Tick-Tock
It's Tuesday night, less than 24 hours left to get your bot working for the sprint tournament. So what should you focus on? How can you boost your chances of winning? Well, there's nothing to it but to do it. Cut off social media and other distractions and just get to it. Turn on some motivational music and code it out.
Polish What Works
Anything that you have working at this point is going to help you. So polish it off. Optimize it. Test it a little at least before uploading, it's better to keep something you know works a bit than to chance something untested at the last minute that might be broken. Check for the little things, are your troops still shooting themselves in the foot? Move and then shoot, that way you don't run into your bullet. Throwing exceptions? Figure out why and fix or prevent it.
Everyone always wants to find that one million dollar idea, that one big thing, that is going to fix everything and make it a turn-key deal. That's just not often the case my friend. Work hard, find the pennies and they will add up much quicker than you think. Just keep doing all the tiny fixes you can find and get them operational quickly.
Trim The Branches
You may have those big ideas that just haven't completely been implemented properly... yet. That's ok don't throw them out. If you are using version control, which you really should be, then branch off and come back to work on them after the sprint is over. Commit to what you feel most confident with right now. Better not to have crazy code going awry and to have less features that actually do what you want.
Best Advice You'll Get Anywhere
Ok, so you feel pretty good. You have your bot bashing everything you can throw against it. Congratulations my friend, but don't sit comfortably on that now. Now is the time that you need to start thinking outside of the box. Think for a second... what assumptions have you made about this game that aren't really in the documentation?
Did you assume that all maps would be square N x N maps until you saw "Line of Fire." It's okay, you don't have to admit it here, but that's the kind of thing I am talking about. Figure out what you are over looking and making assumptions about. This could likely be that tiny edge your bot uses to win these unseen sprint maps.
Out think the developers and figure out what assumptions are going to leave you missing out on huge potential advantages and which one are just going to break your bot. What if you spawn with only enough room to build a gardener and a lumberjack? Did you think of that? Will your bot handle that? Surely that isn't very likely but what else is lying out there in wait to bring your team to a grinding halt?
Can You Handle Over Powered Bots
Scouts. Scouts. Did I mention scouts yet? Right now they seem to have a clear advantage over everything else when used correctly. Have you found out how to protect yourself from them? Have you been using them correctly? Make it happen captain.
Procrastination
Planning to work until the very last minute? Hoping the server won't be bogged down with uploads then? Good luck with that. Why not go ahead and act like the deadline is an hour or so sooner than it is just to be safe?
Stop Wasting Time
Yeah, reading this blog is not helping a lot. Lol, not this close to a deadline. So stop. Go back to working on it. If you start to get stuck or aren't making progress for a while step away for a minute and then come back and hit it hard again or switch to something else and come back to it.
