== August 19 == The day after.

Hehe, it was a close one! I wasn't even sure myself, but at the end I made it... just narrowly squeezed in. It was a really interesting experience to code 1k lines or so in the last couple of days, then debug, playtest, debug some more, and finally tidy it up. Intense!! There's nothing like the smell of burning asphalt in the morning...

On a more technical note, here's how it's looking right now:
1) A working client, with game-world representation of both RFTS and Risk.
2) Several semi-working algorithms to play RFTS.
3) A fully functional Risk bot, which successfully plays the game, with some moderately complex control-flow, and decision making algorithms.
4) A "genetic" framework, which reads, writes, and decodes "genome" files, which specify bot behavior.

Here's what's missing:
1) An "evolutionary framework", to automatically pit bots with different genomes against each other, and slowly breed a set of successful solutions. For now, I'll provide a guide of how to manually tweak genome-files, to affect the robot's behavior in a desirable way.

Here's what needs more work:
1) Certain core algorithms in the bot need to be scrutinized further, to tweak them to the desired condition.
2) Re-visit the genetic framework, such that it would allow for different genetic formats between rulesets.

All in all, and with due humbleness and realization of its shortcomings and such, I feel that presently the project is in decent shape. In the few days that remain of summer, I'll work on tweaking the project further in the desired direction of... taking over the universe! (or is it multiverse by now? whichever.)

As to my experience of GSoC, it was such a booster and catalyst of my rather modest skills. After all, I'm a second-year CS student (3 Java courses, 3 math and theory courses behind me), and taking on a project of this magnitude and difficulty was somewhat of a gamble. I also really enjoyed interacting with the Thousand Parsec community. Hope this project prospers, and lives to see true exposure in the public. The open source community was a new thing for me, both software and concept wise, and I do feel priviliged to have entered this community as a contributor, with some responsibility on the shoulders.

Well, thanks for baring with me. This might just be the last post here (unless there's something important and relevant to say later on) . So long, and thanks for all the fish!

____________________

Victor Ivri (vi1985)
You can find the project in the git repo here: REPO

== August 12 == Final 100 meters...

This would be the time to say "hooray, I did it!", but I didn't; not just yet. I still have several things to tinker with, but if I really push it (like I already did several times before), the 18th is definitely a realistic deadline. I'll make it, because... because I have to :). So stay tuned, there will be more news on Friday!

Later,
Victor.
____________________

Victor Ivri (vi1985)
Blog address: BLOG
You can find the project in the git repo here: REPO

== August 1 ==

Hi all,

Well, I can say that all ~preparations~ to start coding for Risk are finished; the libraries are now nice and generic (framework is tested-working for RFTS), the ruleset is set up and working on my local server. Hell, even the protocol has been patched up for Risk recently (thanks, Kryzstof!). Now I've got two small, insignificant tasks ahead of me (namely, creating game-world representation for Risk, and making the actual AI logic...), and some two-plus weeks to do it. Sounds like a job for... never mind, I'll do it myself ;). And the best part is, I'm going white-water canoing until Monday (inclusive), and will start work only on Tuesday. But hey, I'll stock up on Redbulls and sugar-pills, and hack the remaining 2 weeks away, like they were... like they were one week! Well, wish me luck on the rapids (or, better yet, skill!), and I'll be with you again shortly ;).

Till later,

Victor.
____________________

Victor Ivri (vi1985)
Blog address: BLOG
You can find the project in the git repo here: REPO