I did :-).

Skill Level of Ladmo

Some of the things Ladmo can do

• Claims Neutral Bases.
• Fixes Allied Pills.
• Attacks Pills.
• Refuels.
• Attacks Bases.
• Attacks Enemy LGM.
• Attacks Enemy Tanks.
• Gets Man if stuck, at least tries to!
• Gets Trees when needed.
• Builds Forts, not really forts but places PB around bases nicely.
• Clears Stuff around bases when refueling.
• Limited Mining around bases.
• Dumps Pills in emergency.
• Follows Allies. (If nothing better to do)
• Picks up dead PB's.
• Kinda Indy compatible messaging system (described below!)
• Picks best bases to refuel from. (remembers last stores and time since last seen to compute a guess to how much stores it should have now, also takes in consideration of base is spiked!)
• Remembers pills it previously attacked and/or killed.
• Picks the best base to attack (computes base coverages by enemy pills).
• Moves allied pills that are left in dumb locations.
• Configuration Menu.
• Wanders around. (Randomly picks bases to go to)
• Auto Allies with other Ladmos (Instructions below.)
• Three different personalities/modes.
• Limited borg mode.
• Various other stuff.

Messaging

Ladmo recognizes and/or sends the following commands

/who

Will respond with the Ladmo startup message.

/pause

Will put Ladmo into a pause state. Ladmo keeps its memory, but will not move forward. Ladmo still will shoot and rotate around.

/continue

Will bring Ladmo out of pause state.

/ally

Will cause Ladmo to request alliance with the sender.

The following commands Ladmo will only recognize from/to allies:

/defense

/def

Will switch Ladmo into defensive personality.

/suicidal

/suic

Will switch Ladmo into suicidal personality.

/normal

/def

Will switch Ladmo into normal personality.

/pill number X Y Owned Strength

Ladmo sends and receives updates on pill strengths (Example: "/pill 2 120 87 n 15")

/base number X Y Owned Shells Mines Armour

Ansd also base ownership/stocks (Example: "/base 4 79 102 f 90 60 70")

/pill number ??

Sent when a pill is not where Ladmo thought it was (Example: "/pill 2 ??")

Here is what Ladmo DOES NOT do yet and problems

• Some Combat areas need work. Attacking pills still needs a bunch of work. Repairing pill from distances, spiking, getting out of the way of stuff, trying to shoot through bases and pills to hit enemy tanks ect.
• Messaging system isn't fully implemented yet. It is kinda Indy compatible but it seems to confuse Indy at times. Also Indy confuses Ladmo at times because Indy sends out inaccurate base messages.
• Ladmo doesn't tell the difference between enemy pills and neutral pills, yet, they are just hostile and treated the same. (Should send out the correct messages though)
• Ladmo will sometimes "see" a target that becomes a priority at a certain range, but to get to the target Ladmo would go out of range and thus loose its priority. Ladmo would go towards the previous target bringing in range of the other target and the cycle continues.
• Limited mining functions, just around bases while refueling. In future versions Ladmo will mine more randomly and clear mines.
• Ladmo's code is a complete mess right now. It is not commented, uses too many global variables, way too much memory, and is not optimized at all.
• Ladmo will crash when reaching the bounds of a map. The problem is in the Decayed Brain Movement code and we have not fixed it yet. We need to track down exactly where it breaks. N.B. I haven't checked if this one still exists - the movement code has been extensively changed since 0.60
• Ladmo has a very simple decision making scheme and does not employ any type of long term strategy.
• Some fatal flaws in strategy that I won't reveal.
• Ladmo's messaging window doesn't redraw properly
• There is no easy way to change the keys for the 'borg mode
• Ladmo keeps pushing the gunsight out to max in 'borg mode

Borg Mode

Ladmo will remember everything the tanks sees in this mode and will send out pill messages base messages and receive all messages.

Ladmo does have some unique options that I have not seen from any other bots or borgs, yet. With the special keys listed below the borg mode lets you tap into some of Ladmo's other functions. Those functions include going to refuel, repair pill, go get trees and Ladmo's deadly kill enemy LGM, ect. For some of these functions you must hold down the key for it to work. For example if you want Ladmo to Claim a neutral base for you hold down the 'C' key until Ladmo claims the base.

Here are the keys:

• Accelerate: w
• Decelerate: s
• Turn anti-clockwise: a
• Turn clockwise: d
• Lay Mine: Shift
• Shoot: Space
• Aim Closer: ,
• Aim Farther: .
• Tank View: Return
• PillBox View: '

Special Keys: (none of which seem to be working right at the moment)

• Dump Pill: D
• Build Road Under Tank: K
• Grab Close Tree (limited range): J
• Clear Closest Mine: W
• Build Boat on Closest available spot: Z
• Refuel: R
• Claim Closest Neutral Base: C
• Go Get Trees: G
• Go Fix Pill: F
• Kill Enemy LGM: I

It still has a long way to go, but it is a start. You can also use it instead of the pause menu option to pause Ladmo while still retaining its memory.

Menu Options

Ladmo Main

Messaging

Turn on/off Ladmo's messaging

Show Map

Show/Hide the Map floating window

Show Message Window

Show/Hide the Messageing floating window

Pause

Pause/Unpause Ladmo (stops forward movement)

Record Strategic Log

Start/Stop recording the strategic log

'Bot

'Borg

What is going to be done to Ladmo next

Revision History

• 0.70b8
  • Added messaging window
  • Modified Map window to be auto-sizing
  • Made windows float
  • Made Ladmo's window cursor focus
  • Split Ladmo's menus up
  • Modified the strategy mechanism and ruined the current strategy in the process
• 0.70a6
  • Fixed bug in new blocking wall code
  • Fixed bug which made Ladmo want to wander to the edge of the world. This was a bug in the Decayed Brain code which the scheduler made MUCH more common
  • Modified the path planning to take pill anger levels into account and correctly determine if it can cross a base (based on ownership)
  • Added logging of the game. At present this isn't used for anything. I'm going to start using machine learning techiniques on the strategy next.

• 0.70a5
  • Ladmo now builds blocking walls for spike bases better than it used to.
  • Ladmo now goes to pick up it's man better than it used to.
  • Ladmo now attacks tanks better than it used to.
  • Ladmo now occassionally decides it's had enough of Bolo and will head off towards the edge of the world. If anyone spots what causes this I'd be most appreciative. (I think I introduced this in 0.70a2...)

• 0.70a4

  The Major change with this version is that I modifed Ladmo to use the new version 3 brain header that works with Bolo 0.99.6. This includes the following:

  • Ladmo now uses Bolo's global map - had to remove the 'load map' feature.
  • Ladmo shouldn't run to the other side of the world because it's confused by the extra info brains get in 0.99.6.

• 0.70a2
  • Team App support removed because of bug in Apples GestaltValue library
  • Added the 'Scheduler' - an internal complete re-write of when things occur. This should help in low cpu situations, but will lead to transitory errors - don't worry about them unless they cause real problems, they should be self correcting.
  • Added Map window to Ladmo
  • Added code to make Ladmo look at the screen. i.e. it detects the x that means a dead pill etc. Bot's don't normally get this info. This only works if the relevent piece of window is visible.
  • Made some changes to the attack-pill code - should work better with low cpu now, but may occasionally run off into a bad place.
  • re-wrote the local lgm usage code. Now has some fairly close checks to see what's safe - loses man more, but I think it's worth it.
• 0.60 - September 5, 1994
  • Fixed and re-added routine that periodically checks pillbox views and updates info. It updates the view for one pillbox every 2 seconds. So if Ladmo has 8 pills every 16 seconds Ladmo would have cycled through all of the pills.
  • Ladmo now black lists bases it can't get to and makes an attempt to try and clear the obstacle(s) later. Still some problems but it is a start.
  • Improved Attack Tank.
  • Improved fixing pills at a distance.
  • Will now attempt to clear walls around it's pills. It is on by default but has problems on maps with bunches of walls around bases, Ladmo wastes too much ammo. So if you are using Ladmo on a map like that you should turn that option off.
  • Fixed a refueling bug that caused Ladmo to sit on a base without armour trying to refuel.
  • Fixed some bugs in the dangers, so that Ladmo will now travel better around pills if there are obstacles between him and the pill.
  • New feature that automatically adjusts when CPU is low, this will improve performance on slow machines. Currently there are two modes: "Normal CPU" and "Low CPU."
  • Added AutoSelect Attack Pill.
  • A new Attack Pill Method, called "Advanced Attack Pill", which makes Ladmo the first bot to use a wall trick to take pills at times. Still needs some work, but is definitely an improvement. This method is used when "AutoSelect Attack Pill" is on, and the CPU mode is "Normal CPU."
  • Regular Attack Pill is now an improved version of the "New Attack Pill" in earlier versions which uses just a regular shoot and run method. This is used when "AutoSelect Attack Pill" is off, or when the CPU mode is "Low CPU."
  • Ladmo is the first bot to have a PPC version! (In separate package)
  • Some borg fixes and changes.
  • Some strategy changes.
  • Some improvements to the information Ladmo sends the Bolo Team App.
  • Keys for Borg Mode are now kept in a resource inside of Ladmo. You can use ResEdit to edit them to your preference.
  • Various other improvements and additions.
• 0.51 - August 1, 1994
  • Removed the code that has Ladmo flip through pill boxes views because it was causing some crashes when an allied pill is killed and Ladmo switched to that view. The checks that I had in were insufficient. This will be fixed in a future version.
• 0.50 - First general release, July 31, 1994.

Final Notes

Special thanks go to all the beta testers.

Ladmo is written MetroWerks CodeWarrior. So portions are copyright MetroWerks.

This is an early version of Ladmo, hence the 0.70 version number listed. Use Ladmo at your own risk, if you use Ladmo enough it will eventually crash your system.

Ladmo is Freeware but is NOT in the public domain. Ladmo is copyright 1994-1995 by John A. Wagner and Will Uther. You can freely copy and distribute Ladmo with the following conditions: You may not charge for Ladmo. For profit companies MAY NOT distribute Ladmo without my signed approval. Non profit organizations MAY distribute Ladmo. You must include all of the documentation of Ladmo. You must not distribute modified copies of Ladmo.

If you encounter a bug, or a crash, or any other problem, or just would like to make a comment, suggestion, or want to send us some code to look at, then please do.

If you use Ladmo please let us know. Send us some E-Mail or a post card if you like.