Author Topic: .sharedna  (Read 2144 times)

Offline MacadamiaNuts

  • Bot Destroyer
  • ***
  • Posts: 273
    • View Profile
.sharedna
« on: August 09, 2007, 03:05:48 PM »
.sharedna:

When two bots are tied and share DNA, both DNA are run for each bot behaviour.

That is, if you got one bot that reproduces, and another that fires, they'll both reproduce and fire, tho the copies will only inherit the parent's DNA.

The value stored is the weight of the bot DNA. The DNA with lower weight is run first, and its actions may be overridden by the more weightful DNA. For more than two bots, the tie to the bot with higher weight is the one that runs the shared DNA
Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose...

Offline EricL

  • Administrator
  • Bot God
  • *****
  • Posts: 2266
    • View Profile
.sharedna
« Reply #1 on: August 18, 2007, 04:59:34 PM »
I'm going to put this on my 'no plans to implement' list for the following reasons:

1) It feels like significant work.  Executing one set of DNA per bot per cycle is pretty fundemental to the way the engine works.  I fear that order of operation and other issues would make this rather complex to implement and difficult to debug.
2) There is no such thing as DNA that is specific to behaviour.  It would involve running ALL of the other bots DNA regardless of what it did.
3) The concept of running another bot's DNA is problemetic in general.  Each bot's state is different.  Local variables, refvars, tienums, etc.   Not sure it be useful for what you want in the end.  And things like gene numbers would need to be dealt with.
4) Highly tied cotton candy messes where each bot has like 8 ties woudl be really difficult to deal with and add lots of perf overhead to figure out who runs what DNA...
5) Some sort of viral DNA transfer via ties designed to acheive a similar mechainism would strike me as easier to implement and perhaps more general purpose.

Of course, just because I'm saying no, doesn't mean someone else can't do it.  But I have to say no to some things.....
« Last Edit: August 18, 2007, 05:00:54 PM by EricL »
Many beers....