# Evo_Bot

Robocode Tank Royale bot with a modular gun system where evolved neural networks learn to predict enemy dodge behavior.

## Language

**Evo_Bot**:
The bot itself — handles movement and firing discipline. Guns are pluggable modules.
_Avoid_: robot, tank

**Guess Factor (GF)**:
A value from -1 to +1 representing where on the maximum escape angle arc the enemy is. 0 = directly ahead, -1 = full left dodge, +1 = full right dodge. The gun's prediction target.
_Avoid_: aim offset, dodge index

**Max Escape Angle (MEA)**:
The widest angle the enemy can reach before a bullet arrives, computed from distance and bullet speed. Guess factor is multiplied by MEA to get the aim offset.

**Lateral Velocity**:
Enemy speed projected perpendicular to the line between you and them. The primary signal for guess factor prediction.
_Avoid_: tangential speed, sideways velocity

**Sliding Window**:
The last N ticks (default 30) of enemy state fed as input to the network. Each tick contains lateral velocity, heading delta, and wall distance ahead.
_Avoid_: observation buffer, input history

**Replay Tape**:
Rolling buffer of recorded enemy states (~2000 ticks). The evolution thread evaluates gun fitness against this tape.
_Avoid_: experience buffer, replay buffer

**Virtual Gun**:
A gun that runs in parallel without actually firing. It tracks where it would have aimed and whether a simulated bullet would have hit. Used to compare gun variants.

**Virtual Bullet**:
A simulated bullet fired by a virtual gun. Never actually sent to the game engine.

**TOPO_Gun**:
Fixed-topology ANN gun evolved by GA. Network shape is predetermined (e.g., 91-8-1), only weights are evolved.
_Avoid_: static gun, fixed gun

**NEAT_Gun**:
Variable-topology ANN gun where evolution can add/remove neurons and connections (NEAT algorithm). Deferred — only built if TOPO_Gun hits a ceiling.

**Population**:
The set of candidate networks (default 64-200) being evolved. Each member is a complete set of ANN weights.

**Champion**:
The best-performing network in the current GA population. The champion's weights are pushed to the inference side when it beats the current best.
_Avoid_: best, winner, elite

**Fitness**:
Hit count when a network's aim predictions are evaluated as virtual bullets against sampled ticks from the replay tape.
_Avoid_: score, reward

**Cold Start**:
The first-ever battle with no saved weights. The gun does not fire until the evolution thread produces its first champion. Subsequent battles load persisted weights.

**Weight Persistence**:
Saving evolved weights to disk. Load order: per-opponent file, then global fallback, then random initialization.
_Avoid_: model saving, checkpointing