New user issues

[Numsgil]

I installed DB on my laptop like I was a new user.  Here is my experience (with 2.4X):

1.  None of the settings that come with the program will even let you run a simulation.

2.  None of the robots that come with the program can survive.

3.  Waste seems to be building up very fast (I'll bet this is a bug).  All my animal minimalis died off very quickly.  It took me (who knows what I'm doing) a few minutes to figure out what's up.

4.  I must have missed this, but what are the arcs being drawn inside my bots?  Are they graphical representations of something like waste?  Is there a key anywhere (a key for the graphics is going to be very important with the new graphical things).

This was tested with the latest buddy drop.

That's it, aside from the sheer amount you need to know to get a custom sim going.  But that can't be helped, and it's what the wiki is for.

[EricL]

I plan to spend some time on the new user experience in the next few days.  I'll post what I do.

The graphical arcs (along with the new 'Movement Vectors' feature) are a brand spanking new feature I currently call 'Resource Guages'.  I was planning on doing a full write up when I release the next version.  On on your advice I will add to the program a color key.  They are graphical represenations of the bot's resource state and a few other state items of interest.  Currently, they include:

.nrg - white
.body - magenta
.waste - green
.venom - blue
.shell - red
.slime - yellow
virus formation countdown timer - Cyan

The colors are (where possible) the same as those used for shot impact dots.  I plan to add a few more including one for the cost-of-reproduction countdown.  The idea is to provide more visability into the behaviour and interctions of multiple bots simultaniously, particularly evolved ones with hard to decypher DNA.

They can be turned off via a menu item on the Robots menu.   When turned on, there is a small perf impact.  When off, there is essentially no performance impact.

[Numsgil]

Sounds neat

Although the only colors I remember seeing were green and yellow.

[EricL]

Ah.  The last buddy only has body and nrg.  I changed the colors to match the impact dots and added the additional guages post the buddy.  Stay tuned.

[Numsgil]

I really like this idea, BTW.  One of your best ideas I think

[Testlund]

Yeah, this is pretty cool. One could pretend it's little organs inside the bots.  I don't know how it will look like yet when you have put it all in, but little color dots or lines inside the bots that shows their state and what's happening inside them whould make it more interesting to look at. Maybe you could even make them look a little like mitocondria and similar.... Hmm.  

[EricL]

Regarding the new user issues.

Beginning with 2.42.8f, the need to have performed a prior install should go away.  I have removed the reliance on sysvars.txt.  Additionally, the program itself will now create a settings directory if one is not found and will run without a lastexit.set or default.set file, using reasonable internal defaults.

I still have some work to go here.  No bots come with the naked exe for example and I have yet to handle cases where a sim save is attempted and no Saves directory exists (and several other such cases) but I will get to these.  The goal of needing nothing but the exe is pretty close.  In particular, I plan to add a built-in default plant and a built-in default animal species (essentially Alga_minimalis and Animal_minimalis whose DNA will be inside the exe) and have them cued up and ready to go with appropraite settings as part of a default sim so that the first time user need do nothing but run the exe and start the default sim in order to get a viaable sim running seconds after downloading.

The built in plant will likely become the simple food source discussed here.

[Numsgil]

Not entirely related, but your discussion of a self-boot strapping exe reminded me of my own experiments with them.  I made a game in 15KB that used OpenGL to make a terrain demo with a procedurally generated dirt texture and some experimental procedural clouds.

In particular, you can add alot of stuff to the exe, especially text, if you're willing to pack the exe.  UPX is my personal favorite.

It doesn't impact the executable's speed in any way, and you can get a good 60% compression going.  A zip of the exe is going to be marginally smaller, and the program will load faster (unpacking is faster than reading from the very slow hard drive).

It's pretty easy to set up a .bat file to automate the compression.  It would look like this:

upx yourprogram.exe
pause

Doesn't really add anything all that neat, especially in today's day and age, but I think it's pretty neat to run a program that's tiny