Anti camping mechanism
- philippeqc
- Long Poster - Project Developer - Sage
- Posts: 1526
- Joined: Mon Jul 12, 2004 8:55 am
- Location: Stockholm
- Contact:
Anti camping mechanism
Consider that I've edited my post:
What is camping. I mean can you DESCRIBE it in a way that the game would understand. On the following, I deal with spiraling, but there must be other type of camping. Think about that.
------------- End of edit -------
I had a flash on 2 tehcnique that would allow the game to identify campers.
All of them pretty much rely on the fact that camping is made in some sort of spirale.
First idea: Count the number of right and left turns. If the difference become very large (> than K), then the person is camping.
Second idea: (Much more complex, but probably "safer") An active system should check on either side of you how many times it need to cross your own trace before reaching ANY other trace. It keeps an history of that, sampling every M second, and if in N minutes (size of the circular buffer used to store it), the minimum found in the history is greater than K, then its a camping situation.
Would either of theses detect campers? Think about the camping you have witnessed and run the algos on them. Someone could still box himself and then do some stop-and-go (run left-left run right-right repeat) to fool either methods.
Anyway, my plate is quite full at the moment, and spilling too, so I'm NOT going to work on that. But I may be able to lead someone who feels the need to eliminate campers is worth banging her/his head on walls over the code.
So be nice to my ideas, its just a quick draft.
-ph
Nota: for the second idea, probably the detection will use the same mechanism as to determine the last influence.
Nota 2: There should be some "visual" indicators, like in the first scenario, if K is 50 and you are over 35 more left turns than right, a text saying "You only have 15 left turn left before being considered a camper" would be displayed and updated at every turn. But debating about this is like debating about the color of my next space shuttle, worthless till we get either.
What is camping. I mean can you DESCRIBE it in a way that the game would understand. On the following, I deal with spiraling, but there must be other type of camping. Think about that.
------------- End of edit -------
I had a flash on 2 tehcnique that would allow the game to identify campers.
All of them pretty much rely on the fact that camping is made in some sort of spirale.
First idea: Count the number of right and left turns. If the difference become very large (> than K), then the person is camping.
Second idea: (Much more complex, but probably "safer") An active system should check on either side of you how many times it need to cross your own trace before reaching ANY other trace. It keeps an history of that, sampling every M second, and if in N minutes (size of the circular buffer used to store it), the minimum found in the history is greater than K, then its a camping situation.
Would either of theses detect campers? Think about the camping you have witnessed and run the algos on them. Someone could still box himself and then do some stop-and-go (run left-left run right-right repeat) to fool either methods.
Anyway, my plate is quite full at the moment, and spilling too, so I'm NOT going to work on that. But I may be able to lead someone who feels the need to eliminate campers is worth banging her/his head on walls over the code.
So be nice to my ideas, its just a quick draft.
-ph
Nota: for the second idea, probably the detection will use the same mechanism as to determine the last influence.
Nota 2: There should be some "visual" indicators, like in the first scenario, if K is 50 and you are over 35 more left turns than right, a text saying "You only have 15 left turn left before being considered a camper" would be displayed and updated at every turn. But debating about this is like debating about the color of my next space shuttle, worthless till we get either.
Canis meus id comedit.
- Tank Program
- Forum & Project Admin, PhD
- Posts: 6712
- Joined: Thu Dec 18, 2003 7:03 pm
As much as campers annoy me, it only really matters late in the round when you've got 6 people watching 2, and one of them is camping and managing to avoid getting killed by the other.ishAdmin wrote:I don't think people just camp by making more of one turn than the other. I also don't care if people camp. It doesn't keep them safe for long.
Anyway, I would be opposed to automated camping filters for a number of reasons. For one, I wouldn't want to have to take into account the fact that such filters are enabled in choosing my tactics. Sometimes you get stuck in a box and you have to spiral or do something waiting for the box to open again somehow before you can hunt again. Sometimes you build a spiral not because you're camping but because there are other players who are prone to take spirals for fun and you're trapping.
There's a fine line between trapping and camping that it may not be possible to have a filter for camping without stoping trapping, and trapping is a perfectly valid method of hunting used worldwide and with a long tradition.
So I'd rather just take the good with the bad here and take campers as a necessary evil to avoid ruining other parts of the game. I find that the 'goshdarn scoring system that is popular on other servers (the ones I play on


- Lackadaisical
- Shutout Match Winner
- Posts: 823
- Joined: Sun Dec 21, 2003 4:58 pm
- Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Contact:
.. aren't we (or at least the ts) talking about true camping, as done in the servers with unlimited walllength?
making spirals in servers with limited wall-length isnt camping, it's showing off
making spirals in servers with limited wall-length isnt camping, it's showing off

Official Officiant of the Official Armagetron Clan Registration Office
Back (in the sig) by popular demand: Lack draws
Back (in the sig) by popular demand: Lack draws
Heh, it's an inevitable consequence of having infinite walls. Sooner or later it comes down to who can stay alive the longest because they can't possibly fight anymore. There's an obvious solution to this....Lackadaisical wrote:.. aren't we (or at least the ts) talking about true camping, as done in the servers with unlimited walllength?
making spirals in servers with limited wall-length isnt camping, it's showing off
People that know me know that I am usually an aggressive player, but if I get stuck in a box, I will use a camping technique to try to stall long enough for a whole to open due to crash, wall removal due to crash, or tails to go away in fixed lengths walls.
While I agree that camping just to stall the game can be annoying, there's a difference between trying to survive a trap than just killing time.
While I agree that camping just to stall the game can be annoying, there's a difference between trying to survive a trap than just killing time.
- =*SpectruM*=
- On Lightcycle Grid
- Posts: 15
- Joined: Mon Sep 20, 2004 7:20 pm
- Location: The UK
- Contact: