Author Topic: Metabolism part 1: Catabolism in animals  (Read 12684 times)

Offline Numsgil

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Metabolism part 1: Catabolism in animals
« Reply #15 on: March 18, 2005, 12:09:58 PM »
What would hunger be, mathematically speaking?

Maybe it's the percentage of total energy (that includes fats and carbs, etc.) that's left n turns after the last time it ate?

There are some problems with that though...

I like the idea of moving digestion away from inside the bot.  The only point: before I was going to have it so food sat in the stomach a while before getting digested (the enzymes have a fixed amount they can digest per cycle).  That way we could model 'full'.  As in "I'm stuffed.  I couldn't eat another bite...  KABLOOIE!"

In this new system that's a little harder.  Maybe bots still have a set rate at which they can absorb energy per cycle into their bodies.  Then the stomach is just a depository of 'food' awaiting digestion into 'nrg' at a 1:1 ratio.  The rate of that digestion would be something up to the specialization system with muscles instead of the digestion system with enzymes.

Offline PurpleYouko

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Metabolism part 1: Catabolism in animals
« Reply #16 on: March 18, 2005, 12:32:18 PM »
Quote
In this new system that's a little harder. Maybe bots still have a set rate at which they can absorb energy per cycle into their bodies. Then the stomach is just a depository of 'food' awaiting digestion into 'nrg' at a 1:1 ratio. The rate of that digestion would be something up to the specialization system with muscles instead of the digestion system with enzymes.

I like that thought. A secondary energy depository of limited size would be kind of cool. When it gets empty then the robot gets hungry

 :D  PY  :D
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Offline Numsgil

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Metabolism part 1: Catabolism in animals
« Reply #17 on: March 18, 2005, 01:04:37 PM »
The only question of course is how big is the stomach?  What's the maxiumum it can hold.

Or we can make food degrade in the stomach the longer it's there.  Some kind of half life.

Offline PurpleYouko

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Metabolism part 1: Catabolism in animals
« Reply #18 on: March 18, 2005, 01:13:56 PM »
Fuller it gets, faster it works?

No I don't really like that.

The size could just be anything initially but it should be mutatable so that some robots can hold a larger reserve than others. Maybe we can just set in in DNA like the enzymes.

Also make the diffusion rate from storage to usable energy, variable and mutatable.

Get the energy faster but lose some. Get it slowly and get all of it.

 :D  PY  :D
There are 10 kinds of people in the world
Those who understand binary.
and those who don't

:D PY :D

Offline shvarz

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Metabolism part 1: Catabolism in animals
« Reply #19 on: March 18, 2005, 01:16:02 PM »
Guys, guys, don't go away from all these ideas we had!

I had a breakthrough idea, it is all going to work juuuuust fiiiiiineee!
"Never underestimate the power of stupid things in big numbers" - Serious Sam

Offline PurpleYouko

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Metabolism part 1: Catabolism in animals
« Reply #20 on: March 18, 2005, 01:21:15 PM »
The thing that I really don't want to have to do is to control every reaction directly from the DNA.

I think that would make the whole program extremely cumbersome and would discourage most people from using it at all.

We have to remember that DB needs to appeal to Bot Battle gamers as well as evolution simulators.

I also don't want to lose all the existing bots because they have none of the necessary controls to metabolize the food supply.

I am fine with these new ideas but let's just not get too overcomplicated with the stuff that the DNA files actively handle.

 :D  PY  :D
There are 10 kinds of people in the world
Those who understand binary.
and those who don't

:D PY :D

Offline Numsgil

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Metabolism part 1: Catabolism in animals
« Reply #21 on: March 18, 2005, 01:29:43 PM »
Okay, imagine it's turn 0, your stomach has 100 food, you can digest at 2/cycle (you digest faster by allocating more muscles to the task), and food has a half life of 10.

So, after 10 cycles some food is lost to decay (Less than 50.  I'm not sure of the exact amount, there's some calculus involved, isn't there.) and 20 nrg is digested.  

So if you eat too much, alot of food is just lost because you can't digest it, which means you wasted the effort you spent to get it in the first place.

Offline Numsgil

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Metabolism part 1: Catabolism in animals
« Reply #22 on: March 18, 2005, 01:32:40 PM »
I agree with PY.  I'm willing to explore and and all paths, but it must be easily handled by the bot if this is to work at all.

Offline shvarz

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Metabolism part 1: Catabolism in animals
« Reply #23 on: March 18, 2005, 01:49:49 PM »
Don't have a cow, it will be easy.  :)

Ideally it should be easy to learn, difficult to master.  We'll have a basic set of genes that would allow bots not to care to much about metabolism, except for the fact that there energy can be converted to stuff with different properties, like fat, carb, protein, muscle, shell, slime, venom, poison, lignen, chitin and so on...

These will be copy-paste genes/enzyme sets.  You just decide:  In my bot I want to have muscle and venom, then choose the set and copy/paste the stuff at the end of your genome.  

if you want to get fancy - evolve stuff or dig in and learn.

Would that work for you?
"Never underestimate the power of stupid things in big numbers" - Serious Sam