RustConf 2023 - Using Rust and Battlesnake to never stop learning

[@Coreyja]

Author here! Hope you all enjoyed this talk as much as I did putting it together! I'll try to check in on this comment secion and continue to answer any questions you have! Thanks for stopping by!

[@darklajid]

I appreciated the talk, I'm glad to learn about battle snakes. I do feel that the talk was very light on .. details. I would've liked to understand a bit more about the actual changes vs just "4 turns to ... 7 turns". There was no ... Rust code in the talk :-/

[@Coreyja]

@maximus1172 Love to hear it! Good luck with your snake! Stop by the Discord if you ever get stuck or just want to chat!

[@linco95]

How does it score a state? Does it consider eating fruit? Trapping/killing opponent snake? Etc...

[@Coreyja]

@@linco95 Sorry for the super late response! I don't get notifications for this video and forgot to check on it The scoring function is in someways the real "brain" of a minimax snake like I write! My best one is based mostly on area control. So it compares the number of board squares I can get to before my opponents! There is also some modifiers in there for preferring to get food when I'm low on health and stuff like that I've found this area control to work fairly well for me, but the fun in Battlesnake is trying out different things and seeing what works best!

[@VoyivodaFTW1]

Fun talk. Definitely interested in Battlesnake and optimization.

[@adrianbool4568]

By far the best Rust talk I've watched. Both engaging and informative. Well done on spreading the Rust love! ;-)

[@EngineerNick]

Very cool :)

[@stevenhe3462]

Prune the tree and make it parallel, I guess?