Can DB actually open a .dbo file?

[Zinc Avenger]

Seems like a silly question to me, but its stumped me. I ran a week-long zerobot sim with regular saves of the "best" bot. Naturally the program gave an "out of memory" error and crashed, leaving me with a tantalisingly frozen screen listing a non-zero number of births.

Aha! I thought, I shall simply start a new sim with the "best bot" just before the sim crashed! Unfortunately, I can't find a way for DB to import anything but .txt or .org files, when the "best bot" is saved as a .dbo file.

Am I just being thick?

[EricL]

Edit-> Insert Organism.


Unlike the txt files which contain only bot DNA for a single bot, DBO files are binary files that contain a lot of living organism state like mutation rates, mutation history, age, parent info, number of offspring, ties, nrg, body, shell, slime, etc. and in the case of multi-bots, can contain many bot 'cells', not just one.

dbo files are also what teleporters use, so you can teleport it in also.

[EricL]

Also, I'd be curious to know if the out of memory error was becuase you filled up the hard drive or whether you think there's a memory leak of some sort.  Thanks.

[Numsgil]

If you're saving simulation files periodically, you'll be filling up your hard drive fast.  Again, it relates to those pesky mutation details.

[EricL]

If you're saving simulation files periodically, you'll be filling up your hard drive fast.  Again, it relates to those pesky mutation details.

Which is why I added the options to strip mutation details in autosaves and also to only preserve the last 10 autosaves.  

And just for completeness, I added an option to only preserve the last 10 autosaved 'best bots' for 2.42.9.

[Zinc Avenger]

The hard drive is not full (13GB free), but I wouldn't be surprised if a sudden explosion of reproduction brought the entire thing to a standstill. I wonder if a cancerously reproducing bot with 600+ mutations can eat memory faster than virtual memory can be allocated?

Incidentally, is there any documentation on the anatomy of a .dbo file?

[Henk]

DBO's have been around for a long time and I don't think much has changed since Carlos (  ) introduced them...

[EricL]

The source code itself is the best documentation as to dbo file format.  Note that it is not really a file format in that the only code that ever needs to parse and read it is DB itself.  The format is a consequence of the code, not the other way around.   Note also that the same code is used to save dbos as is used to save sims since part of saving a sim is saving the bots in the sim.

As the program evolves and features are added which require new bot properties or state, what gets put into dbos evolves as well.  I've probably added a dozen or more things in the last 6 months.  Luckily Nums (I think) added backwards compatability in the formating code long ago which makes new additions easy and backwards comptabile (you can load a bot saved in a newer version into an older version without issues - the newer stuff is ignored by the code in the older program).

There are other types of memory besides user mode VM.  Out of memory errors can occur due to exhaustion of kernal mode resources such as file handles or stack overflow.   I probably have a recursive allocation bugs or something like that somewhere.  If you could post a sim, perhaps the last one saved before the crash, that would be much appreciated.

[Numsgil]

As the program evolves and features are added which require new bot properties or state, what gets put into dbos evolves as well.  I've probably added a dozen or more things in the last 6 months.  Luckily Nums (I think) added backwards compatability in the formating code long ago which makes new additions easy and backwards comptabile (you can load a bot saved in a newer version into an older version without issues - the newer stuff is ignored by the code in the older program).

Backwards and forwards compatibility

It's really just a raw dump of a robot's class data.  Nothing really all that special.

[EricL]

Backwards and forwards compatibility

I cast a shadow in your presense...  

[Numsgil]

Is "when we are all together there is light everywhere and no shadows are cast." the rest of that statement?

[Korba]

Where is that from?   Oh, and awsome program!

[Numsgil]

It's from a book (series?) by Robert Sawyer called Far-Seer.  It's a method of acknowledging a superior, I believe.  You can see a sample use from one of his books here.

[Korba]

Thanks, it sounded familiar though I don't think that I have read the book, maybe I have heard someone else say it.