782 News (Information)

1. Testing with another team will immediately reveal many bugs in the program. Many of you waited until the tournament to do this---bad idea.
2. Changing one line of code can change the emergent behavior of the whole team in unexpected way. This is what makes multiagent system such fun (and challenging).
3. Placing a lot of System.out.println() in programs will slow it down a lot. Of course.
4. The Java Virtual Machine's thread scheduler is not fair or round-robin. I don't know why you would assume it was.
5. Always looking towards the ball to see where it is can make a player very slow moving. Imagine that!

Happy Holidays!

The other semifinalists were the Gamecocks (of course :-), and the Sharpshooters.

Overall I think everybody made a valiant effort. Most of the teams showed some exciting team playing. There was a lot of passing (even if the pass was not always caught) and several good adaptive zone strategies. I eagerly await your writeups. Please remember to detail how your strategy works. As you can tell, it is often hard to tell how the players are implemented by just looking at them.

Finally, I have made available the log files from the final, semifinals, and two other games. They are .zip files which you must uncompress before running in the soccermonitor. To view the log files just run the soccermonitor (no need to run the server), the under LogPlayer->OpenFile open the unzipped file, then press the "play" button.

Also, you must make sure that there is at least one member from your team in the room at all times between 1 and 4pm, or until you get eliminated. The team member will be responsible for running your team.

	dataFromServer = ProcessSensoryInput.parse(agent.wm.dgWrapper.receive(delay));

	agent.wm.addInput(dataFromServer);
	
	//If it is a "see" action then call handle()
	if( dataFromServer instanceof ObjectInfoContainer )
	{
		handle(dataFromServer);
	}

You should always rememeber a few basic rules:

1. Every function should have a comment that explains what the function does.
2. Each file should start with a comment that explains the role of that class in the architecture.
3. There should be a decription of the architecture.
4. Do not turn in pages and pages of code which you did not write (that is, the original Biter code).

It is also clear that some of you still do not understand the concept of individual behaviors and the benefits of separting control knowledge from task-level knowledge.

1. The new PS 5 is out. Check the link on the left.
2. The grades are in for PS2. They are outside my door.
3. I have updated the uml link in the biter homepage to point to the new UML diagrams. To see the diagrams you have to open up "Logical View" and double-click on "ActivityManager".

I should note that many of you used static variables to enable "communication" between the players on various threads. This would amount to telepathy on the part of the players. It is, of course, not allowed and some of you lost some points because of this. Remember, all communications between players must be via the soccerserver using "say" and "hear" commands. Any teams using other means of inter-agent communications will be disqualified from the final tournament.

javac -g -d .. -classpath .. -sourcepath .. *.java

java -classpath .. biter.SoccerClient

If you are in Linux (or any other Unix) just type make to compile it and make run to run it.

Also note that PS1 can be done in groups of 1 to 3 students, and remember that you all need to sign the coversheet when you turn it in certifying that each one of you did an equal amount of work.