General > Biology
Volvox
Numsgil:
A little CPU intensive, but I've managed to speed up the simulation quite a bit, so something new that slows it down won't be as big an impact as otherwise.
Found something: A baby volvox is called a gonium:
"Gonium: 4, 8, or 32 cells in flat plate"
Flat plate! That's what we're trying to do anyway. So maybe what we're really after is a gonium.
A gonium of 4 cells would probably be something like Helios. But like the rest of our MB, Helios takes alot of commands to create the structure, and the process isn't foolproof.
So what are multicellular critters doing that we aren't? They don't seem to carefully turn by 39.5 degrees, fire a tie, turn a bit more, etc. There's something else going on.
As for moving,
"Swimming path: colonies rotate in a flat coenobia (Gonium)"
Hmmm.... Some tie physics is off, so things like angular momentum aren't even addressed. After 3.0, I'll look into ties.
For reproduction:
"Autocolony formation: gonidia develop by asymmetric cell divison in the posterior part; at 8-cell stage, a pore opens; when final cell number is reached, colony inverts through pore"
Does that make sense to anyone?
Here's the first resource:
Tiny organisms.
As far as mucialge goes, here's what I have so far:
"In addition, many colonial forms have small cells, which secrete mucilage. The mucilage is less dense than water and aids in buoyancy."
Found it here
Here's how they divide. This makes sense, but something like this is hard to do in the current program. How do these colonies know which direction to divide in?
Maybe we could have 2 cell types, one circular and one square. The square forms would allow sticking together much easier, then you can use the *.hitang (or whatever the command is) to help figure out which side to divide on. Not perfect but a start.
Also, maybe a reproductive flag could be set that means that the parent is to create a permanent tie to the child instead of the temporary birth tie.
The problem really is that current bots are very non object oriented, but cells in real life seem to be object oriented, so the individual behaviors are independantly triggered. What we need is a DNA where the order of the genes doesn't matter. This doesn't have to be from within the program, it could just be a development philosophy for DNA writers.
Numsgil:
Round 2:
This is a link on goniums
Note that they can be ovoid or angular.
Second Link.
This one says:
"A Gonium colony consists of 4, 8, 16 or 32 cells, held together in a disk-shape by a gelatinous matrix."
So a multicellular ogranism's matrix seems to help give it its shape, while the fibrous things that connect the cells help keep it together (?).
I'll keep researching. How could we have a gelatinous matrix in DB? What would it do?
The last thing we'd need is some kind of sexual reproduction (not the thing we have now, I mean a good version :P). That's always been my pet project that I can't figure out a good idea for.
SyndLig:
You said something about having "circular and square" bots? That's been something I've wanted in DB for a while (but I have no knowledge of coding. >_>).
It would be very interesting if you could control the amount of sides on a bot to a maximum (say, 6-8), so we could have anywhere between a circular bot to a hexagonal or octogonal bot. That could add some interesting recognitions, too, such as a bot that'll only eat triangular veggies.
Over time a bot could transform to a totally different shape, which can easily help/harm them (A bot designed for use as a square (in things like reproduction) suddenly becoming circular would most likely kill it off).
Off-topic somewhat, I know, but hey... I wasn't ever very interested in volvoxes.
Numsgil:
The original DB way back when had square bots. They were changed to circular to make them more realistic.
I can see arguments for rectangular and ovoid, but triangular? Octogonal?
For reproduction, I think something where the two daughter cells don't take up more room than the parent did would be useful.
Like this: [ ] = a cell
1. [ ][ ][ ]
2. [ ][|][ ]
3. [ ][][][ ]
4. [ ][ ][ ][ ]
That would follow along with the physical sizes I'm giving all the cells' compnents.
shvarz:
That makes sense, Nums. Also, when cells are dividing equally there is really no "side" to which they divide. Instead, they choose an "axis" along which to split the cells.
Here is an idea that might make creation of bots like Helios: When two bots are tied and one of them divides, then it automatically gets ties to both parental bots.
Something like
O---O
left one divides
--- Code: ---o---O
| /
|/
o
--- End code ---
Or, if they both divide on the same cycle:
--- Code: ---o---o
| |
o---o
--- End code ---
Then creation of Helios-like bot would be accomplished by two simple divisions (second one synchronized).
By the way, when it is said that Volvox cells divide in a single plane, it just means that they form a single-layer sheet. That sheet is then wrapped up somehow to form three-dimentional hollow ball. We would have to step down in terms of dimensions - divide in single direction, then wrap the line to form a circle.
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