Multiple snapshots can mature by EVALUATE time but only the last one
triggered a superSpikeUpdate. Earlier matured snapshots were silently
discarded — wasting learning signal. Now each matured snapshot with a
valid ring buffer hit gets its own weight update.
Weights were barely moving: |wih| +0.14%, |wOut| +7.7% over full session.
Bump output ETA 2x and input→hidden ETA 4x to accelerate convergence.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Lower THRESH 0.2→0.08 to increase hidden firing rates (output layer was frozen due to rate≈0 in weight updates)
- Add ETA_IH=0.005 for input→hidden updates (10x smaller than output ETA=0.05 to prevent weight thrashing from large preTrace magnitudes)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The retroactive error signal matures many ticks after the snapshot was taken,
but superSpikeUpdate was using bot.lastSpikes/lastVSnap which had been
overwritten by subsequent DECIDE cycles. Learning was applied against wrong
neural activity — effectively random weight perturbations.
Fix: AimSnapshot now captures spikes, vSnap, and preTrace at DECIDE time.
superSpikeUpdate receives these saved values at maturation instead of the
stale current state.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Expand input layer from 36 to 80 neurons: bearing (0-35) + velocity direction (36-71) + speed (72-79)
- Population-code velocity direction (same 10° band scheme as bearing) and speed (8 bands, 1 unit/tick)
- Compute 1-tick velocity from position deltas in onScannedBot
- Add 100-slot ring buffer with per-slot tick tracking for enemy positions
- Replace instantaneous bearing error with retroactive would-have-hit signal
- Skip learning until first aim snapshot matures (buffer fill period)
- Delayed-target SuperSpike: weight updates use most recently matured retroactive bearing
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Document exception handling, zero-value BotResult trap, shared adversary bots
- Add offline parsing example using parseServerOutput
- Skip tests gracefully when JARs missing (guard before suite blocks)
- Fix blocking readLine in runner_process.nim: poll with 50ms sleep + atEnd check
(was preventing timeout enforcement, now blocks correctly during battle)
- Add test task to QBot.nimble and config.nims setup docs to AGENTS.md
- Add debug logging to TestBattleRunner for bot identity tracking
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Implements:
- BattleResult type and JSON-lines parser (#127)
- TR server lifecycle manager (#128)
- Bot compiler using nim c (#129)
- runBattle() orchestrator (#130)
- Example test in OscillatorBot_garage (#131)
- Framework usage guide (#132)
- TestBattleRunner.java for external server (#133)
- BattleRunner process lifecycle (#134)
Fix: runner_process.nim was redefining TimeoutError locally; now
uses std/net.TimeoutError consistently with server_manager.nim.
- Deleted constants.nim, event_queue.nim, graphics.nim, json_parse.nim, schemas.nim, utils.nim, and ws_client.nim files.
- This cleanup removes unused code and simplifies the codebase, focusing on essential functionalities.
- Removed non-existent exported/ directory from layout docs
- Replaced hardcoded bot binary entries with *_garage/out/ pattern for build directories
- Added all known bot binaries (GotoTest, OscillatorBot, PPO_Bot, QBot, SAC_LSTM_Bot)
to .gitignore with clarifying comment about Nim's compilation target structure
Nim places compiled binaries at bot root (no extension) and in out/ subdirs.
The out/ pattern catches all build outputs; specific bot binaries listed for
root-level executables since gitignore lacks a reliable "no-extension files" glob.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Extracted concrete numbers from 13 papers in docs/papers/neuroevolution/.
Key findings: use CMA-ES or mutation-only truncation GA, mutate ALL weights
(not 5%), sigma=0.005-0.01, pop=64-200, no crossover, single elite.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
SirStone