Poll

Please take a minute or two to fill out this poll and maybe add a note to the thread. How did you discover DarwinBots?

A friend or relative's recommendation
9 (6.4%)
Home of the Underdogs web site
24 (17%)
Another shareware/abandonware web site
2 (1.4%)
Googling for Artificial Life sims
61 (43.3%)
Purely by accident
16 (11.3%)
A DarwinBots member's webpage link
1 (0.7%)
Wikipedia's Darwinbots entry
12 (8.5%)
Other
16 (11.3%)

Total Members Voted: 125

Author Topic: How did you find DarwinBots?  (Read 44386 times)

Offline Testlund

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How did you find DarwinBots?
« Reply #45 on: April 25, 2008, 12:03:31 PM »
Sorry for getting philosophical in the wrong topic but...

Maybe pinnacle species have emerged before, that cause ecosystems to collapse and evolution to start over, if not something else like an asteroid does it. It's just sad that humans have the power to be guardians of the planet, to preserve the balance and diversity, and eventually have the ability to colonize space and take species with us, and maybe terraforming other planets. Humans me be the only hope for life on this planet to continue forever, somewhere else, because this planet will eventually be gone in the future anyway. Maybe without us the life on this planet would just be short waste of time between two eterneties.
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Offline EricL

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How did you find DarwinBots?
« Reply #46 on: April 25, 2008, 12:27:53 PM »
Quote from: Testlund
Any mammal in our own size is stronger than us. A chimpansee would win any wrestling match against a human.

I agree to a large extent with your philopsophy and lament on the sorry degree to which humans are living up to their potential, but I wanted to point out that the statement above is a common misconception and largly incorrect.  A human in top physical condition, as one would expect a chimp in the wild to be, is pound for pound on par with other primates w.r.t. phycisal strength.  The misconception stems from the fact that most humans and thus the "average human" are not in top physical condition.   The biology, the physcis of bone density and muscle development and such are basically identical in both species.  There are differences in mechanics.  We don't braceate and chimps are poor runners, but these differences aside, it's a myth that humans are some sort of weakling that only managed to survive through brain power.  You can bet neanderthal's used brawn as well as brains to survive.      
Many beers....

Offline Testlund

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How did you find DarwinBots?
« Reply #47 on: April 25, 2008, 02:07:56 PM »
I meant Homo sapiens which is a separate branch from Neanderthals. But none of the other species on their way to become humans made it, like they were a bad evolutionary 'choice'. I would say they were all bad fit for the planet. Gorillas and chimpanses may be the closest to a human that works on this planet.
The internet is corrupt and controlled by criminally minded people.

Offline Trooper5445

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How did you find DarwinBots?
« Reply #48 on: May 05, 2008, 07:23:15 PM »
I suppose I could feel stupid for being on topic but it was by a rather odd course that I managed to discover these here forums. It all started on (last) weekend. It was a free weekend for Team Fortress 2. Knowing this was a good game and having a good computer, but a cheaper heart, I decided it best to enjoy it while it lasted and then be done. So I enjoyed myself and played on. Then it ended. Rather abrupt and I was not satiated. So instead I decided to load up one of my other steam games. What did I have to lose. I loaded up DefCon. While there I had such a good multiplayer diplomacy game I forgot while I had stopped playing the game. So I searched for some mods to see what was out there.

While on the DefCon forums I found something. A simple mod. It added units in the shape of people's avatars as sort of a community mod. Anyhow one of the units was the Darwinians in Darwinia. Now it was a nuclear sub like unit, and so when it only had 1 nuke left it rather resembled genitalia. Someone mad the comment that they had merely "evolved" the ability to reproduce and gave a link to an evo sim known as "Darwin's Pond." 'Twas a simple game but it reminded me how much I liked evolution sims. With this knowledge in mind, after playing I finally decided what to do and began the process of searching for something more complex.

In the end I found this by a Google search but the route there was rather long and detailed above.

Now that I have found this community I am determined to learn *DNA*. I have dabbled in Python, C++, and Visual Basic prior to this. I am now determined to create a creature for the leagues and participate in the community. My goal is to not download or copy other's code (even if it is available by author's consent) but purely develop my own. I've started with some tutorials and rather simple creatures and now look forward to advancing to something rather simple. My current goal is create a bot that is totally stationary, expending no energy until it find prey at which point it will track and devour the pray assuming it can get within a certain distance by a certain time.

I would be grateful for any basic help that can be provided, and would just generally like to say 'hi' to the community.

So Hello Community.
« Last Edit: May 05, 2008, 07:24:26 PM by Trooper5445 »
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Offline Numsgil

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How did you find DarwinBots?
« Reply #49 on: May 05, 2008, 08:01:37 PM »
Heh, welcome.  I've played everything you mentioned except Darwinia (demo slogged on my computer at the time).  Fun games all

Offline Trooper5445

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How did you find DarwinBots?
« Reply #50 on: May 05, 2008, 09:30:09 PM »
Thanks. Nice avatar by the way. I always was a fan of the Orz.
Quotation is a suitable substitute for wit

- Oscar Wilde

Offline Numsgil

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How did you find DarwinBots?
« Reply #51 on: May 05, 2008, 09:41:19 PM »
heh, I wonder how many other people here know what the Orz are (or maybe is?  I think Orz is a single entity).

Offline Skylimit

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How did you find DarwinBots?
« Reply #52 on: June 25, 2008, 04:20:51 PM »
Hi,

Just joined.  I have programmed Conways game of life several times (first on Commodore64 in basic   )
Last year I found a very powerful version of the original idea, where organisms have a program that can mutate  (Evolve 4.0, now at version 4.x)   As it was too addicting, I threw it away after a couple of weeks, ..., now I've installed it again a couple of weeks ago, and it still is addicting  
I've developed all kinds of creatures, or better, I've evolved them.
But what I was missing is the "on-line" exchange of creatures, while they are evolving.

I've searched everywhere, but afaik this is the only simulation that actually has it
I found you through wikipedia, through evolve link, and then overview of other sims

First thing I'm wondering about, ..., there seem to be little people online,
and what I'm also missing, not sure if it really is the case, ..., but the creatures that are exchanged online, are they the orginal version of how the bot was launched, or are they the mutated versions?
Wouldn't it make sense to exchange random species, in their mutated form?


Offline Numsgil

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How did you find DarwinBots?
« Reply #53 on: June 25, 2008, 04:29:21 PM »
Mutated bots are shared.  Although bots can be marked as "do not mutate" if the author intended.  There aren't many people on line because the connection isn't terribly stable (something weird with how Visual Basic closes connections or handles dropped packets or something, I think).  Which is presently* be worked on by Eric, who's the main programmer at present.

*this is a relative term
« Last Edit: June 25, 2008, 04:29:45 PM by Numsgil »

Offline cpugamerbb

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How did you find DarwinBots?
« Reply #54 on: September 07, 2008, 02:47:59 PM »
I was looking on youtube for swarm intelligence videos and came across the Swarm vs Swarm video, and was very interested from a programming standpoint.

Offline bacillus

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How did you find DarwinBots?
« Reply #55 on: September 12, 2008, 06:34:21 PM »
I actually came to know about DB through Commander Keen; strangely, I met him through another friend, who coincidentally dabbed in DB for a while a few years ago but gave up on it.
After I became involved, I looked around for better alternatives, but didn't find any; at that point, I already had my own simulator up and running, but gave up on it due to my poor GUI programming skills.
btw. what species were used for Swarm vs. Swarm?
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
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Offline Gantolandon

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How did you find DarwinBots?
« Reply #56 on: September 13, 2008, 08:17:27 AM »
Wikipedia. I searched for some evolution simulators.

Offline Cyberduke

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How did you find DarwinBots?
« Reply #57 on: October 14, 2008, 11:16:00 AM »
I was reminiscing about a game I used to have an the Atari ST where you could build robots by wiring up sensors to actuators and memory locations using a GUI and then they would battle each other in an arena, find their way out of mazes etc I think they also needed to eat ‘food’ and on the map they looked like a mini version your wiring configuration.
Then I was thinking about c-robots and terrarium, and did a search for a C# version of c-robots and came across darwinbots in a google search somewhere along the line, which then made me think about a few other Atari ST and DOS evolution sims I had seen along similar lines to sim life.
Anyway I loved the idea of combining the two, so after writeing a few basic bots, I got into doing the zerobot sims.
« Last Edit: October 15, 2008, 01:02:10 AM by Cyberduke »

Offline bacillus

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How did you find DarwinBots?
« Reply #58 on: October 14, 2008, 11:40:27 PM »
I used a java program for a while that let you program tanks to run in an arena. It was quite complex, with having to balance radar strength, movement efficiency, developing a way to tell walls apart from enemy tanks etc.
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
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Offline multibotlover

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How did you find DarwinBots?
« Reply #59 on: November 05, 2008, 12:34:40 PM »
hi everyone! im a total noob to this so dont mind if I ask a lot of questions.I found darwinbots when I was looking at evolution sims on youtube!