Comparing player strengths and weaknesses - java

I'm developing a game which will have the same sort of system as pokemon does, i.e. every player will have a 'type'(fire,water,grass etc.). When players fight, I need to determine what factr to multiply attacks by, to create strengths and weaknesses. So far I'm using a switch in each 'type' class which takes another 'type' class as input and returns the multiplication factor. With only three of these 'type' classes, I'm writing a lot of ode and I can foresee it getting out of hand in the future when I want to add more.
So my question is, how can I implement a DRY solution for determining strengths and weaknesses of each type? I've attached a table of the pokemon types as a reference for what it is I am trying to do.

How about enumerating the types, and building a 2D matrix that looks just like the one you posted. Whenever you need the "factor" for a battle, look the factor up using the attacker and defender as indices in the 2D array. Lookups would be fast and the code would be pretty clean.
Sample use cases would look something like this:
factor = factorTable[FIRE][WATER]; // would set factor to 0.5
factor = factorTable[WATER][FIRE]; // would set factor to 2.0
As Noctua suggested, it might be a good idea to have the actual data in a config file. That way you can easily change it without recompiling. If you go for that option, you'd need some kind of parsing function to create the matrix at the beginning of the program.
An even better step to take next would be to encapsulate the table behavior and type representation in classes. The underlying implementation could still be the same (or change, that's the point) but you wouldn't expose the table nor the enumerations directly.
factor = StrengthFactors(Player1.Type(), Player2.Type()); // or similar

I think you should use a single array of strings to store the different types. Then you use a 2D Matrix to store multipliers. The idea is to use the id of this array of string to know where is the multiplier. You will have a O(n) complexity to find the multiplier you want.

Related

Efficient de-deduplication (memoization) of objects in Java, shortcomings of HashSet

So I am working on some data-structure, whose operations tend to generate lots of different instances of a certain type. The datasets can be large enough to potentially yield millions of such objects. It is crucial that I "memoize" them, since there are recurring patterns in these calculations.
Typically the way memoization is done is that you simply have a set (say, a HashMap with its keys as its values) of all instances ever created. Any time an operation would return a result, instead the set is searched for an existing, identical object. If the object is found, it is returned instead, and the result we looked up with instantly becomes garbage.
Now, this is straight-forward enough. However, HashMap is not a perfect fit for this use case. There are two points I will address here:
Lack of support for custom equality and hashing function
Lack of support for "equivalent key" lookup.
The first has already been discussed (question 5453226), though not sufficiently for my purposes; solutions in the form of "just wrap your key types with another object" are a non-starter. If the key is a relatively small object (e.g. an array or a string of small size) the overhead cost of these wrappers can be nearly 2X.
To illustrate the second point, let's say the data type I'd like to memoize is a (typically small) int[]. Suppose I have made an operation and it has yielded a result, but it is not exactly in an int[], rather, it consists of a int[] x and separately a length int length. What I would like to do now is to look up the set for an array that equals (as a sequence of ints) to the data in x[0..length-1]. In principle, there should be no problem to accomplish this, provided that the user supplies equality and hashing predicates that match the ones used for the key type itself. In principle, the "compatible key" (x and length here) doesn't even have to be materialized as an object.
The lack of "compatible key" lookups may cause to program to create temporary key objects that are likely to be thrown away afterwards.
Problem 1 prevents me from using something like int[] as a key type in a Map, since it doesn't have the hashing and equality functions that I want. Further, I actually want to use shallow / reference-only comparisons and hashing on these objects once I'm past the memoization step, since then x is an identical object to y iff x == y. Here we have the same key type, but different desired equality/hashing behavior.
In C++, the functionality in (1) is offered out of the box by most hash-table based containers. (2) is given by some container types, for example the associative container templates in the Boost library.
A third function I'd be interested in (less important) is the insert_check/insert_commit idea, where we first check if a matching key exist, and we also get some implementation-defined marker back (e.g. bucket index). Then if we do create a new key and want to insert it, we give back the marker and it's inserted to the right place in the data structure. There is no reason why the hash of the same key should be computed twice.
If the compiler (or JIT) is clever enough to avoid double lookup in this scenario, that is a preferable solution - it's easier not to have to worry about it. I just never actually tested if it is.
Are there any libraries known to offer any of these capabilities in Java? Do I have to roll my own? Am I missing something?

Custom Object properties - multiple primitive variables or array of objects

I'm rather fresh in programming and I try to make simple app. App will allow user to make a character sheet for popular RPG game. Right now I trying to model it (on paper) and have (maybe a stupid one) question.
Each character have set of skills - a lot (33). And each skill cane have value of 0-5. Now my question is: is it better to make 33 ints insied Character object or make Class Skill and make array of Skills in Character? My knowledge of Java is not good enough to decide :( If anyone find some useful article about it or can just simply explain it to me I would be grateful.
I just hope it is not completely stupid question :)
Have a nice day!
If you have a fixed number of skills you can use multiple attributes, will increase readability when used, but will make your class a bit ugly and less mantainable.
If values are always an int, I would reccomend to use a Map instead of array or Collection.
Map<String, Integer> skills;
So you can have a class with nice declaration and refer to skills by name and not by position in the array:
Integer strenghtLevel = skills.get("strenght");
I definitely recommend to create a specific Skill class. Today you are using ints from 0 to 5; but such things tend to become more complex pretty fast.
Therefore you should carefully design the "Skill" class upfront (you might also consider to have a Skill interface; as you might face the need to have different implementations (for different skill types) at some future point).
You character class could then be using a dynamic container; for example java.util.ArrayList to hold all the various skills.
It's probably better to make a class skill, because then you can ensure each skill has a name and a value. Then, you can also do things like creating a method to print out or display the name and value, and if you want to add another attribute to the skill, it is fairly easy.
You could use an array of int elements. It should be enough, unless you want some custom logic. If the values should have states and actions, then they should be objects.

Idea for a data structure to store 2D data?

I have a large 2D grid, x-by-y. The user of the application will add data about specific points on this grid. Unfortunately, the grid is far too big to be implemented as a large x-by-y array because the system on which this is running does not have enough memory.
What is a good way to implement this so that only the points that have data added to them are stored in memory?
My first idea was to create a BST of the data points. A hash function such as "(long)x<<32 + y" would be used to compare the nodes.
I then concluded that this could lose efficiency if not well balanced so I came up with the idea of having a BST of comparable BSTs of points. The outer BST would compare the inner BSTs based on their x values. The inner BSTs would compare the points by their y values (and they would all have the same x). So when the programmer wants to see if there is a point at (5,6), they would query the outer BST for 5. If an inner BST exists at that point then the programmer would query the inner BST for 6. The result would be returned.
Can you think of any better way of implementing this?
Edit: In regards to HashMaps: Most HashMaps require having an array for the lookup. One would say "data[hash(Point)] = Point();" to set a point and then find the Point by hashing it to find the index. The problem, however, is that the array would have to be the size of the range of the hash function. If this range is less than the total number of data points that are added then they would either have no room or have to be added to an overflow. Because I don't know the number of points that will be added, I would have to make an assumption that this number would be less than a certain amount and then set the array to that size. Again, this instantiates a very large array (although smaller than originally if the assumption is that there will be less data points than x*y). I would like the structure to scale linearly with the amount of data and not take up a large amount when empty.
It looks like what I want is a SparseArray, as some have mentioned. Are they implemented similarly to having a BST inside of a BST?
Edit2: Map<> is an interface. If I were to use a Map then it looks like TreeMap<> would be the best bet. So I would end up with TreeMap< TreeMap< Point> >, similar to the Map< Map< Point> > suggestions that people have made, which is basically a BST inside of a BST. Thanks for the info, though, because I didn't know that the TreeMap<> was basically the Java SDK of a BST.
Edit3: For those whom it may concern, the selected answer is the best method. Firstly, one must create a Point class that contains (x,y) and implements comparable. The Point could potentially be compared by something like (((long)x)<<32)+y). Then one would TreeMap each point to the data. Searching this is efficient because it is in a balanced tree so log(n) cost. The user can also query all of this data, or iterate through it, by using the TreeMap.entrySet() function, which returns a set of Points along with the data.
In conclusion, this allows for the space-efficient and search-efficient implementation of a sparse array, or in my case, a 2D array, that can also be iterated through efficiently.
Either a Quadtree, a k-d-tree or an R-tree.
Store index to large point array into one of the spatial structures.
Such spatial structures are advantageous if the data is not equally distributed, like geographic data that concentrates in cities, and have no point in the sea.
Think if you can forget the regular grid, and stay with the quad tree.
(Think, why do you need a regular grid? A regular grid is usually only a simplification)
Under no circumstances use Objects to store a Point.
Such an Object needs 20 bytes only for the fact that it is an object! A bad idea for a huge data set.
An int x[], and int[] y, or an int[]xy array is ideal related to memory usage.
Consider reading
Hanan Samet's "Foundations of Multidimensional Data Structures"
(at least the Introduction).
You could use a Map<Pair, Whatever> to store your data (you have to write the Pair class). If you need to iterate the data in some specific order, make Pair Comparable, and use NavigableMap
One approach could be Map<Integer, Map<Integer, Data>>. The key on the outer map is the row value, and the key in the inner map is the column value. The value associated with that inner map (of type Data in this case) corresponds to the data at (row, column). Of course, this won't help if you're looking at trying to do matrix operations or such. For that you'll need sparse matrices.
Another approach is to represent the row and column as a Coordinate class or a Point class. You will need to implement equals and hashCode (should be very trivial). Then, you can represent your data as Map<Point, Data> or Map<Coordinate, Data>.
You could have a list of lists of an object, and that object can encode it's horizontal and vertical position.
class MyClass
{
int x;
int y;
...
}
Maybe I'm being too simplistic here, but I think you can just use a regular HashMap. It would contain custom Point objects as keys:
class Point {
int x;
int y;
}
Then you override the equals method (and thus the hashCode method) to be based on x and y. That way you only store points that have some data.
I think you are on the right track to do this in a memory efficient way - it can be implemented fairly easily by using a map of maps, wrapped in a class to give a clean interface for lookups.
An alternative (and more memory efficient) approach would be to use a single map, where the key was a tuple (x,y). However, this would be less convenient if you need to make queries like 'give me all values where x == some value'.
You might want to look at FlexCompColMatrix, CompColMatrix and other sparse matrices implementations from the Matrix toolkit project.
The performance will really depends on the write/read ratio and on the density of the matrix, but if you're using a matrix package it will be easier to experiment by switching the implementation
My suggestion to you is use Commons Math: The Apache Commons Mathematics Library. Because it will save your day, by leveraging the math force that your application require.

Linearly "smoothed" function using lookup table

If I want to write a function (probably also a class) which returns linearly "smoothed" data from an immutable lookup table (fixed when calling constructor) like this:
For example func(5.0) == 0.5.
What is the best way of storing the lookup table?
I am thinking of using two arrays.
Could there be other better ways?
What is the best way of calculating the required value? (In terms of real-time efficiency, excluding preparation time)
I am thinking of pre-sorting the lookup table on arg and using a binary search to find the nearest two points.
Or should I build a binary tree to simplify searching?
Or could there be other better ways?
(Minor) What would one call this kind of function/class/data-structure/algorithms? Is there any formal names for this in Computer Science?
I think I may need to write my own class. The class, at best, should be immutable because there is no need to change it after initialization and probably multiple threads will be using it. I may also need to get keys and values by the index.
Looks like you are trying to linearly interpolate a set of points. I'd use java.util.NavigableMap. It provides functions such as higherEntry(K key) and lowerEntry(K key) which facilitates getting the neighboring points.
You put into the map your (x,y)s. When queried for f(x_i), you'd first check if the mapping is contained in your map, if it is, return it. If not you'd call higherKey(x_i) and lowerKey(x_i) to find the neighboring two points. Then use the formula to interpolate those two points (see
Wikipedia's Linear Interpolation Page).
I'd also implement the interpolation logic in a different class, and pass it in as a constructor argument to your function class in case you want to use different interpolation methods (i.e. polynomial interpolation) later.

Is it better to use a custom Java object or to use a HashMaps to store data

Lets say we have a bunch of data (temp,wind,pressure) that ultimately comes in as a number of float arrays.
For example:
float[] temp = //get after performing some processing (takes time)
float[] wind =
Say we want to store these values in memory for different hours of the day. Is it better to put these on a HashMap like:
HashMap maphr1 = new HashMap();
maphr1.put("temp",temp);
maphr1.put("wind",wind);
...
Or is it better to create a Java object like:
public class HourData(){
private float[] temp,wind,pressure;
//getters and setters for above!
}
...
// use it like this
HourData hr1 = new HourData();
hr1.setTemp(temp);
hr1.setWind(wind);
Out of these two approaches which is better in terms of performance, readability, good OOP practice etc
You're best off having an HourData class that stores a single set of temperature, wind, and pressure values, like this:
public class HourData {
private float temp, wind, pressure;
// Getters and setters for the above fields
}
If you need to store more than one set of values, you can use an array, or a collection of HourData objects. For example:
HourData[] hourDataArray = new HourData[10000];
This is ultimately much more flexible, performant, and intuitive to use than putting storing the arrays of data in your HourData class.
Flexibility
I say that this approach is more flexible because it leaves the choice of what kind of collection implementation to use (e.g. ArrayList, LinkedList, etc.) to users of the HourData class. Moreover, if he/she wishes to deal just with a single set of values, this approach doesn't force them to deal with an array or collection.
Performance
Suppose you have a list of HourData instances. If you used three float arrays in the way that you described, then accessing the i'th temp, wind, and pressure values may cause three separate pages to be accessed in memory. This happens because all of the temp values will be stored contiguously, followed by all of the wind values, followed by all of the pressure values. If you use a class to group these values together, then accessing the i'th temp, wind, and pressure values will be faster because they will all be stored adjacent to each other in memory.
Intuitive
If you use a HashMap, anyone who needs to access any of the fields will have to know the field names in advance. HashMap objects are better suited to key/value pairs where the keys are not known at compile time. Using an HourData class that contains clearly defined fields, one only needs to look at the class API to know that HourData contains values for temp, wind, and pressure.
Also, getter and setter methods for array fields can be confusing. What if I just want to add a single set of temp, wind, and pressure values to the list? Do I have to get each of the arrays, and add the new values to the end of them? This kind of confusion is easily avoided by using a "wrapper" collection around an HourData that deals only with single values.
For readability i would definately go for a object since it makes more sense. Especially since you store different datacollections like the wind longs have a different meaning as the temp longs.
Besides this you can also store other information like the location and time of your measurement.
Well if you dont have any key to differentiate different instances of the same object. I would create HourData objects and store them in a array list.
Putting data in a contained object always increases the readability.
You have mentioned bunch of data, So I would rather read it as collection of data.
So the answer is , if something already available in Java collection framework out of box , why do you want to write one for you.
You should look at Java collection classes and see which fits your requirement better, whether it is concurrent access, fast retrieve time or fast add time etc etc..
Hope this helps
EDIT----
Adding one more dimension to this.
The type of application you are building also affects your approach.
The above discussion rightly mentions readability, flexibility , performance as driving criteria for your design.
But the type of application you are building is also one of the influencing factors.
For example, Lets say you are building a web application.
A Object which is stored in memory for a long time would be either in Application or Session Scope. So you will have to make it immutable by design or use it for thread safe manner.
The business data which remains same across different implementations should be designed as per OOP or best practices but the infrastructure or Application logic should more be your framework driven.
I feel what you are talking, like keeping an object for a long time in memory is more a framework driven outlook, hence I suggested use Java Collection and put your business objects inside it. Important points are
Concurrent Access Control
Immutable by design
If you have a limited and already defined list of parameters then it's better to use the second approach.
In terms of performance: you don't need to search for key in hashmap
In terms of readability: data.setTemp(temp) is better than map.put("temp", temp). One of the benefits of the first approach is that typing errors will be catched during the compilation
In terms of good OOP practices: first approach has nothing to do with OOP practices. Using the second approach you can easily change the implementation, add new methods, provide several alternative data object implementations, etc.
But you might want to use collections if you don't know the parameters and if you want to work with uncategorized(extensible) set of parameters.

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