It would be nice to have a beginner version where we can choose functions from a menu and get an idea of what the curve looks like. Then, once I am back up to speed I can play for real.
If you have OS X, you could probably pop open Grapher and try a few curves there. But if you don't, I'm sure there's some web app for visualising curves as well.
Oh by the way. I think I had 2 players and you had one because you could have hit your other one since the beginning.
After you hit one of mine, it was disabled and I was just with one playable Player left.
I was surprised to see that many people didn't know how to define a step function. One way to do it is: size_of_jump*max(0, sign(x-position_of_jump)). Also, max(0, sign(x-position)) allows you to switch on and off other parts of your function like a high frequency sine that can spray an area.
Its easy to write a tool that produces a function in every round using step functions that kills the maximal number of enemys. I love this kind of game so I think its very sad that I don't see a way to rescue it. Even if you would restrict the available operations just to addition and multiplication its still quite easy to write a tool that produces functions that are arbitrary close to any curve that could be defined with step functions.
Yeah, step functions really break this. I think I was in a game with you or some else with the same general idea, they won on the very first turn with the sine wave trick.
You can just analyze the graphical output of the browser and hence make your hack useless. The underlying problem of this game is just too easy to solve.
@readerrrr: I'm commenting here because HN doesn't let me comment your comment.
> You can always make the game itself harder on top of all the anti-bot tricks.
You are implying two things here. Firstly, that its' always possible to make the game harder and, secondly, that anti-bot tricks can solve this issue.
I'm skeptical about the first part and strongly disagree with the second.
In regard to the first part I'd say that it's hard to make the game harder without making it unenjoyably to play. How'd you integrate a sufficient amount of complexity into this game without ruining the fun? That it's in principle possible shows Go. Interesting problem.
In regard to the second part I say that it's just adding (futile) noise and not tackling the fundamental problem. The player has to see at least the map. He then draws a graph in a program that produces a function that has nearly that graph and gives a string defining that function. The user just copy and pastes it into the game.
You can always make the game itself harder on top of all the anti-bot tricks.
The game has to be only hard and expensive enough to hack so that the effort isn't worth the result.
Of course with unlimited resources you can pretty much solve anything, if you assume those, then everything is easy to solve. But assuming that is simply ignorant.
