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Rev

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Good Versus Evil

Results - July 19, 2014

The current King of the Hill is Mercenary by user Fabigler! Keep submitting entries and knock him off of his throne!

Click here to view the Scoreboard.

Programs submitted on or before July 19, 2014 were included. All other submissions will be included in future trials. New results should be posted around August 9, so that gives you plenty of time.

Illustration drawn by brother _{Illustrated by Chris Rainbolt, my brother and a fresh graduate from Savannah College of Art and Design}

Introduction

The angels and demons are fighting and, as usual, using earth as their battleground. Humans are stuck in the middle and are being forced to take sides. An unknown neutral force rewards those who consistently fight for the losing side.

The Game

Each trial, you will be pseudorandomly paired and then shuffled with between 20 and 30 other submissions. Each trial will consist of 1000 rounds. Each round, you will be passed an input and be expected to produce output. Your output will be recorded and scored. This process will be repeated 1000 times.

Input

You will receive a single argument that represents the past votes of each player. Rounds are delimited by comma. A 0 represents a player who sided with Evil that round. A 1 represents a player who sided with Good. Within a trial, the players will always be in the same order. Your own vote will be included, but not explicitly identified. For example:

101,100,100

In this example, three rounds have been completed and three players are competing. Player one always sided with Good. Player two always sided with Evil. Player three swapped from Good in round 1 to Evil in rounds 2 and 3. One of those players was you.

Output

Java Submissions

Return the string good if you want to side with Good.
Return the string evil if you want to side with Evil.

Non-Java Submissions

Output the string good to stdout if you want to side with Good.
Output the string evil to stdout if you want to side with Evil.

If your program outputs or returns anything else, throws an exception, does not compile, or takes longer than one second to output anything on this exact machine, then it will be disqualified.

Scoring

Scores will be posted in a Google docs spreadsheet for easy viewing as soon as I can compile all the current entries. Don't worry - I will keep running trials for as long as you guys keep submitting programs!

You receive 3 points for siding with the majority during a round.
You receive n - 1 points for siding with the minority during a round, where n is the number of consecutive times you have sided with the minority.

Your score will be the median of 5 trials. Each trial consists of 1000 rounds.

Deliverables

Non-Java Submissions

You must submit a unique title, a program, and a Windows command line string that will run your program. Remember that an argument may be appended to that string. For example:

python Angel.py
- Note that this one has no args. This is round one! Be prepared for this.
python Angel.py 11011,00101,11101,11111,00001,11001,11001

Java Submissions

You must submit a unique title and a Java class that extends the abstract Human class written below.

public abstract class Human {
    public abstract String takeSides(String history) throws Exception;
}

Testing

If you want to test your own submission, follow the instructions here.

Additional Notes

You may submit as many different submissions as you want. Submissions that appear to be colluding will be disqualified. The author of this challenge will be the only judge on that matter.

A new instance of your program or Java class will be created every time it is called upon. You may persist information by writing to a file. You may not modify the structure or behavior of anything except your own class.

Players will be shuffled before the trial starts. Demon and Angel will participate in every trial. If the number of players is even, Petyr Baelish will also join. Demon fights for Evil, Angel for Good, and Petyr Baelish chooses a pseudorandom side.

Answer*

## Fortune Teller ##
This is still work in progress. I haven't tested it yet. I just wanted to see if the OP thinks it breaks the rules or not.

The idea is to simulate the next round by executing all other participants a few times to get a probability of the outcome and act accordingly.



    package Humans;

    import java.io.File;
    import java.io.IOException;
    import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
    import java.net.JarURLConnection;
    import java.net.URL;
    import java.net.URLConnection;
    import java.net.URLDecoder;
    import java.util.ArrayList;
    import java.util.Enumeration;
    import java.util.jar.JarEntry;
    import java.util.jar.JarFile;
    import sun.net.www.protocol.file.FileURLConnection;

    public class FortuneTeller extends Human {

    /**
     * Code from http://stackoverflow.com/a/22462785 Private helper method
     *
     * @param directory The directory to start with
     * @param pckgname The package name to search for. Will be needed for
     * getting the Class object.
     * @param classes if a file isn't loaded but still is in the directory
     * @throws ClassNotFoundException
     */
    private static void checkDirectory(File directory, String pckgname,
            ArrayList<Class<?>> classes) throws ClassNotFoundException {
        File tmpDirectory;

        if (directory.exists() && directory.isDirectory()) {
            final String[] files = directory.list();

            for (final String file : files) {
                if (file.endsWith(".class")) {
                    try {
                        classes.add(Class.forName(pckgname + '.'
                                + file.substring(0, file.length() - 6)));
                    } catch (final NoClassDefFoundError e) {
                    // do nothing. this class hasn't been found by the
                        // loader, and we don't care.
                    }
                } else if ((tmpDirectory = new File(directory, file))
                        .isDirectory()) {
                    checkDirectory(tmpDirectory, pckgname + "." + file, classes);
                }
            }
        }
    }

    /**
     * Private helper method.
     *
     * @param connection the connection to the jar
     * @param pckgname the package name to search for
     * @param classes the current ArrayList of all classes. This method will
     * simply add new classes.
     * @throws ClassNotFoundException if a file isn't loaded but still is in the
     * jar file
     * @throws IOException if it can't correctly read from the jar file.
     */
    private static void checkJarFile(JarURLConnection connection,
            String pckgname, ArrayList<Class<?>> classes)
            throws ClassNotFoundException, IOException {
        final JarFile jarFile = connection.getJarFile();
        final Enumeration<JarEntry> entries = jarFile.entries();
        String name;

        for (JarEntry jarEntry = null; entries.hasMoreElements()
                && ((jarEntry = entries.nextElement()) != null);) {
            name = jarEntry.getName();

            if (name.contains(".class")) {
                name = name.substring(0, name.length() - 6).replace('/', '.');

                if (name.contains(pckgname)) {
                    classes.add(Class.forName(name));
                }
            }
        }
    }

    /**
     * Attempts to list all the classes in the specified package as determined
     * by the context class loader
     *
     * @param pckgname the package name to search
     * @return a list of classes that exist within that package
     * @throws ClassNotFoundException if something went wrong
     */
    private static ArrayList<Class<?>> getClassesForPackage(String pckgname)
            throws ClassNotFoundException {
        final ArrayList<Class<?>> classes = new ArrayList<Class<?>>();

        try {
            final ClassLoader cld = Thread.currentThread()
                    .getContextClassLoader();

            if (cld == null) {
                throw new ClassNotFoundException("Can't get class loader.");
            }

            final Enumeration<URL> resources = cld.getResources(pckgname
                    .replace('.', '/'));
            URLConnection connection;

            for (URL url = null; resources.hasMoreElements()
                    && ((url = resources.nextElement()) != null);) {
                try {
                    connection = url.openConnection();

                    if (connection instanceof JarURLConnection) {
                        checkJarFile((JarURLConnection) connection, pckgname,
                                classes);
                    } else if (connection instanceof FileURLConnection) {
                        try {
                            checkDirectory(
                                    new File(URLDecoder.decode(url.getPath(),
                                                    "UTF-8")), pckgname, classes);
                        } catch (final UnsupportedEncodingException ex) {
                            throw new ClassNotFoundException(
                                    pckgname
                                    + " does not appear to be a valid package (Unsupported encoding)",
                                    ex);
                        }
                    } else {
                        throw new ClassNotFoundException(pckgname + " ("
                                + url.getPath()
                                + ") does not appear to be a valid package");
                    }
                } catch (final IOException ioex) {
                    throw new ClassNotFoundException(
                            "IOException was thrown when trying to get all resources for "
                            + pckgname, ioex);
                }
            }
        } catch (final NullPointerException ex) {
            throw new ClassNotFoundException(
                    pckgname
                    + " does not appear to be a valid package (Null pointer exception)",
                    ex);
        } catch (final IOException ioex) {
            throw new ClassNotFoundException(
                    "IOException was thrown when trying to get all resources for "
                    + pckgname, ioex);
        }

        return classes;
    }

    private static boolean isRecursiveCall = false;
    private static ArrayList<Class<?>> classes;

    static {
        if (classes == null) {
            try {
                classes = getClassesForPackage("Humans");
            } catch (ClassNotFoundException ex) {
                
            }
        }    
    }
    
    private String doThePetyrBaelish() {
        return Math.random() >= 0.5 ? "good" : "evil";
    }

    @Override
    public String takeSides(String history) {
        if (isRecursiveCall) {
            return doThePetyrBaelish();
        }
        isRecursiveCall = true;

        int currentRoundGoodCount = 0;
        float probabilityOfGood = 0;
        int roundCount = 0;
        int voteCount = 0;


        
        do {
            for (int i = 0; i < classes.size(); i++) {
                try {
                    if (classes.get(i).getName() == "Humans.FortuneTeller") {
                        continue;
                    }

                    Human human = (Human) classes.get(i).newInstance();
                    String response = human.takeSides(history);
                    switch (response) {
                        case "good":
                            currentRoundGoodCount++;
                            voteCount++;
                            break;
                        case "evil":
                            voteCount++;
                            break;
                        default:
                            break;
                    }
                } catch (Exception e) {
                }
            }

            probabilityOfGood = (probabilityOfGood * roundCount
                    + (float) currentRoundGoodCount / voteCount) / (roundCount + 1);

            roundCount++;
            currentRoundGoodCount = 0;
            voteCount = 0;

        } while (roundCount < 11);

        isRecursiveCall = false;
        if (probabilityOfGood > .7) {
            return "evil";
        }
        if (probabilityOfGood < .3) {
            return "good";
        }

        return doThePetyrBaelish();
    }
    
    }

If this is an answer to a challenge…

…Be sure to follow the challenge specification. However, please refrain from exploiting obvious loopholes. Answers abusing any of the standard loopholes are considered invalid. If you think a specification is unclear or underspecified, comment on the question instead.
…Try to optimize your score. For instance, answers to code-golf challenges should attempt to be as short as possible. You can always include a readable version of the code in addition to the competitive one. Explanations of your answer make it more interesting to read and are very much encouraged.
…Include a short header which indicates the language(s) of your code and its score, as defined by the challenge.

More generally…

…Please make sure to answer the question and provide sufficient detail.
…Avoid asking for help, clarification or responding to other answers (use comments instead).

Edit Summary*

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\$\begingroup\$ If your bot runs all the other bots each turns before answering, won't it take more than 1s to answer? \$\endgroup\$
– plannapus
Commented Jul 9, 2014 at 12:41
\$\begingroup\$ @plannapus I'm going to guess the assumption with this bot is that everyone else is going to err on the side of caution and avoid anything close 1 seconds worth of wait. I'm thinking it may be worthwhile submitting and entry that consists of a 0.9 second wait, before returning "good", just to mess with him. Actually, SBoss has beat me to it :D \$\endgroup\$
– scragar
Commented Jul 9, 2014 at 12:44
\$\begingroup\$ Yahhh! Then I would have to blacklist that bot in my code. That would be frustrating... Also with different entries in different environments like Python or Perl the reprated loading of the interpreter might just be enough to bring this code above the time limit. \$\endgroup\$
– Andris
Commented Jul 9, 2014 at 12:55
16

\$\begingroup\$ If someone else does the same thing as this, you get an infinite loop. \$\endgroup\$
– Brilliand
Commented Jul 9, 2014 at 17:10
4

\$\begingroup\$ The submission timed out. I attached a profiler, and nearly half a second is spent calling some submissions. It at least works though, so congrats for that. \$\endgroup\$
– Rainbolt
Commented Jul 14, 2014 at 0:57

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