Author Topic: A cou... A lot of questions  (Read 6287 times)

Offline Peksa

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A cou... A lot of questions
« on: March 18, 2007, 09:52:05 AM »
Hey! I've been playing with DB for couple of months and reading the forums for almost as long. I've tried my hand in pretty much everything. I've been writing about 10 bots for F2, but I usually get bored or get better ideas before I can finish them. The latest is a SG bot that has got up to Zebedee, but the ones before it are mostly outdated. It needs still a lot of work.

I've got so many questions that they might be too much for one thread or forum, but what the heck.

1.
I've used wiki a LOT when writing bots, but it lacks info on the new .eye commands I've read about on the forums. What are the new .eyecommands and how do they work? (I've read at least of .eyeXwidth and .focuseye)

2.
In leagues, what is a statistical draw and how many rounds it takes to determine the winner?

3.
I read that someone had a way to stop their zerobot sim when .repro evolved. Is this doable in DB or do I need some kind of external program?

4.
In costs the movement cost is XX per bang. What's a bang?

5.
In my evosims almost allways either veggie or bot, or even both, start's to reproduce wildly becouse mutation in repro-gene. I've gathered that movement cost is dependent on mass, so if I use dynamic costs, it draws more heavily on the bigger bots and kills them faster than the miniscule ones. I've ran an evosims where a continuosly reproducing bot had actually adapted to dynamic costs and the costs had got up to 20X. It had very low amount of veggies. The tiny bots just floated around until they found a veggie, reproduced to thousand or so bots that drifted in every direction. The costs eventually killed most of them causing the population to drop, but some survived and found another veggie and this happened again and again. SO, the question I had is: What can I do to stop the conditionless producing? I have thought that I might be using too low costs, but it's hard to find costs where the big ones survive and the little ones dont.

6.
Is there any speed difference in toroidal and bordered sim?

7.
How do databases work?

Uhh... I think that's about it. For now
Thanks in advance.

-Peksa

Offline Peksa

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A cou... A lot of questions
« Reply #1 on: March 18, 2007, 10:06:40 AM »
Forget about question 3, I found the scripts

Offline Henk

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« Reply #2 on: March 18, 2007, 12:58:07 PM »
Welcome!

I'll give answering your questions a try  

3.
I read that someone had a way to stop their zerobot sim when .repro evolved. Is this doable in DB or do I need some kind of external program?
This can be done with scripts; see attachment
EDIT: D'oh  

4.
In costs the movement cost is XX per bang. What's a bang?
A Darwinbots unit of energy (as joule is in RL),

6.
Is there any speed difference in toroidal and bordered sim?
Not that I know of  Maximum speed can be set in the simulation tab

I hope other members can answer your other questions!
« Last Edit: March 18, 2007, 01:03:24 PM by Henk »
cond
*.DBbugs 0 =
start
.rejoice inc
stop

Offline Peksa

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« Reply #3 on: March 18, 2007, 05:20:47 PM »
So movement costs are .up/.dn/.dx/.sx * mass * cost/bang?

Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #4 on: March 18, 2007, 06:36:26 PM »
Yep, that's the general idea.  Bangs are impulses.  You can think of them like tiny little bombs exploding that push the bot forward, like this.

The eyecommands are relatively new.  Try to find the thread where Eric talks about his changes for 2.43, I believe they're talked about in there.  Hobby projects like Darwinbots always suffer from a lack of documentation, unfortunately.

A statistical draw occurs until a winner has managed to win 1/2 number of rounds + sqrt(number of rounds).  I wrote a thread in suggestions, I believe, where I examine the math behind it.

How do databases work...  not well   It hasn't been experimented with in quite a while.  What happens is that data from bots gets sent to a common delineated file (CDF) which should be loadable into any spreadsheet program.

5.  This is a pretty standard behavior.  It's just what the environment encourages.  It sounds like a decent adaptation to the environment.  If you're looking for more interesting behavior, you could try making the enviornment more complex.  Perhaps add some veggies that run around instead of just existing.  The more interesting you make the environment, the more interesting the adaptations.

Offline Jez

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« Reply #5 on: March 18, 2007, 08:26:30 PM »
Hiya and welcome to the forum.

1) I recorded the links to the posts about these recently I'll try and find the links again. (If you feel like adding the info to the wiki feel free!)
(Edit)
Point 12
Demo of eyeN width
Eyewidth
And maybe Ratticus Rex (F2) in the bestiary which used eyewidth and one of the other recent bots (sry forgot which one).
(/Edit)

2) A statistical draw is an analysis of the results to see if you could get the same results tossing a coin really; using this method you would never get a draw if you ran enough matches unless the two opponents were evenly matched. (You might need an infinite number of matches to decide this...)
I guess it's a league draw when I get bored of running the match or my pc bursts into flame and dies. In which case the older bot wins. (You are probably talking a couple of days at least!)
If you have run into a situation like that you could always try posting the bot in the bot tavern and seeing if anyone can help or replicating the defenders ID system. (Maybe difficult in an SG bot!  )

Somebody like Nums can probably explain the method we use to decide the winner better than me, I keep forgetting how the method works.  
« Last Edit: March 18, 2007, 08:47:53 PM by Jez »
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Offline Endy

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« Reply #6 on: March 18, 2007, 08:44:57 PM »
A statistical draw is when both bots are evenly matched. One may eventually win a round, but the next round the other will win. If this continues for long enough it'll be a statistical draw.

Offline Peksa

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« Reply #7 on: March 22, 2007, 05:16:35 PM »
Thanks everyone! I'll try to spice up my evosims a bit

One more though: How long it usually takes for zerobot-sim to evolve anything?

Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #8 on: March 24, 2007, 01:10:18 PM »
I think it's on the order of several million cycles.

Offline Peksa

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« Reply #9 on: March 25, 2007, 06:52:34 AM »
ok. Thanks.

Offline Jez

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« Reply #10 on: March 25, 2007, 09:45:56 PM »
'scuse me, link button not working but (You must enter a URL you must enter a title    ); in this post (P3) Eric said: FYI, in my experience, it takes between 10M and 15M cycles to produce a first replicator in a sim with 100 heterotrofs using a starting genome consisting of a sequence of 30 0's and the default mutation rates ocsillating between 1/6X and 16X.

http://www.darwinbots.com/Forum/index.php?...l=zerobot&st=30
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Offline Peksa

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« Reply #11 on: March 26, 2007, 07:42:51 AM »
Oh... I better start using the search before bugging you guys with questions

Offline Jez

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« Reply #12 on: March 29, 2007, 04:43:13 PM »
No probs! Sometimes it can be hard to find a specific bit of info when you haven't been following the forums.  
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