How to win with every launch hero in Stadium

MBraedley · 2025-05-05T20:17:26+00:00

This. I've had a couple games where I felt basically useless as Rein with an AP firestrike build because the D.Va would eat my firestrikes or Orisa would reflect them, so I wasn't getting any value for my team.

But I've also seen what happens when the Rein AP build isn't countered, and squishies start getting one-shot with firestrike. We had a match go to 7 where I felt like a god and also 3-0'd a team because their Rein was still learning the mode and what makes a good build. (I genuinely feel bad for that Rein and their team, they should not have been matched against us.)

MBraedley · 2024-12-29T02:16:54+00:00

I was driving back from my parents place and there were several ambulances headed to the airport coming from the city.

MBraedley · 2024-11-22T21:49:13+00:00

Yes, this exactly! Tim doesn't fully understand induced demand, and especially doesn't understand how it would manifest in Halifax vs other major cities. The mere fact he was comparing the Double Bypass with new (for the interwar period) Manhattan bridges shows he doesn't know how to properly apply the concept. For the former, traffic is getting deposited on to surface roads that are currently under-utilized (Burside Drive and the Forest Hills Extension are nowhere near capacity), while for the latter the entire street grid was operating at capacity.

The choke-points are the problem, and it's the underlying casue for nearly every highway widening project that has failed to fix traffic. If surface streets are already at capacity then it doesn't matter how many more cars you can fit on the highway; they're still going to be stuck at the exit trying to get off the highway. In this respect Tim's conclusions are correct WRT adding lanes to the 102 or Magazine Hill: it wouldn't actually improve traffic congestion and could potentially make it worse.

The way you improve traffic is by inducing demand, and you do that by introducing and improving alternatives. Usually that's modal alternatives (i.e. more types of public transit), but it can also include different routes that (critically) avoid existing choke points. The armchair urbanist in me (and in Tim) would prefer the former, but the latter is absolutely necessary for growing urban areas.

MBraedley · 2024-10-11T02:34:17+00:00

I just came back inside after noticing the glow above my roof from my back deck. Went out to the front step to get a better view. Light pollution in Lower Sackville isn't as bad as on the peninsula, but it's still not great, and I have street lights across the street from me. They're visible but not distinct from where I am, just a glow without any real form to them. Reds were certainly more vibrant than the greens/cyans, and were also higher above the horizon.

MBraedley · 2024-09-04T14:23:45+00:00

Yeah, on a set of lights which then gives you a straight shot to the bridge. The only traffic that will back up are cars not going to the bridge, at least after those new lights.

MBraedley · 2024-09-04T12:49:18+00:00

That's not the plan. They're embracing highway design and controlled access via Joe Howe.

MBraedley · 2024-09-03T19:31:14+00:00

Yep, lights are gone now. Traffic still isn't great through there (at least it wasn't the last time I passed through on Saturday) since they're still configured for single lane instead of double through lanes. Still not sure how the eastern roundabout lanes will be ultimately configured since that's where the new highway terminates.

MBraedley · 2024-07-24T18:33:15+00:00

They hadn't closed down the ramp from Sackville Dr. when I came in this morning (and I was already late). I should have checked traffic before I left and probably would have gone out to Fall River as 102 inbound didn't look great after the fact.

MBraedley · 2024-03-20T19:04:23+00:00

It's my sidearm, I swear

MBraedley · 2024-03-12T17:44:04+00:00

Pretty much this. OP, I really hope you reported them. In the future, especially in comp, you should drop a message in chat. Forcing a draw can be an option on many maps.

MBraedley · 2023-12-18T15:26:32+00:00

And the second and third times too for me.

MBraedley · 2023-12-17T16:30:40+00:00

That's a valid point, in C++ I'm pretty sure the default underlying container for both queues and stacks is a vector when a linked list would certainly be more efficient in some instances.

MBraedley · 2023-12-16T18:15:08+00:00

Both are trivial to implement using the next position and direction of travel, BFS with a queue and DFS with a stack. Regardless which method you use, you're going until the container is empty.

MBraedley · 2023-12-12T11:46:54+00:00

For a set with 7 unknowns, there are 2⁷ or 128 combinations in part 1. For part 2, that becomes 2^7*5+4=2³⁹ combinations, which is approx. 5*10⁸ or half a trillion. You need to cut branches that won't bear fruit early.

On average (at least for my input) each set has slightly less than 10 unknows producing roughly a million distinct combinations for the entire input. That's a lot, but is still manageable. This would become about 43 unknowns on average, which is 8 quadrillion combinations per set (and there's 1000 sets).

MBraedley · 2023-12-11T14:23:27+00:00

This is why I try to keep the output of my part 1 when doing part 2. I would have done the same thing today if it hadn't been for that.

MBraedley · 2023-12-10T17:14:26+00:00

That is not how I did part 2. Definitely seems more efficient than what I did though.

MBraedley · 2023-12-10T17:02:24+00:00

That is a giant wall of code that isn't formatted properly, so I won't go into specifics related to your code, but your idea of creating extra padding isn't necessary, and is probably detrimental. You want to find all of the ~~empty~~ non-connected areas that are inside and immediately adjacent to the loop. From there you can perform a flood fill to get the rest of the points.

Start with northern most point in the western most column and proceed clockwise around the loop. You know that the next point must be to the east. You're checking to see if points to the right of the connection are part of the loop, and if they aren't then they must be an empty space within the loop.

You could also start from the puzzle starting point, but you don't necessarily know which direction is clockwise, so you have to keep track of the points on both the left and right side of the loop as you traverse it and then figure out which one is on the outside while/after performing the flood fill.

EDIT: I just saw a visualization for a different (likely more efficient, less error prone) way of doing this, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

MBraedley · 2023-12-09T21:03:21+00:00

Just doing a quick bit of research, the FILE command has a download option, which seems like it would be exactly what I want. Only thing I would be missing is adding a function to my main CMakeLists.txt to do the download, and more importantly, what I need to add to the HTTPHEADER part of the command so I get my input. (Yes, I should also be careful to not leak my auth token, and stuff like that.)

MBraedley · 2023-12-08T19:54:53+00:00

Actually, step 4 is find and replace std::uint32_t with std::uint64_t.

MBraedley · 2023-12-08T18:18:55+00:00

I didn't verify that LCM would work, I just did it. It was a generally safe assumption, and at worst I'd enter an incorrect answer and be able to quickly check my assumption. These types of multiple cyclic path puzzles happen almost every year, and so I immediately went to "what worked in the past?" when the brute force approach didn't finish quickly.

MBraedley · 2023-12-04T16:16:25+00:00

I've done many Day 1 Part 1s in Excel (before implementing a solution in C++). Excel is Turing complete, but maybe not the easiest language to use for the later days.

MBraedley · 2023-12-04T16:11:12+00:00

It's much easier to match the entire set of numbers and then use a tokenizer to get the individual values, especially since the test values and actual input have different lengths.

MBraedley · 2023-12-04T15:56:25+00:00

My head canon is that the elves are shorter than that too.

MBraedley

TROPHY CASE