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Multibot Vegetable

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Boris of Quirm:
I am in the process of designing a veggiebot that will grow in a similar fashion to a basic plant, but I was wondering if anyone has tried this before.

My current plan is to assign a value to a cell that determines whether it is a root, stem, leaf, flower or seed.  This will be done at birth and governed by who the parent is.  I am still working out the logic for this but will post my progress here as it developes.

The end plan is to have a multibot that passes food through it's roots and leafs into the rest of the plant.  A seed is then produced by the flower and this seed can then attach itself to a passing 'animal' where it can grow until it is big enough to become a stem, produce it's own root and start the process again.

If anyone has any suggestions/hints/tips/ideas/etc. they will be gratefully recieved.

Numsgil:
Multibot programming is notoriously hard, generally because it's difficult to create the structure you need to program a bot, both in the DNA and in the structure of your multibot.

However, if you're willing to experiment in 2.4, you can use the *.timer to help bots decide what they're supposed to be.

*.timer is incremented every cycle, it's value automatically passed on to children, and modifiable by a bot.

Boris of Quirm:
Thanks for that, I may give that a go.

PurpleYouko:
In 2.37 you can simulate this with any memory location you like. Just have a gene that increments the timer on each cycle.

Also use *.robage to determine the steps to take during the bot's first few cycles of life, or to tell it when to enter a new phase of development.

There are many ways to do this kind of thing and they are all complex but doable

Boris of Quirm:
I have come up with a basic plan of attack for developing my plant.

It will take place over several versions each one slightly more complex than the last.  Initially I will not be concerned about how the bot reacts to attacks or reproduces.

[you]Version 1 - The Basic Plant[/you]

The bot has three cell types - a stem, a leaf and a flower.

A stem is the only part of the bot that can reproduce.  It can by tied to a maximum of 4 other cells.

A leaf is denoted by spinning to the left (anti-clockwise).

A flower is denoted by spinning to the right (clockwise).


[you]Version 2 - Defences and food distribution[/you]

As version 1 and :-

Stems now produce shell each turn.  This is similar to a tree producing bark.  The older a stem cell is the more bark it will have.

Leaves now pass some of their energy into the stem cell they are attached to.  They also produce poison each turn.  This will be a poisonous plant!

Flowers draw energy from the stem cell they are attached to.


[you]Version 3 - Reproduction[/you]

As version 2 and :-

While they are spinning, flowers now look for bots that are not part of the plant.  If they find one they attach to it and detach from the plant.  They now turn into a seed.

As a seed they remain with their host for a number of cycles after which they detach and turn themselves into a stem cell.

The whole growing process can now start again.


These versions are subject to change and other versions may be added at a later date depending how well these work.  Suggestions are welcome.

My goal is not to worry too much about what's eating me, as I am trying to develop a working model of a plant.

The pseudo code for version 1 will be posted up here once I have finished it, followed closely (hopefully ;) ) by the DNA.

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