Ungazetted holidays?

[Zoetrope]

Is there life on Earth? This whole MOO forum complex seems deserted since 22 or 23 Feb. Perhaps the scenario of Doom has been translated to Apolyton? Sudden silence surrounds SF-game-forum - so strange! So spooky!

[P-K]

Time to face destiny on multiplayer

PK

[Zoetrope]

A destiny much to be desired. Unfortunately i'm under a strict ban that forbids me from playing any computer game until my thesis is completed, which looks like taking until 2006.

[P-K]

Ehmmmm ban? Till 2006? How old are u my friend? I feel sorry about your trouble!

PK

[Old n Slow]

Well good luck with your thesis -- hopefully it will be worth the sacrifice.

[Zoetrope]

I've been on earth 47 local years, and in the orion sector for hundreds of galactic standard years in each of an estimated thousand (or so) parallel universes.

During my recent leave i made good progress on the thesis - it's up to 142 pages, software has been written and debugged (sorry Klackons, there wasn't room for both you and the Meklar), and research has advanced satisfyingly.

Now the question is how to continue pushing the thesis ahead at a fair clip, while back at work full-time ... Delegation.

[P-K]

I understand your busy now.
But i hope u ll play moo with us sooner then 2006!

PK

[Zoetrope]

Then i'll have to work fast! There are still perhaps 5000 pages of notes to distill into a coherent document 1/20 that size!

When i was able to play MOO2 (and SMAC/X and a couple of other stayers) single-play was so much fun but hinted at there being greater possibilities than the computer alone could present, so I always wanted someone to play against, as stealth strategies (or submarines) are untestable against an AI that is invariably omniscient.

Sadly, my friends always fell into one of three categories:

(1) "Not interested."

(2) Lose concentration and drift away after at most 85 turns.

(3) Cheat blatantly. (Hmm, that invasion fleet looks like a poorly designed alt-Einstein! Let's just check the tech graph for you, my lad.)

I realise now that easily bored opponents should play Advanced games, so they can interact from the outset. It's good that MOO2 and SMAC have that option, but I was too late in appreciating its sociological advantages.

As for cheaters: a dose of their own medicine is in order, when the opportunity arises.

[Brutalisk]

"forbids me from playing any computer game until my thesis is completed,"

I seek comfort in the fact that I am not alone in this self-impsoed ban.

Would you like to help me finish my thesis Zoetrope?

[Zoetrope]

Brutalisk: what is your thesis's topic? Mine is on crossbar switch matrix scheduling algorithms in telecommunications. (To creatively quote a colleague, "Hyperspace Communications has to begin somewhere, we surmise".)

[Brutalisk]

Multiobjective Optimization using Evolutionary Algorithms (a GA in this case) for decision making

I finished my program ages ago but have a problem getting round to writing the actual thesis.

[Zoetrope]

Writing is traditionally the most onerous task in research, just as documentation is in programming.

I've learnt to type the comments first, then do the code later, so that i can pick up the loose ends after the inevitable distractions.

Now I'm beginning to find that, in the same way, the thesis should be written before the research is done! Of course one can paste in the results later, but the structure will already be present.

So i'm alternating between typing the motivations, explanations, algorithms and examples, testing whether my code still works and plugging holes in my analysis.

When Simulated Annealing was a hot topic I tried applying it, but found that (at least my implementation of) it converged too slowly and to inferior values compared to specialized heuristics.

A cursory look at Genetic Algorithms led to the realisation that it was unclear how the scheduling problems could be recast in genetic form. In particular, crossover of genes seemed to take allowed states to disallowed states. (Maybe i'll revisit GA one day: i have a book on GA in C++ that i haven't read yet!)

Btw, mostly i code in C, because C++ was neither (a) familiar, nor (b) so readily available, when i started this project. To give you some idea of how long I've been at this, my first code for some of these algorithms was in Fortran 4. Come to think of it, for matrices F4 is still superior to C and C++. But it's not so natural at representing binary search trees, string classes, or more specialized data structures.

Optimal solutions can be found quickly for small cases (up to 4 transmitters and 4 receivers) by a combination of branch-and-bound and dynamic programming. One insight into the structure of the solutions sped the computation about 1000 fold.

The optimisation problem has doubly exponential complexity, so a polynomial optimisation method is unlikely. Still, it's fun seeing how much progress can be made with algorithmic refinements.

Some aspects remind me of how the numerator and denominator tend to grow exponentially in rational arithmetic. There's probably a link, though I don't have any handle on it yet.

How is this related to MOO1/2 other than as a cause for neglecting the game? Well, I wonder how many players have a maths, science or engineering background (or hobbies in those fields of endeavor) ? How does one go about creating a poll?