Project HYDRA

[Light]

thinking back about it some genes in helios dont actually activate and serve no purpose, they are junk in a sense, Helios works by tiein and then using the fact the ties aren't solid for each bot to move/rotate into position  and then when the ties are solid they are locked, The reason Helios doesn't work in 2.4x is not due to the ties but due to the greater differences in size between bots, when it tries to form they are to close together and to much variation in size for all 4 bots to be produced and tie to each other successfully. Also when bots reproduce in 2.37 there is a small gap between them, but in 2.4 they are touching and birth ties seem more 'springy' in 2.37. Helios is so precise in its formation that slight changes cause it to break

[EricL]

As for stifftie, you can "set" it at age 2 but it should have no effect till the tie stiffens. It is a value that stays put forever so this is OK.

I don't think fixlen works that way tho. I think if you set it too early it doesn't do anything.

Well, there's one bug in 2.4 then.  The current code zeros out .stifftie, .fixlen and sets .fixang to 32000 the cycle after a value gets placed into tienum.

So, is .tienum the actual trigger then?  The 2.4 code may be backwards and treats these others are the triggers.  Currently, any value placed into tienum persists across cycles (there is a line to set it to 0 at the end of the cycle after all the tie operations have happened, but it is commented out).

Also,  I have been playing with Helios using the fixed radius mode in 2.4, which should eliminate the different bot size issues.  There are still issues.  It forms pairs, not quads.  I think the tie physics are what is changing the realtive positions and failing the quad formation as well as possible sysvar issues.   Will keep digging.

[PurpleYouko]

So, is .tienum the actual trigger then?

Yes it should be. Tienum is the point we use to reference a specific tie that we want to change the length or angle of so it makes sense for it to have it reset the cycle after it is used. The others cannot be processed without tienum being first set so this seems a logical way to do things.

Stifftie, fixang and fixlen are set by the use of tienum but are actually directly tied to physical tie properties in the ties array. These property should remain in the set position unless the robot is not a multi-bot in which case fixang and fixlen revert to default positions but since the springiness of ties doesn't come into effect until they harden, stifftie remains the same.
I can't say for sure it the value in the sysvar remains set but the ties array value does.

Tienum should most definitely NOT persist across cycles