Unknown Network 1

[davidalangay]

*SPOILER ALERT*...might be a workable solution revealed.


I'm tasked to obtain a file held by another Exabot not under my command. I honestly thought this was going to be a simple one: just waltz up to the little bugger, whack it with a KILL command, GRAB the file and happily LINK -1 it back to my host.

It was...for the first run. For the second run the little bugger holding the file is in a different place. How annoying. Since you cannot "see" what's in a room, you cannot condition your Exabot to look before killing/grabbing as you search every host. Trying to grab a file that is either locked or simply not there causes the Exabot to die.

I found a solution worthy of a budding Starcraft Zerg player. I created a Zergling rush of Exabots that stormed through the area, each with the commands to get them to their destination, blindly kill the enemy, grab at a file that was hopefully dropped, and scamper back to the home host. Only one survives, the rest dies due to an abend.

So much for hacker stealth!

It works, but I'm sure that's not the best way to do that. I haven't read the second issue of Trash so maybe my answer is in there. Perhaps there is a hardware register that orders the little bugger to talk to my Exabot and bring it to me. Nah, that can't be that easy.

Suggestions?

[The Renderer]

Your solution is pretty spot on. Not sure what you don't like about it.
Edit: You don't mention how you actually generate your "Zerglings". If you actually programmed 8 different ones then there is a more elegant solution (and one that fits in the size limit): Self-replication. But the file retrieval works as you described.

[davidalangay]

Originally posted by The Renderer:

Your solution is pretty spot on. Not sure what you don't like about it.
Edit: You don't mention how you actually generate your "Zerglings". If you actually programmed 8 different ones then there is a more elegant solution (and one that fits in the size limit): Self-replication. But the file retrieval works as you described.

I manually created the Exabots and copy pasted the sourcce inn each, but had to modify the destination link numbers for each. Yuck. It's like using a stick of dynnsmite to deal with termite infestation.

[The Renderer]

Originally posted by davidalangay:

Originally posted by The Renderer:

Your solution is pretty spot on. Not sure what you don't like about it.
Edit: You don't mention how you actually generate your "Zerglings". If you actually programmed 8 different ones then there is a more elegant solution (and one that fits in the size limit): Self-replication. But the file retrieval works as you described.

I manually created the Exabots and copy pasted the sourcce inn each, but had to modify the destination link numbers for each. Yuck. It's like using a stick of dynnsmite to deal with termite infestation.

That probably brought you over the size limit.
As I hinted at above, you can have a single self-replicating EXA to do the same thing.

[davidalangay]

Originally posted by The Renderer:

Originally posted by davidalangay:

I manually created the Exabots and copy pasted the sourcce inn each, but had to modify the destination link numbers for each. Yuck. It's like using a stick of dynnsmite to deal with termite infestation.

That probably brought you over the size limit.
As I hinted at above, you can have a single self-replicating EXA to do the same thing.

You're right, it did take me over the qualifications to put my solution on the charts. I was happy with that. I just wanted the solution solved. I struggled with it for a while.

I suspect you mean the REPL command. I actually considered that but at the time it did not fit what I needed because the link logic in the Exabot to be replicated only pointed to one destination (the first location of the Exabot holding the file). Multiple replications, though elegant, would have sent them all barrelling to one location, not one to each location. Manual duplication and a rather tedious copy and paste of source was the only way -- at the time -- to solve the problem.

I'll play around with the REPL command in practice. I don't have a sandbox to work with so I will use a new solution file with the current map. The only way at the top of my head to make this work is to code all eight link paths to each box, bordered by MARK statements to JUMP to. With every replicate statement, the label would be the name of the MARK segment to execute that puts the bot where it should be. THat's still a lot of code to type, and it may still knock me over the limit. I'll give it a try.

EDIT: tried the REPL command and it did work. It saves me having to do a manual copy and paste since I enter all the pathway links in one Exabot. While it still knocked me over the limit, it was only by 15 as opposed to 33.

Thanks for the help.

[The Renderer]

Hmmm. Not ideal yet. You don't need to actually enter the pathways. There are quite a few ways to do this but they all have one thing in common: Every step along the path looks the same, there is always an exit at 800 and one at 801, doubling the hosts every step. So... why not just split the EXAs at every step into one version that goes to 800 and one that goes to 801? So you start with one EXA, then 2 go on to the next step, 4 to the next and 8 to the last.

[davidalangay]

Originally posted by The Renderer:

Hmmm. Not ideal yet. You don't need to actually enter the pathways. There are quite a few ways to do this but they all have one thing in common: Every step along the path looks the same, there is always an exit at 800 and one at 801, doubling the hosts every step. So... why not just split the EXAs at every step into one version that goes to 800 and one that goes to 801? So you start with one EXA, then 2 go on to the next step, 4 to the next and 8 to the last.

You're right! I spawned the replicas at my home host. I could have done that in steps that do not change in link number. This will cut down on a lot of link statements!

[la_nague]

the repl command can jump to a special line and execute it, so you can make sure the replicate is not just following its daddy (or mother?)

[Scooter]

Don't forget that you can LINK to a number contained in a register, too. You don't have to hardcode every LINK command.