Author Topic: Another strange behavior  (Read 4313 times)

Offline Testlund

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Another strange behavior
« on: January 07, 2007, 02:55:15 AM »
I have found that if you have it set so the sun goes done after a certain amount of energy has been reached in the sim, then everything comes to a halt. No reproduction. It doesn't make any sense to me that all evobots with random mutations shouldn't be able to reproduce just because they aren't hit constantly with energy shots. If I turn off that setting and energy starts flowing into the sim, then the bots starts to multiply again. I checked them and they all had different levels of energy. Has anybody else seen this or do I need to post a sim?
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Offline Testlund

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Another strange behavior
« Reply #1 on: January 07, 2007, 03:59:26 AM »
And here's one that produced an offspring already at an age of 4 cycles, with no .repro instruction.  
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Offline EricL

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Another strange behavior
« Reply #2 on: January 07, 2007, 02:07:54 PM »
Please post a sim.

There is no direct relationship between sunshine and reproduction in the code.  There are some indirect things.  For example, bots must have body > 2 to reproduce.  Perhaps your evo bots all have different nrg levles but also all have different nrg reproduction thresholds? Posting a sim would help.

Regarding the young mother, that one is curious.  It certainly looks like it got hit with some info shots.  Perhaps that is how it reproduced.  Or the parent may have forced it to reproduce via .tialoc, .tieval...
« Last Edit: January 07, 2007, 02:09:58 PM by EricL »
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Offline Testlund

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Another strange behavior
« Reply #3 on: January 07, 2007, 03:55:09 PM »
Well, if you say so I guess you're right. You understand this better than me. I didn't know memory shots could do so much stuff. Here's a sim. You can run this and explore the latest issues I've been wondering about, including the override tresholds for costX.
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Offline EricL

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Another strange behavior
« Reply #4 on: January 07, 2007, 06:07:13 PM »
My guess is that your sim is basically stagnating when the sun goes down.  Your nrg shooting veggies have a condition that stops them shooting if their nrg falls below 10000.  Thus, when the sun goes down, they stop shooting after a while, decreasing the nrg shots in the sim.  Your population is below the target range and CostX as fallen to 0.  Thus, your veggies aren't shooting but neither are they dying into corpses that would decay and provide nrg shots.  Free nrg drys up.  Without costs or veggies throwing away their nrg in shots, the total nrg level in the sim stays high and does not drop to bring the sun up.  Things are stagnant.  The free nrg shots available in the sim as fallen to such a low level that your heterotrophs stop reproducing since they arn't getting any new nrg.  The population stays below the range, costs stay 0, things are stagnant.
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Offline Testlund

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Another strange behavior
« Reply #5 on: January 08, 2007, 02:37:45 AM »
But if you look at the zerobots you will find they have different levels of energy in them and no dna instruction telling them to reproduce if energy reaches a certain level. I whould expect them to reproduce more randomly. For instance I've been running the sim through the whole night and not a single bot has reproduced. With all the random mutations going on in the sim I don't understand how this can be. So I have two choices here: Either let it continue like this forever or turn off the sun treshold and let in a swarm of energy causeing a cancerous reproduction and slow down of the sim to a freeze.  
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Offline EricL

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Another strange behavior
« Reply #6 on: January 08, 2007, 11:09:18 AM »
When I look at the zerobots in the sim you posted, I can't find any that have reproduced at all.  The Best Bot has no offspring.  Perhaps the reproducers you evolved are now dead and could not survive without the steady stream of nrg shots from the veggies, which stopped when the sun went down.  Stopping all the nrg shots but makign the sun go down is a drastic environmental change.  If yoru zero's evolved in a sim with lots of free nrg shots that suddenly dry up, it's not surprising that they should all die off.  The ones that remain are mutants that have lost the reproduction capability.

When I turn on the sun, your veggies start shooting as expected but no one suddenly starts reproducing.

When I add a bot such as Animal Min. it reproduces fine with the sun on or off.

Sorry, but I don't see a bug in the sim you posted.  I see a stagnant sim with zerobots that don't know how to reproduce.
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Offline Testlund

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Another strange behavior
« Reply #7 on: January 08, 2007, 02:52:20 PM »
Try this one then. Here I just loaded the sim, went into the ui and unchecked "Sun goes down if nrg >" and clicked "change". After just a few seconds the number of bots changed from 55 to 56. Here I save the sim, zip it and upload it here. If the bots don't continue to reproduce when you load it then we have a force major or a devil in my computer.
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Offline Testlund

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Another strange behavior
« Reply #8 on: January 08, 2007, 03:14:27 PM »
And it gets even more weird. just started a new sim with only 10 NRG Providers and 10 zerobots. After just 3000 cycles I had over 40 zerobots, but their DNA is all 0's.  
« Last Edit: January 08, 2007, 03:14:52 PM by Testlund »
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Offline EricL

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Another strange behavior
« Reply #9 on: January 08, 2007, 03:27:56 PM »
Okay, here is what happening.

Your bots are reproducing through altzheimers.  Your waste threshold is set at 400.  When a bot's waste level exceeds this, the altzheimers routine writes random stuff to the bot's memory, occasionally hitting .repro or .mrepro and they reproduce.

Bot 344 (lower right quadrant) is positioned right in the sights of a veggy.  With the sun off, it's waste level is below 400 but when you turn on the sun, it gets a mouth full of nrg shots, a small percentage of which goes to waste.  The threshold is exceeded, altzheimers kicks in and it is the first to reproduce and does so several times over the next few 100 cycles.

This is why turning off the sun appears to stop reproduction and why your bots can reproduce without DNA to do so.  It's all about waste as a side effect of absorb ing nrg shots from the veggies.

It's not a bug, its a feature!
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Offline Testlund

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Another strange behavior
« Reply #10 on: January 08, 2007, 03:49:48 PM »
Wow! Thanks for sorting that out. I think that is too much. I don't think altzeimers should be able to cause reproduction just by accumulating waste, but I'll live with it.  

It would be better though if altzeimers could only affact gene functions the bot allready has imo.
« Last Edit: January 08, 2007, 03:52:48 PM by Testlund »
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Offline Endy

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Another strange behavior
« Reply #11 on: January 08, 2007, 08:54:13 PM »
  Had the same thing happen in one of my sims. Stupid things don't die and can't evolve, they're straight replicators. Got me mad enough I added some code to prevent true dna-less bots from existing for long and messing up the runs.

Personally I don't mind the fact that waste can do this. With the relativly low level of reproduction, successfully better methods will evolve from it. Kind of how life started out, with free energy and primitive self repication. As time goes on they'll be selected for ability to reproduce around the plants and eventually figure out some way to feed in a stable manner.
« Last Edit: January 08, 2007, 09:05:13 PM by Endy »