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New bot shape

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shvarz:
No, I did not mean to go directly to an amorphous goo, I meant that you can give bots controls over simple shapes and how they get stuck to each other. Pretty easy to imagine DNA controls that would switch between oval, triangle and quadrilateral and maybe higher-level shapes too. The controls for changing shape would be easy too - control lengths and/or angles. Allow only one connection per side and interacting sides from two bots must be of equal length.

Actually, you don't even need to introduce shapes higher than triangles, just develop good realistic algorithms that would deal with how triangles interact with each other and with the world and how they change shape. More importantly - how a large collection of triangles stuck together changes shape when one of them tries to change shape. True, it's not going to be very bio-looking, but you can hide the triangles and show more rounded bots for pleasant looks.

Numsgil:
I read some articles in an Alife journal about something similar using rods.  They would connect together using simple rules and form more complex aglomerations.  It's certainly an option.  If anything, limiting bots to regular polygons would make things easier.

With the present capsule design, I was trying to roughly simulate the rounded shapes of actual cells, and provide a generalization that the current system would fit inside.  Bots shaped like capsules look vaguely cell like (resemble plant cells more than animal cells), and if you maximized the size of the head and tail you get a bot that's a circle.

So I'm open to suggestion.  Personally, while I think using n-gons would work just fine, I also think rounded capsules are keeping more in the spirit of Darwinbots, with its faux biology.

shvarz:
Well, looks are not everything. Besides, as I said, the looks can be cosmetically applied on top of physics. I was just thinking that you may as well build-in some more robust structural integrity for multibots. Connected sticks are pretty flimsy things - break one and the whole structure falls apart. Connected shapes right away provide a higher level of complexity and stability. And much more complex shapes. Not sure if it's necessarily a good thing, it was just an idea.

Welwordion:
I think there is not much value in to complicated shapes, exspecially when shape plays such a minor role in most aspects of the game, pivots and capsules give enough function of positioning and keeping together, although I am worried about the topic of equal orientation for bots in order to make their movement commmands compatible, however I do not know mujch abouts darwinbots3 work in this regard.

Numsgil:
I'll keep it as a fall back plan.  If I can't get a reasonable simulation running using round rods like this, I'll start to play with using regular polygons.


--- Quote from: Welwordion ---I think there is not much value in to complicated shapes, exspecially when shape plays such a minor role in most aspects of the game, pivots and capsules give enough function of positioning and keeping together, although I am worried about the topic of equal orientation for bots in order to make their movement commmands compatible, however I do not know mujch abouts darwinbots3 work in this regard.
--- End quote ---

I haven't worked out multibot communication yet, but it'll probably be like the rest of the senses and be relative to each bots' position and orientation.

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