Day 10, 11, 12: 15 minutes is like two days and two days is like 15 minutes.
On Day 9 I made the video, but it was still missing taht one feature i had wanted before making video, that robots would go to different tiles if tiles are already occupied, in that video they were still all basically going to same style. I however figured it might take a while to implement it, so i save dit for next day.
On day 10, i had worked about 15 minutes and was looking "huh, so it was this easy to implement, should have done it yesterday", I clicked run, and notice dit didnt work. After a long time looking for error and seeing absolutely no fault in code, I finally realised I had been watching from wrong place. Code was basically working just fine and there was no actual bug in it, it was just that I didnt realise I was looking at wrong tile all the time.
My pathfinding had a system where it looked for closest building tile, when that tile had been found, then it looked from which direction they were going to come to that tile. that if they were going to come from left, then it would check if first tile to left of that building tile is a legal tile to go, if yes, then it would set target tuile to be this one.
Problem with my checking was, that I was checking if the building tile was occupied or not, when I should have checked the tile beside it. This naturally led pathfinder always reporting target tile to be free, since building tile wasnt legal ground for robots, keeping it always non occupied, and in the end they all ended up going to same tile.
When I realised this, I also realised I had to rethink the whole thing. In the end, adter having thought about it for rest of day 10, I came up with a solution that I would do pathfinding twice. First to look for the clsoest building tile, after this I would do pathfdinging starting from that building tile to find first legal tile (which is usually right besides it, unless those are occupied, as occupied ones are not considered legal ones).
After this, in day 11, that part was finally working. Well, basically working. For now I noticed there were still some bugs in other places in codesand rest of day went in fixing them, for there were lots of those, and I didnt realise them until I had this part working, since before that they werent really tested.
Day 12 I was already implementing some new small things, and noticed some more bugs too. So main of day 12 went on figuring out more bugs. However, both day 11 and 12 I didnt get to work much as I had other things to do and I didnt really have peace to code, nor do I expect to have much peace today either.
I am actually bit worried how this game will end up. I have very reasonable plan, but now it looks like I wont have much time during this second week at all to work on this. I have already set a new lowest standard for game which I will implement first. After that, if there is still time, I will try to implement more things to it.
This lowest standard however probably means that the game is not going to be very good, but then again, I set out mainly to practice this year, and basically even if I wouldnt finish anything, I have given a good test for AI programming, so this have definetily been useful to me. However, if I am not able to get anything workable submitted, I feel unsatisfied. Just not sure if submitting the lowest possible will satisfy me either, but at least it is worth a try.
Today might be my last day that I might be able to work on this project several hours, Just not sure I am able to do it undistracted. Hopefully I get as much as possible done today, since from all the days from now on until the end of competition, this might be the most important day in deciding how finished this product will be in the end.