Process

On the first day of Zero Robotics, we first started by trying to understand how the game works, trying out the API functions, and tried to find a few first loopholes. We quickly found out that once you plant, you could immediately water twice. This was a major improvement over watering then waiting twice, which was extremely helpful to our strategy. We also started thinking about how melons scored the highest, producing 11 points every 10 seconds. 

On the first day, we began coding for the competition. We primarily planned and wrote the early stages of code that would be beneficial in preparing for the creation of our finalized code for the competition. From the previous online class, most of us had an early prototype of code for the purpose of growing a singular crop. Reviewing the rulebook and writing this code provided us with a fundamental idea of what we would have to create in order to set the stage for later code, being knowledge of the characteristics of the field we were playing on. We began finding the exact travel times that it would take to travel between each section of the map, including the plots, the astronaut zone, and the watering zone. This also allowed us to create an effective plan to farm the right plants within the right plots, where we swiftly realized that sitting within the first plot and farming solely melons was a great plan to accumulate points. Due to it taking well over 17 seconds to travel between plots, and the most extensive plant growth time being 11 seconds, moving between plots would easily result in the death of any previously placed plants. This resulted in the best solution to be to sit within one plot and farm the crop with the highest time-to-point ratio, being watermelons. After devising this strategy, we began to code it. For the time being, this would be simple hard-code, however we would advance this later. We got a maximum of 132.

 On this day, we continued to work with the new scores. We didn't make too many major developments, but using Sarah's new idea, which involved going to watering while the melon was growing. This allowed us to get up to 165.

 On this day, we continued to experiment, but we were continuing to experiment with code techniques. We also switched our code to a format that would be more modular, allowing for faster and quicker changes.

 On this day, a major blow to our score came: the water -> water -> wait didn't work anymore, due to a bug fix by the creators of the game. We quickly adapted to this new rule, quickly getting 103 in only a little bit.

On this day, we continued to try to improve our code with optimal points with a focus on consistency. We also tested the code, and Sarah's code came out on top as the best code. We submitted our practice round code later on after a bracket to figure out the best code.

This time we worked on various items, mainly the website. However, Benjamin was vigorously trying to optimize points, and with this work, he was able to get good points that worked very well and got better scores, but were also more risky.

This time, Benjamin was able to create a 3d Desmos graph in an attempt to try to get optimal points. However, it didn't help too much, showing how hard it was to break the 103 barrier.

Due to the significant amount of progress we already were at, and our existing knowledge of the game and its updates, we mostly spent the day improving our code and working on this website. We attempted to squeeze out as much more points.

After the alliances came back, we discussed with our new teammates on how to improve our code, but no major improvements occurred.

Due to the significant amount of progress we already were at, and our existing knowledge of the game and its updates, we mostly spent the day improving our code and working on this website. We attempted to squeeze out as much more points as we could, but we didn't make any progress.

We were thinking of new strategy's trying to hopefully improve are time (even if it just improved by miliseconds). This mainly included switching around points to see how consistently close we could get to an objective point without failing.

Today we decided to try implying vectors. This would initially help us get more precise locations on the axis on the plots and watering. 

Today there was a surprise update and we had to change are code. After changing we decided to stop using vectors since it is better to use the game.MovePlot(Plot Id) function now. We are still debating about not using vectors for watering. One member of our team continued to use vectors, however we eventually decided not to use these as they would not benefit us much with score.

Due to the significant amount of progress we already achieved, and our existing knowledge of the game and its updates, we mostly spent the day tweaking and improving our  code and working on this website. We attempted to squeeze out as much more points as we could and one of us (Akhil) was able to get 112.988 by getting an extra tomato at the end.