New bot shape

[shvarz]

After thinking about it a bit, just having triangles should be plenty. Join to triangles along one of the sides and you have a multibot that can swim by changing the shape of one of them - by periodically increasing the length of the two unconnected sides (kind of like wagging the tail). Is your physics engine complicated enough to have this sort of propulsion?

[Numsgil]

It could be.  I think I could work out the mathematics, or an approximation of it anyway .  You can make arbitrary shapes with any number of triangles, and it wouldn't be difficult to control at all, since the number of sides is a constant and low three.  DNA could simply control the length of each side to change shape, with certain restrictions to maintain surface area.

When I get that far I'll experiment with a trial version and see what comes of it.

[EricL]

FYI, I did a little thinking last night about supportting capsule shapes in DB2.  Could have a long axis dimension through .aim under bot control, default would be 0.

But then I though more about what would be necessary to do this right:

Changes to fluid resistance and friction to handle new shape.
Fluid resistance at least would now depend upon bot oreintation.
Vision routine to handle capsule viewing.
Collisions routines for bots and shots and shapes handle capsules and factor in rotation.
A real angular momentum algorithm.
Moving from aim sysvars to thrust jets.
Tie changes to be end specific.

And so on.    Suffice it to say no-one has to worry about this showing up in DB2.

[Numsgil]

That list is pretty much what I'm doing right now.   Or trying to do, we'll see what comes of it.

[Botsareus]

So I reversed my thinking, instead of bots acting as the joints between ties, I have bots be the rigid rod and have them form joints with each other.

What about tie-feeding?

[Numsgil]

So I reversed my thinking, instead of bots acting as the joints between ties, I have bots be the rigid rod and have them form joints with each other.

What about tie-feeding?

What about tie feeding?

[Botsareus]

Does the new robots have to position itselfs infront or in back of the victum and have zero disitance between them in order to form a tie? It was much easyer before when the robots can attach at any angle with relatively good distance...

[Botsareus]

A problem of creating a worm:

A two celled warm is relatively easy:

A robot turns 180 degrees , reproduces , turns 180 degrees back. The baby robot attaches itself to thr back of the parent.

But what about if a warm consists of 3 or more cells. That means that the first two cells bouth have to rotate 180 degrees etc.

Solution:

Make the robot have a spesial command that makes its head and the eyes fase the back or the front.  Also please don't forget about slanted shots. This means: The shot can come from the front slanted up or down Or from the back slanted up or down.

[Numsgil]

Ties and connections will be distinct ideas.  Ties will work pretty much like now.  You'll need to face the thing you want to tie to.  You'll need to be within a certain distance.  But you only get one tie.

Connections, like forming a worm, are a separate issue and feature.  Most likely, here's what happens:

1.  Reproduction works by taking an elongated bot in the shape of a capsule, and cleaving it in two.  Probably with the child bot's head being your old butt.  This way reproduction is always possible because the parent and child will take up the same physical space.

2.  Connections can be formed (probably can only be formed.  Still working out the logistics) by short-circuiting the reproduction process, so the child bot doesn't fully separate from the parent bot.  So in short forming a worm should be relatively easy.  Making the worms' cells work together is another issue entirely.

So in short, ties won't have anything to do with forming multibots.  They'll be separate ideas.

[Botsareus]

Sounds Cool

[fulizer]

So I reversed my thinking, instead of bots acting as the joints between ties, I have bots be the rigid rod and have them form joints with each other.

What about tie-feeding?

What about tie feeding?

tie feeding would work the same but with rigid ties (I think)
also nimsgils answer, ive ehard that somewhwere...

[rsucoop]

Might I point out that by changing the shape of the cell, oyu greatly devalue its overall efficiency. The reason bubbles are round is because a sphere evenly distributes the forces exerted on it. Once you change the value of pi, or create a new shape other than a sphere, you create a weak spot in the cell, one which would cause a direct increase in damage bonus. Also, movement could be limited with a value that represented the sides of the cell. A 1 in the value of that side would indicate there are feet/flippers or some locomotive filange. If these values were expanded, different values like a 2 or 3 could change their best use/function as a swimmer/walker or whatever. These values would be used for determining a seperate cost evaluation. Changing the shape of a bot would have a profound effect on the type of bot it could be, hibernation would be difficult without a circular outer shell. The amount of new bots we would see would be exponentionaly larger than the types out now. Advanced multi-bots with nerve-like cells that were shaped closer to a star to allow for more 'fixed' ties with other cells, acting as a message highway for the cells. A cell could tell anyother cell at any given location in the multi chain to do something, like mutate, or make a shell or go faster or feed us. You might as well make a mutation value for the slopes of the sides of the cells, so that things like sin cells could be developed.

[Moonfisher]

Wouldn't making it 3D increase the physics calculation too much ?
Anyways, from what I understood the bot has one tie and can form 2 of these links (One on each side)...
Or can you make several links in each end ?

Either way it seems to me like it would be cool if you could adjust the length of a bot, so you could use the conventional round shape or make your bot longer.
This way a round bot would also be able to serve as a joint for several longer bots. Having small round joints in between the long bots would also increase manuverability.

The downside of only creating links through birth would be that small organisms who infiltrate larger complex organisms would have no way in.

I'm also trying to figure out where the "canon" would be located... if it's in the midle it will be more effective at covering the sides... if it's in one end the rear will be very vulnerable forcing bots to keep on the move, and creating a dilema when linking complex organisms...
Maybe there could just be 2 possible shapes, you could just pick one when giving birth, this way a long bot could have a canon in each end and cost more to grow...
Either that or you could just have 2 canons all the time, and stretch the bot as needed, if it doesn't make short(round) bots owepowered compared to the longer ones.

I definately think it would be a shame to remove round bots altogether, I can't imagine the longer bots would be as easy to controll... single cell organisms would get knocked around all the time, wouldn't they ?

[Numsgil]

Wouldn't making it 3D increase the physics calculation too much ?

It would, but not as much as you think.  It's straightforward enough to scale to 3D if I had a working 2D version.  But for the initial release I think it'll be 2D.

Anyways, from what I understood the bot has one tie and can form 2 of these links (One on each side)...
Or can you make several links in each end ?

The technical side is straightforward enough to have as many joints as I want, wherever I want.  However, allowing bots to change their shape might put some tax on the system, and limit the effective number of joints.

There was a great picture on Wikipedia that illustrated what I wanted to do, but I can't find it anymore :/  Basically, there are two types of connections bots might form.  The first allows for something that looks a tree.  Bots connecting multiple other bots together at their end points.  A long snake would be the simplest form, but you could also form something like a stick figure.  Each joint would also be a motor, so bots could apply force to change the angle (a walking stickman might be possible, but more realistically I tink a bunch of bots doing "the worm" to crawl along the top of shapes is more feasible.)  Something like a fish might also be possible, a long snake like bot wiggling to produce drag and net motion.  The second is a tissue layer that looks like a long stack of pancakes, or offset, looks like a brick wall.  This tissue form could be used to form something like a volvox: a bunch of bots all connect in a long stack, with their heads larger than their tails, to form a curve and eventually a large ball, with a hollow space in the middle.  In order to get to the inside of the volvox, another bot would have to either be eaten and pooped out by one of the border cells, or kill a handful of the border cells and squeeze in.

I'm working on the physics right now.  I need to find a way to balance rigid bodies (which are easy to simulate) with some slop in the joints to form something like a flexible tissue.  Once that's done (probably a few months yet), I'll start working on the control scheme.  How the bots will actually control and form these shapes.  This is definately the biggest step.  Once I get the physics down, most of the rest I know how to do.

Either way it seems to me like it would be cool if you could adjust the length of a bot, so you could use the conventional round shape or make your bot longer.

Yep, that's what I'm planning.  Still working on how it would work though.

The downside of only creating links through birth would be that small organisms who infiltrate larger complex organisms would have no way in.

It would be very easy for a complex organism to form a "skin" to keep out small bots.  But a small bot can always kill the skin cells and force its way in.  Or trick the skin in to eating it and pooping it out the other side maybe.

I'm also trying to figure out where the "canon" would be located... if it's in the midle it will be more effective at covering the sides... if it's in one end the rear will be very vulnerable forcing bots to keep on the move, and creating a dilema when linking complex organisms...
Maybe there could just be 2 possible shapes, you could just pick one when giving birth, this way a long bot could have a canon in each end and cost more to grow...
Either that or you could just have 2 canons all the time, and stretch the bot as needed, if it doesn't make short(round) bots owepowered compared to the longer ones.

You've lost me.  What cannon?

I definately think it would be a shame to remove round bots altogether, I can't imagine the longer bots would be as easy to controll... single cell organisms would get knocked around all the time, wouldn't they ?

 A round shape would just be the bot making its dorsal axis as small as possible.  Sort of a fuzzy logic control scheme.  Bots set values that represent how hard the cytoskeleton is pulling in different directions.  The physics engine then determines the appropriate changes in shape.

[Moonfisher]

By "canon" I mean whatever it is the bots are using to shoot... the shots will have to come from somewhere.
In a circle shooting from the center is the obvious choice, but when you make the shape longer, then if you leave the "canon" in the center your ends will be exposed (More travel time for shots) , if it's in one end the other end will be exposed.... which is why I was thinking they could have 2 "canons" to be able to cover both ends.