Code center > Suggestions
What should vegs not be allowed to do?
Anonomous Guest Person:
I like the cellulose idea too (but want a *.photo sysvar for SOMETHING darn it!) It's... almost exactly the same as my idea, really, with the main difference being that mine was just to emulate body in matters of mass and volume and stuff like that.
And, if not for the fact that it wouldn't allow for bots to hide their eyes, I'd be all for keeping it so that in order to see, you have to have a definate *.eye5 (or some other number) in your bot's DNA.
Also, if it's possible to do so without actually be MORE taxing on performance, I'd like it if it checked each eye usage individually, with ref sysvars also accounting for .eye5.
That is, if .refeye is used, then it'll calculate .eye5 even if no .eye5 is actually used. (Don't diss the possibilities of a robot that could do this! It'd be seen as blind but wouldn't be if done well! Now I just have to figure out how to mathematically calculate where a bot will be in one cycle of movement using only ref vars, and calculate the angle distance that'll occur... if someone knows that freaky trigonometry stuff (I probably even spelled the word wrong! that's how little I know of it!) please teach me!)
Anyway, sorry for rambling My point is, there'd be a lot less system tax because plenty of bots out there don't use at least one or two of their eyes, and some neglect as much as half of them.
Numsgil:
I remember now, the C++ code checks for syvar usage during lifetime, but the VB fork doesn't because we wanted to be sure that refeye > 0 if the ref'ed bot can see.
Zinc Avenger:
Why not create a setting (tickbox, whatever) that says that a bot is a restricted veggy?
I don't think the idea of restricting vegetables with regard to eyes etc. is a good thing, the more freedom there is the more interesting the simulation becomes after all!
But if the user can specify a bot to be a "restricted" vegetable then it would allow us to run much larger sims with lower overheads, and not interfere with the more interesting vegetables possible.
In fact, nearly all veggies I use in my less exotic sims are Alga Minimalis. Is there some way of making this more efficient? All (unmutated) AM veggies act the same way, so how about creating a "default" veggy bot that acts like AM but is not handled by the DNA script system? Could that shave a few microseconds off a cycle? Just throwing wild ideas into the teeth of the wind here.
EricL:
I'm torn about your excellent suggestion ZA. One the one hand, yes I think I could make some significant perf enhancements for sims with restricted veggies. On the other hand, I don't like even the current species-wide UI options for fixed and autotroph and veggie repopulation and I worry about too many knobs in the UI.
I think I'm coming to the position that autotrophy should be available to all bots as discussed above, that we should (someday) replace the different veggy feeding styles with a new mechanism as discussed above, that direct re-population and population control for these guys should go away and that soley a bot's genes dicate whether they take advantage of autotrophy or not. Thus all bots would essentially have the autotrophy option checked.
The reason I dislike the veggy repopulation and population control stuff is that it's artificial and amoung other things repopulation causes discontinious sim energy inflows.
How's this. There's a restricted "built-in" veggy. It can't see, it' can't move on it's own, it doesn't evolve, it doesn't even have DNA and the veggy repopulation and population control only works for this built-in species. Maybe it's even always fixed or at a minimum the fixed option checkbox only applies to them. (Any other bot that wants to be fixed has to have a gene to fix themselves.) Being fixed helps performance since fixed bots don't move, don't collide with other fixed bots, don't friction or fluid resistance, etc. The restricted veggy is a bot - it can be seen, eaten, tied to, etc. - but it's there mostly as an artifact of the landscape to bootstrap the ecosystem, provide food for other bots and as a doorway for energy to enter the sim. People who don't care above evolving veggies can use these for the veggies in their sim and reap the performance enefits. People who want the full flexability to evolve autotrophic bots or autotrpoh/non-autotrpoh hybrids can use full blown autotrophs that have the potential to evolve, see, move, etc.
Anonomous Guest Person:
--- Quote from: EricL ---How's this. There's a restricted "built-in" veggy. It can't see, it' can't move on it's own, it doesn't evolve, it doesn't even have DNA and the veggy repopulation and population control only works for this built-in species. Maybe it's even always fixed or at a minimum the fixed option checkbox only applies to them. (Any other bot that wants to be fixed has to have a gene to fix themselves.) Being fixed helps performance since fixed bots don't move, don't collide with other fixed bots, don't friction or fluid resistance, etc. The restricted veggy is a bot - it can be seen, eaten, tied to, etc. - but it's there mostly as an artifact of the landscape to bootstrap the ecosystem, provide food for other bots and as a doorway for energy to enter the sim. People who don't care above evolving veggies can use these for the veggies in their sim and reap the performance enefits. People who want the full flexability to evolve autotrophic bots or autotrpoh/non-autotrpoh hybrids can use full blown autotrophs that have the potential to evolve, see, move, etc.
--- End quote ---
I like that idea to some level... but it has a few major problems.
What happens when other bots change it's sysvals from outside? Or virus it up?
Also, if this is added I'd suggest that it's not ALWAYS fixed but rather that whether it's fixed or not remains unique to each bot, with an added exception that it gives birth to bots that're fixed based on species preference as opposed to the bot's own preference.
Also, to Numsgil, may I request that you take your idea of muscle, fat, and cellulose to a new topic so we can discuss it without getting too far off topic in this topic? I know it probably has a few topics devoted to it but they're probably at least a year old... by now.
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