New bot shape

[Numsgil]

Shots will play a slightly diminished role, I think.  I'll probably just limit shots so that they just come from the eye.  I might play around with having longer bots be stronger (if you pretend the shot is a bullet from a mass driver, the longer length would give the bot more room to accelerate the particle and deliver more force).  But that's all in the distant future.

[rsucoop]

What about adding inertia to the shot as it comes from the bot? So if the bot is moving 20, and it shoots, the shot will now travel 60. I think this would raelly imrpove realism and reduce the role of a shot. If we do this, I think the distance the shot can travel could be limited so that their is no real way to keep the shot alive, since it has more to do with friction and forces played on the shot.

[Numsgil]

That's how the present system works, actually. So yeah, that's what I plan on doing

[Botsareus]

Shots will play a slightly diminished role

Num, what do you mean by "slightly diminished" ?

[Numsgil]

-6 shots (ie: body shots) are replaced with swallowing another bot, for instance.  Instead of firing in any direction, I'll probably limit shots to only firing in the direction of the bots' eyes.  That sort of thing.

[jknilinux]

Hi nums,

This is probably the ultimate alife body form: http://www.io.com/~spofford/ . Now, not only will the bots' programs evolve, but their bodies will too. Try out the program!

[Numsgil]

Yes, I think I've seen it before.  Could never figure it out exactly.  There are certain limitations to what a bot in DB can be since they need to be able to connect and form a MB.  Other than that, there's certainly a lot of wiggle room.

[Blacksmith]

have you look at what the artificial simulator 'Gene Pool' uses?

[Numsgil]

Yep.  Ideally when I'm done you'd be able to build something like the gene pool swimmers.

[jknilinux]

Have you seen the program "primordial life" ( http://www.io.com/~spofford/ )? I think that is the best: to have the bot SHAPE, not just behavior, be able to evolve. What do you think? maybe one of the lines could be a "linker" line to enable multicellularity?

Have you seen the program "primordial life" ( http://www.io.com/~spofford/ )? I think that is the best: to have the bot SHAPE, not just behavior, be able to evolve. What do you think? maybe one of the lines could be a "linker" line to enable multicellularity?

[bacillus]

Primordial Life is interesting, however I think that evolving such a creature would be something to aspire to rather than have it built-in. I do think, however, that certain substances, such as chlorophyll and muscle, will act as a sort of substitute for these "body parts".

[Cyberduke]

Ahh, I have just looked at ‘Gene Pool’ and think I now better understand the direction you are going in.

I assume an individual cell would still have flagella to move (slowly).
And in multi cellular organisms each cell would be more specialised.

I just thought, would you make things like sensors (eyes) something you have to build in a cell since there might not be a lot of point in having eyes in every cell especially since there is a processor cost involved in doing so?
Maybe flagella shouldn’t be innate either.

Then again all this is just hindering the artificial evolution.

[Numsgil]

Yep, Gene Pool sort of critters is what I'd like to be able to simulate.  Only instead of a single organism it's several bots that communicate and work together.

Single bots would still be able to move around with their current abstract propulsion mechanism.

I think there was some play with the idea of letting bots turn off vision or propulsion, etc., for some sort of specialization benefit, but the exact mechanism and benefit was never agreed on.

[bacillus]

Maybe have a sort of 'init' gene, where the bot's properties are specified, eg. how many eyes it has/uses, each eye either costing a certain amount of DNA points to attain or keep up, or maybe just use energy to switch an eye on, and perhaps different methods of propulsion eg. a max. power - energy usage/unit ratio.

[Cyberduke]

Well since any kind of sensor has an associated processor overhead (or be it only broad phase) it does sound logical for a cell to start with no senses or movement ability and then have to 'load nrg points' into a particular sensor for it get better (longer range?) So the evolutionary pressure would be to become more economical with the use of sensors (which would help processor load).

If your cell has evolved into an algae (veggie) niche then it is unlikely to benefit much from eyes.