Loading speed

[Testlund]

Tried to load a saved evosim which had over 200 mutations in it. Took allmost 2 min to load. Then I saved it without mutations and load it again and it only took 13 seconds. I just pointing it out in case you might think your save has gotten corrupted or something, like I first thought.  

[EricL]

The sim file size difference is also striking.  If each mutation history string is 100 bytes, then 200 mutation strings is 20k.  If you have 1000 bots in your sim, that's 20Mb of mutation history in the sim file.... Little wonder it takes a while to parse and load as well as and adding significantly to the working set of the program.

[Numsgil]

Mutation details probably shouldn't be stored as a string.  Realistically mutation details are pretty templatized anyway.

Usually It's:

X happened to Y with length Z at timestamp T.

Would be worthwhile just to create a system to store the 4 or so numbers per mutation and set up a phylogenic tree against which the bots reference themselves instead of saving the mutations for each bot.

[EricL]

Completely agree.  Though not difficult, many other things are higher on my to do list so it won't happen soon unless someone else writes it.