unreality

That's great news

Good idea... if you need specifics or the outline of the way my emulator is structured, just PM me

So I describe it instead of captioning it, everyone gets mad at me... GC describes it instead of captioning it, and it's okay Hehe whatever. It is funny looking back though..

hey Bad-Riddler: First of all, thanks and welcome to BD & VNA Second of all, I designed VNA 2.0 specifically to make it easier to swallow for non-programmers. If you think this gets complicated you should see VNA 1 The truth is, the game's just not for everyone. I made the OP as engaging as I think the game requires to draw in people, and it did draw in a pretty good number of non-programmers, but you can't dumb everything down and it does take some abstract thinking to understand some of the concepts. As for the emulator... uhh I never said I would supply an emulator, all "official" are (or were) run by me ;D I could post my own emulator for download but it's written in an archaic language for pre-OSX macs called 'Hypercard' and I doubt anyone here could run the actual application. I would if I could, trust me. No other 2.0 emulator was made until FOTH made his excel version, which was only a page ago or so. On Brainden, OPs only have a 10min edit time. And I agree about some things with the excel emulator. It is not "the VNA emulator", it's just FOTH's version, I don't understand it much either (cuz I fail at Excel ), so if you have a problem, take it up with him And lastly... why would I make a site, especially when the "fanbase" is so small. I don't even know how to make a site, and there would be no reason for the effort This is VNA's site ;D edit: and cool, good luck making a program and stuff. It's always good to get more players!

answer time #2 is easy to spot, has multiple flaws, and is almost as much a matter of opinion, so no real spoiler needed anyway #3 - I still haven't gotten around to this ;D Has anyone?

I definitely intend to - tomorrow probably. The Awesome is a very good bomber, fast and efficient, but Fish3 may have a better bombing strategy (and clearly is designed like a freaking bomb shelter to account for enemy invasions), we'll see I trust Prime's results that his beats mine 75% of the time but I want to see the games for myself ;D Also I have begun working on a new program Oh and if anyone wants a detailed schematic on how the Awesome works, just PM me or ask her... it took me a while to figure out its central concept, which is immediately obvious after you see it, it's one of those dumb "aha" things, at least for me Kind of like when, about a week ago, when I was planning the VNA Riddles, I was coming up with the most efficient copy-eraser program I could. My first one consisted of two lines, then I saw that it could be one, over 2 rounds - it was another "aha" moment, because this simple VNA language that I made hides some ghosts in the machine that I never expected ;D Speaking of that, that's my next program's name: "Ghost in the Machine", for possibly a different reason, maybe. It's still in the first stages of thoughts in my head ;D

Time to get this show on the road

As soon as I looked at the code, I saw what was wrong immediately - I just had to type in a couple of characters and that test program worked perfectly I'll go ahead and test Prime's again now what was wrong was that, my function evaluator function, called ivec, at first only had one parameter, the string to parse. I had forgotten that a line was also needed as input, so I added that partway in. Well, the a/b/c function code calls the ivec function again with the new processed value from the other line, but I had forgotten to put in the second parameter, which would then be the line number for the line denoted within the a/b/c function. This may make no sense to you but it's okay because it makes 100% sense to me I know now why it wasn't working before and why it is now So I'll test Prime's now update: just tested Prime's, and it works perfectly ;D Whoo. I'll test my emulator a little bit more, but now I'm pretty sure it has the capacity for infinite crazy functions with crazy combos of a/b/c and stuff FOTH: if you want to know how it works without rendering the whole array, the ivec function [i made the name for my original emulator of VNA 1, which called parameters "input vectors"] is given the parameter string of the line as input, as well as the current line. It runs a loop on the parameter string, stopping the loop and returning if it detects that it has just a number, and each time finds the innermost function by running through the characters, keeping track of the most recent "(" until it hits a closing ")", then counts backwards, taking the stuff between the parantheses as 'funcinput' and the text before the left "(" and after a comma or another "(" as 'funcname'. Then it runs a switch on 'funcname' to give different code for each function, which is how it knows how many commas to look for in 'funcinput' and what to do with the numbers. If the funcname is a/b/c, it uses 'funcinput' as an addition onto the current line running the function and takes the designated line and dissects it for the a/b/c parameter. Then it runs the ivec function (while still inside the first ivec function) on this parameter text and the modified line, ie, the line that the parameter text is from This allows for infinite a/b/c nesting The bug that it was having was that, when I called the ivec function again, I forgot the second parameter, the line designated by the a/b/c function. I'm not sure how it even worked before without having that crucial second parameter, but it's fixed now

thanks but I can't trust my emulator until I'm sure it's working... I think I'm going to rewrite it, in a different language maybe I downloaded your excel emulator, it looks cool, but I'm an excel newb and can't make heads or tail of it... I figured out that I have to ctrl-click (rt-click on a windows then?) to use the buttons but I have no idea why there are two game columns or how to enlarge them or input a new program or anything Just curious, have you checked the battles between the programs that I DID run for the tournament (ie, with the programs of me and frost and mekal and DMS)? I think those should check out, they worked just as they should FOTH: thanks for helping with the debug, I'll look at the issue more closely later

considering the abusive posts by andromeda and her assaultive PM, I'll make another caption, but I definitely won't be playing this game again I honestly thought that the goal was to describe the picture. Thanks for making me feel welcome to this game for DMS's eyes only: edit - typo

A caption is just another way of describing the picture ;D I couldn't find tangible obvious meaning from the picture, and making up a purpose behind the picture is too risky, so I descibed the artistic qualities instead Is that not allowed? Does it have to be a newspaper-esque description-caption?

I did some investigating. My logical analysis of Fish3 followed your guys' convictions, so I did some testing with my emulator and started looking into how it could mistranslate the clear logical command. After thinking about it (and mostly staring at it blankly and rereading ) I made a test program and tried it: SHIFT 100;105;1 JUMP c(-1);0;0 JUMP b(a(-1));0;0 BLANK 0;7;0 as I suspected, it sat there on line 3, when it instead should have jumped 7. Rather, it seemed to fail bigtime and just repeat line 3 over and over again. I can't believe this... I'm so sorry... when I was first making the emulator, I tested function nesting and everything appeared to work fine. I may have changed something since then, or the design doesnt loop right to process potentially infinite a/b/c nesting, but something is wrong. I feel like an idiot. I am an idiot. I was being all confident that my emulator was fine when of course it wasn't, the code is complex enough to mean there's bound to be bugs, gah I should've known that!!! Gahhhhh.... I'm clearly not fit to be VNA host ;D One of you guys should take over, you would do a better job. I like working on the abstract of inventing the language and making programs, but clearly one of you guys would be a better host for running games, tournaments, etc. I'll happily just play from now on I'll be trying to fix and debug the emulator in the meantime. Oddly, the only times this problem has been encountered, ever, in VNA and 2.0, has been with your two programs [possibly just Prime's program, I dont know about FOTH's or why it froze] because no other program has ever gone into that kind of loop. This is really strange, because I would an expect an a/b/c nesting problem to be universally apparent. Luckily this means that the damage was contained, but it also means it'll be a b*tch to debug. Wish me luck So, yeah, sorry... I feel so stupid right now. I'm sure Prime or FOTH will make a much better game-runner than me Again, sorry. Wow. ergh

my turn

I appreciate your concern and I wasn't "dismissing you with dismay", sorry if it seemed that way I'll run it again if you want, but the result was the same every time I ran through it, regardless of the opponent. I'll test it and then run it through manually with just myself. If there happens to be an error with my emulator, then I'm deeply sorry... we'll see though. For the infinite loop thing, I didn't realize that 0 wasn't part of the com at the end, but rather a possibility of the previous line. In that case, I don't know what to tell you, sorry. Does your emulator do this even when the infinite loop would never occur? If I understand correctly, it's checking every possible route, and is seeing possibility of error? Is 0 an in-built possibility of the previous line or is it just if it gets overwritten?

Prime: ah I see your point about #1, cool idea My first thought was that if another program happened to land on the previous line, it would copy onto you, but it would be the same already, so it's no problem. Good improvement! for #4, yeah I'm sure there's even more ways to do it DMS: actually those lines AND the next one (the bomb). But they are the lines being copied for the new spawn program. But as Prime pointed out, they will overrun the "parent program" Other answers to #2: - even if they bomb the enemy, THEY win, not you - they'll probably bomb you first anyway - there were some other structural problems, I don't remember them now so #1 is solved, #2 is solved, #3 is unattempted [even by me so far, haven't had the time], #4 is solved (two ways so far), #5 is unattempted, #6 is not really a problem Good job guys! ;D

Prime: well I ran the version you gave me for the tournament. If you've fixed it since then, I obviously have no idea if it works or not I can run your newer version if you want (post it again) FOTH: if you're running Prime's newer versions, he's probably fixed it, but if you ran the same version mine did, it should have gotten stuck fairly quickly (first few rounds). If not, no offense, but something is wrong with your Excel emulator My emulator runs all commands & functions perfectly as they should be, I've extensively tested it. And, again, you can't have any c(0) in a c-parameter. If you have something that COULD evaluate to it, it's a risk. If it's never supposed to happen, why not make it something other than 0? Because 0 just causes an infinite loop that jams the emulator. It was in the OP of this topic but I'll say it again: No a(0) in the a-param, b(0) in the b-param, or c(0) in the c-param! There are other logical impossibilities, all detailed in the spoiler near the bottom of the OP. If an emulator encounters such a logical paradox it should end the game immediately and report the problem. Or just leave it, because nobody should have anything like that in their program oh and the VNA is initially filled with BLANK 0;0;0, not BOMB 1;1;1. I considered doing all bombs, but decided that BLANKs were better

I successfully created a "Do X Rounds" button with a text field to input the number of rounds I want to run (it stops automatically if someone wins), so this should make running games be quicker Oh and Prime I tested my VNA emulator just in case, no bug ;D The lines we were talking about work fine

Here is the answer to #4 (mine at least, there are probably more ways)

Prime: you are superclose on #1. So close that I'm going to post the solution: For Prime's answer to #4, not necessarily ;D The concept takes advantage that the VNA is 200 nodes long, which is not divisible by 3. Only 2 of 3 iteration starting points would result in a potential overwrite (the third will become one of them on the next cycle around). 1 of those 2 gets bombed and you win, but the other one would overwrite your bomb, thus you copying it backwards would just be copying the same program backwards, so when the program cycles back around, it will overwrite your program. This doesn't mean you have lost the game (just an infinite tie), but the conditions of the riddle require you destroy the program before it overwrites you. The possible starting positions of the other program lead to 1 of 3 different positions when it's closest to you: 1 2 3 SHIFT 1;-3;0 BOMB 0;0;0 1 - good job, your program wins 2 - your program loses (it gets overwritten, causing the infinite loop that the riddle question says counts as losing) 3 - this one misses both of your lines, but in 66 rounds it will have gone 198 lines farther, putting it at position 1 (which is your victory) So while you still have a 2/3 chance of definite victory, 1/3 of the time (depending on starting placement), the other program will overwrite yours #5: Obviously 'rand' is unnecessary, or I wouldn't have removed it The point of the question was how you could artificially make an unpredictable function (yet constrained to one digit) [edit - typo]

Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. And yes that would return true without a doubt I see what you're saying. If you want me to test it anyway I will, but it will return 'true'

Oops, that's what I thought your first one meant. No, neither are correct, sorry.... it's a complicated line. More than just numbers are needed ;D

sure It would just be nice to know that I was playing, you know? ;D (I think it started while I was still banned). So where is the first caption, or do I make the first caption?

Whoa how did my name get put down? I didn't even know I was in this until someone PMed me

nope Think of what that does: copies itself one node forward, then jumps 70 nodes forward. That achieves nothing ;D Nice try though hint:

Anyone attempt any of the VNA Problems yet? (in my sig)