Frequently Asked Questions

Programmer Questions:

Q Can I keep a map or some trace of where my bot has been to assist with finding a solution?

A Yes, in fact this is a fundamental part of the AI required for reliably and efficiently solving mazes. The exact way you do this is up to you. The outline of one possible approach can be foudn in the tutorial section of the website.

Q Is it legal to write code to attempt to determine which type of maze the bot is on, and to have different algorithms to solve the different maze types?

A Yes. Most of the procedurally generated mazes have some patterns which can be exploited, and it is fine to try to guess which maze type the bot is in and adjust behaviour accordingly. However because the custom maze is completely unknown, bots still need a good general algorithm that performs well on any maze type. Maze-specific tweaking should be done after the bot is already working well. It's not really something beginners should worry about, but it is definitely a technique used in high levels of competition.

Q My bot keeps crashing, or I can't figure out why its doing what its doing. How can I debug my code?

There is a special debugging mode that allows you to step through your code interactively in the IDE, and see the bot's position updated in the GUI. You can examine the values of variables and see exactly what your bot is doing, and where it goes awry. This technique will be covered in a workshop, and we'll eventually have a tutorial as well.

If your bot is crashing the exceptions will be recorded in the bot's log file, and will indicate the line of code that caused the crash. You can also output your own diagnostic information to this log to help you track down where the problem lies.


Unanswered Questions:

Do you have a question not answered here? Send an email to .