Touch senses?

[Testlund]

I remember Eric mensioned in some thread (forgot which one) that he could wire eye functions to touch senses instead. I was wondering if he has abandoned the idea? I'm running an evosim where I've turned off vision for all my bots, but I suspect that was a bad idea, because a lot of functions are dependent on a bots ability to see. I guess that without vision a bot won't recognise conspecs and can't evolve sexual reproduction, among other things. What do you think?

[EricL]

Wiring refvars to touch is on my list.  Just been busy with other (non-DB) things recently.  Stay tuned.

[Testlund]

Alright. Cool!  

[EricL]

Okay, as of 2.43.1e, an impact with another bot updates the refvars to reflect the properties of that bot.  Vision overrides touch, so if a bot is looking at another bot with it's focus eye and touches a different bot in the same cycle, the refvars will reflect the viewed bot, not the touched bot.  If a bot is in contact with more than one bot, a random touched bot is chosen to populate the refvars (providing no bot is in the focus eye).

People who want to run blind bot sims should be all set with this next drop.  Disabling vision for a species should make it so that refvar values only come from phsycial contact.

Also, the refvars are now reset to 0 if no bot is in the focus eye and no bot is touching.  Refvars were never getting reset before, so they would continue to reflect the static values of the last time a bot was viewed with the focus eye until a new bot came into view.  Bot DNA should now be able to simply be conditional on non-zero refvar values intead of only trusting the refvar values when *.eye5 is non-zero.

Refvar population due to phsycial contact with shapes is coming, but not yet implemented.  I'll update this topic when I make this happen.

[Testlund]

That will be awesome to see in action. Have taken a break from DB, eagerly awaiting your next drop.  

[Testlund]

Hmm... I've thought a little more about this. When a bot touches another it's mostly short bumpings. So I suppose that if bot 1 bumps into bot 2, then bot 2 (if it's a hunter) will turn around and shoot at it?. But if that is just one quick touch, how long will bot 2 continue to shoot? Maybe a bot can be fine tuned to either continue to move a little in the direction where it was last hit to 'stay in touch' so to speak, or maybe to continue to only shoot as long as it continues to recieve energy. Not likely for such thing to evolve by itself though. Maybe it might evolve to shoot a tie in that direction and then tie feed. In any case I can't wait to see what will come out of this feature in an evosim. It will give bots a new kind of awareness.

[Numsgil]

I imagine, so long as the shot cost isn't too high, that you'll see bots that shoot constantly.  Especially when you're blind I think it's a good strategy.

[rsucoop]

Can a bot touch one bot while tied to another and looking at another and read the refs for each in one cycle?

[Numsgil]

Not presently, vision sysvars override touch sysvars.

[rsucoop]

hmm.... but can a tie be read while either eye or touch are active?

[Numsgil]

of course.

[rsucoop]

I see a symboitic multi-bot potential.... Using a universal tranlsator, a bot could take a blind bot and thrash it into other bots to see what it is. A Universal Translating Farmer Bot that was territorial..... excellent.