Better Seeing

[EricL]

In addition to the forthcoming change which modifies the distance an eye can see as a function of it's width, I've been thinking about how to do a better job w.r.t. being able to get refvar level info on multiple objects per cycle, both those in sight and those being "rememberred".  Here's a couple ideas:

1) Changing .focuseye would instantly change all the refvars.  Thus a bot could do things like:

-4 .focuseye store
*.myeye *.refeye !=
 -140 .aimshoot store
-3 .focuseye store
*.myeye *.refeye !=
 -105 .aimshoot store
-2 .focuseye store
*.myeye *.refeye !=
 -70 .aimshoot store
.
.
.
and so on...


2) Add the sysvars .refid, .focusid and .focustype.  .refid is a refvar that would return an ID of the object being viewed.  If .reftype is 0, this is a bot.  If .reftype is 1, a shape and so on.  Setting .focusid and .focustype would change the refvars to reflect the properties of the object with that ID and type if it exists.  With this, bots could do things like keep track of objects they've seen recently without needing to look at them.  Conspecs could stay in formation with one another or know when and where a sibling died.  Preditors could shoot at things they once glimpsed but are now beyond their vision range.  An ant queen could read the .outNs of scout bots at distance...  Lots of possibilities.

[googlyeyesultra]

I kinda like number one. Number two somewhat confuses me; refid doesn't seem very well explained. Would this be the position in the bot array? Also, you'd want a myid, presumably. And trefid. And so on.

[Numsgil]

#1 would have to work as commands instead of sysvars.  So you'd do -4 focuseye instead of -4 .focuseye store.

[Testlund]

Conspecs could stay in formation with one another or know when and where a sibling died.  Preditors could shoot at things they once glimpsed but are now beyond their vision range.

Could a single cell be able to have this feature in the real world, because this looks more like abstract thinking to me, which I think only mammals possess? A cat can know that something is behind something else, but a frog can't for instance. It would be a completely new direction for DB.