy will have a harder time to eval
MSmits: they are hard to solve yes
MSmits: but anything like that will hurt both sides
MSmits: so this only works if you know you are especially good at dealing with it
Marchete: one will be hurt harder
MSmits: and everyone else isnt
Marchete: exactly
MSmits: it's a good point
Marchete: anyways everyone else seems to mean 1 guy
Marchete: maybe 2 when I tackle the game
MSmits: in this case yeah, he's the only one doing the chain counting efficiently
MSmits: though some other guys seem to make sacrifices really short before the end game (2-3 plays) where he does them 15 plays before the end game
MSmits: my leaderboard version also makes sacrifices really short before the end game
MSmits: thats why i am 2nd really, not because my solver is good
Marchete: remi is near you in score
Marchete: so it must be good too
MSmits: yeah, but he makes sacrifices too easily, even when he's not supposed to. This costs him boxes
MSmits: I think he might be using a chain-counting mcts like we discussed
MSmits: but if you havent fully solved, you should not sacrifice
jacek: join #ru and ask him directly
MSmits: remi is french :P
jacek: oh i thought you meant milka
MSmits: ahh no, i dont need to ask really. I kinda know what he does. He wasnt really secretive about it either
MSmits: https://www.codingame.com/replay/569616446 here you see remi do sacrifice at frame 25 even
MSmits: there is no way he knows it will help
MSmits: and he loses the game so...
Marchete: too early it seems
jacek: premature sacrifice eh
MSmits: exactly :P
Marchete: I'll ad a damn NN and let it do the guessing :D
Marchete: add*
MSmits: yeah for early game this might work
MSmits: or at least, give some small edge
Marchete: and endgame, damn too :D
MSmits: nn will also have trouble converging on a good set of weights, but it only has to be better than nothing
Marchete: just throw more games
MSmits: yeah, but if the data seems too random to it, it wont help
MSmits: your training loss will get smaller but the test/validation loss wont change
Marchete: win/loss will be brought back from endgame
MSmits: but as i said, it only has to generalize just a teeny bit
Marchete: like jace_k does
Marchete: but jk
Marchete: the game is huge in search space
MSmits: yeah
MSmits: I was thinking of trying my solver on smaller versions of D&B to see how it stacks up against the solvers in those papers
MSmits: up to 5x5 has been solved
MSmits: the increase in time required goes up extremely fast with 1 size added
HassanAli4651: can any one help me with this?
MSmits: so 7x7 is miles away, I think even outside of googles range
MSmits: this... what?
HassanAli4651: mars lander ep1
MSmits: simple if/else solution will work
HassanAli4651: i tried
MSmits: if you're going too fast, activate the thrust
MSmits: otherwise just fall
MSmits: dont do any other movement
Marchete: I want someday to try AlphaZero but with graph/features and not the board representation directly, and possible moves as something of high level (like cut a dipper)
jacek: graph game eh
MSmits: seems hard Marchete
MSmits: but many things worth doing are
Marchete: game -> abstraction->AZ->high level move
MSmits: you need a lot of output though, the game can have many suchs constructs and in many combinations
MSmits: not sure how to code the policy here
Marchete: I think less than x,y,side output
MSmits: I think there are thousands of possible objects
Marchete: identify possible chains, and possible cuts inside them
Marchete: and 1 random
Marchete: thousands types->
Marchete: on the same type, it will be a best to cut
MSmits: just looking at a dipper for example. It matters how long the loop type is and also how long the attached chain is
Marchete: by size and similar
MSmits: so you have like 10 x 10 options right there
MSmits: for differen dippers
Marchete: that's true
MSmits: and that does not include ungrounded dippers
MSmits: those will have a massive amount of variation
MSmits: I think x, y side might be easier to do :)
MSmits: btw, I made a lookup table for simple endgames
MSmits: so just isolated chains and loops
MSmits: I only needed 6k values
MSmits: but using the lookup table wasnt faster than just running the function
MSmits: (the one i shared)
MSmits: that error by mikla's bot i shared earlier would have been 1 of the lookup values
SlickSteel: Hey yall!
jacek: ohai
sakuraiuto001: hey
CodeAce: ?
Marchete: ¿
doomento: hi
Plantchant: hello
client2233: hello
mokupnik: Is there some issue on the site? Because i can't make a contribution, building just goes on forever. Even when I upload he project that was already accepted.
jacek: try again
binjn: hello everyone
walker2k: hello binjn
walker2k: :D
binjn: oh hello
FriendlyKh: y
TheIceJetski_9b4a: hello
Konrad_O: Hello!
AntiSquid: oh look CSB with lazors
jacek: ?
QuickMathzs: :poop:
BugKiller_328: hi
BugKiller_328: anyone here now ?
BlaiseEbuth: No.
BugKiller_328: :smile:
BugKiller_328: in 'PRACTICE' puzzles, (easy, medium, hard), is there any way to search puzzles which has specific learning opportunity ?
BugKiller_328: for example, search problems which have 'backtracking' as its 'LEARNING OPPORTUNITY'
BlaiseEbuth: Not from this location. But you can click the 'tag' corresponding to what you want to practice to get a list of all the puzzles that have it.
BugKiller_328: cool, clicking tag will list me the puzzles associated with it ?
BugKiller_328: Thanks..
BlaiseEbuth: yup
BugKiller_328: any location to display list of tags ?
BlaiseEbuth: And if you want a full list of tags with the puzzles associated check https://chadok.info/codingame/tags_list.html
BlaiseEbuth: ^^
BugKiller_328: yes, this is what I want exactly.
BugKiller_328: I'm spending much time here these days to learn & have fun..
BugKiller_328: @BlaiseEbuth thanks.
BlaiseEbuth: :thumbsup:
BlaiseEbuth: THe @ isn't required btw BugKiller_328
BugKiller_328: haha.. this is also I didn't know.
just write name and it will work ?
BlaiseEbuth test.
BlaiseEbuth: Yup that works
BugKiller_328: my test message is displayed in red on your side ?
BlaiseEbuth: Yes
BugKiller_328: in my side, no any diff
BugKiller_328: ok. thanks. (maybe platform highlights the text which has my nickname )
jacek: also when you write your password it will be masked automatically. like ********
BlaiseEbuth: Same for your bank card code
Counterbalance: wtf https://www.codingame.com/learn/%F0%9F%92%A1%F0%9F%92%A1%F0%9F%92%A1%F0%9F%92%A1%F0%9F%92%A1
Counterbalance: emojis in urls.. ieuw...
BlaiseEbuth: https://www.emojicode.org/
BugKiller_328: :rolling_eyes:
jacek: https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/aoMq21A_460svav1.mp4
BlaiseEbuth: :D
jacek: i wonder if that game would fit in CG
BlaiseEbuth: Only one command "play"... The branching will not be too important.
jacek: you can choose pawn
BlaiseEbuth: Oh my! Oo
BlaiseEbuth: Simulation will be complicated though with the random...
BlaiseEbuth: How to transform a quick fix into a big one:
Correct an old version of the code, then copy-paste it over the actual code, and finaly, commit.
Good. You can now fix your bullshits.
Westicles: Do we know the date when chat is going to die?
BlaiseEbuth: There's nothing planned about that.
Westicles: Ah, good to hear
BlaiseEbuth: CG don't want to spend time updating/recoding the chat, so they spoke about its suppression. But some of the CG devs are against it, so for now it will just stay as it.
BlaiseEbuth: Why this question btw?
Astrobytes: 2061 it will die
Westicles: Us non-mods just have to try and read the tea leaves
Astrobytes: We get no special info for the most part unless there's a specific issue
Astrobytes: To their credit, CG are pretty transparent in that regard
pci: Sokoban -- I finally figured out what I was doing wrong and why I was struggling to solve some of the test cases within 10 seconds...
pci: the way I was encoding the state for my visited test was preserving the order of the boxes... by removing that suddenly my 15 second times turned to 1.5 seconds
pci: Unfortunately I tried a lot of different algorithms before discovering this... then went back to my original and that was all that was needed. :P
Lordam: Hi all, its very embarassing but even after reading the forum about the puzzle "Encryption/Decryption of Enigma Machine" I cannot figure out why the test cases 4 and 5 always fail (ingame all test cases are green). Anyone any hint? :S
Lordam: got some help from Westicles already, thanks!!
Wontonimo: what? world chat could go away?
Wontonimo: just getting caught up on the chat from hours ago
ElderMan: there isn't any bare bones tutorials on here, is there?
ElderMan: I'm extremely new.
GarethEddies: I'm looking for someone who can provide some feedback on a code challenge submission before I send it for draft submission
BobLob: I have some time if you haven't gotten a response yet.
Eeveee: World Chat could be great way to learn new things from many people, it just doesn't make sense that they are considering to kill it just because it's difficult to maintain
BobLob: I'm just hearing about this tonight, but it would be rather ironic if a company that was trying to sell its expertise in the coding field found a chat service difficult to maintain.
BobLob: Or, maybe maintenance isn't the issue? Maybe it's lack of use. There have been 7 messages in the last 6 hours.
juice0: is the discord channel more popular?
Wontonimo: nope, the discord channel is pretty dead
Wontonimo: it gets busy a couple times a week, and very busy during a multi challenge
Wontonimo: it = here on world chat
bitwiseio: im handycaped, im drunken :D
CodeAce: Hello World
CodeAce: In Real World
CodeAce: :joy:
swapbee: hello
