Author Topic: The amazing Antbot  (Read 22818 times)

Offline bacillus

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The amazing Antbot
« on: April 30, 2008, 08:05:52 PM »
Recently I've been working on a bot that acts like a colony of ants. In the beginning, a single young queen gathers food, until she is large and bloated. Then, she sits down and starts producing offspring. The offspring can either be another young queen or one of the following servants:
  • Scout-A scout looks for veggies, then ties to them and drags them in. Once near the queen, the veggie is tied in place.
  • Worker-A worker communicates with other workers to find food sources, which are relayed back to the queen.
  • Drone-The real muscle of the hive. They collect food from workers and nearby food sources, and relay nrg back to the queen. As well as that, they produce adrenaline when attacked, which is converted to venom, and spat out at enemy bots.
Here are some cool features that have been implemented in the bot:
  • Gardening-A veggie dragged in by a scout is harvested, but not killed. This ensures a steady food supply for when food is hard to come by.
  • Workers remember when they see food, and tell other workers about it.
  • Drones tell other drones when an enemy is nearby by sharing adrenaline levels.
  • The queen has fertility cycles eg. the body has to be greater than *.timer in order to reproduce
  • Drones don't interfer with bots from a different hive.

I still have a communication channel open that I'm dying to use. I really need some help to figure out what to do with it.
"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 Numsgil

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« Reply #1 on: April 30, 2008, 08:44:09 PM »
Not sure if it's the best strategy or not, but since most sims have a veggy cap, if you can coral and defend all the veggies from other species, so that no veggy repop events occur, you can starve out your opponent.

Offline bacillus

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« Reply #2 on: April 30, 2008, 08:48:07 PM »
It is sort of hinting towards that. The problem is that you run out of space to put the veggies in. Besides, it's not really a competitive bot, more of a human interest one.
EDIT=> actually, I might make the scouts mark the veggies so only members of the same hive feed off it. How's that for an idea?
« Last Edit: April 30, 2008, 08:51:10 PM by bacillus »
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan

Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #3 on: April 30, 2008, 09:01:36 PM »
You can do lots of things, but I think it's more aesthetically pleasing if it's in the bots' best interest.  Why should hives respect each other's marked food?  It's not in the interest of the hive to play nice with other hives.  Maybe if you implemented some sort of primitive diplomacy.  Hives caught stealing from another's marked food get war declared on them, and the robbed hive tries to kill the offending hive's queen...

I still prefer harvesting and defending veggies, though.  It's a somewhat stable strategy that's in the Hive's best interests.  What I would do is work on forming a defensive ring of warriors around your veggy cache.  The warriors fire backwards to feed occasionally, and feed other ant bots that come looking for nourishment (real ants do this, one ant barfs up some lunch for the other ant).  If an enemy is discovered, the soldier stays put and tries to fire some sniping shots to kill it.  Maybe it alerts more mobile soldiers nearby about the threat (use in/out and transfer the x,y pos of the enemy).  A hive keeps its veggy cache small enough that the soldiers can adequately defend it.

Offline bacillus

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« Reply #4 on: April 30, 2008, 09:10:22 PM »
I was playing around with a similar idea, having Guards line the perimeter of the hive. If it is an enemy bot, it tries to kill it, if it's an ant from another hive, it shoots a memory shot that sends it flying backwards.
I'm moving away from the "good of the species" idea and towards the "good of the colony" idea, but that might make the whole thing unstable. I usually run a size 10 sim, and it doesn't take long for one single hive to swarm the map. If you ever ran it, you would see newborn bots (at least drones and workers) hurled backwards. Also, a newborn queen would get slaughtered. Maybe a baby queen overrides the guard's attack instinct?
How about this: A worker will sometimes steal food from the enemy hive. The enemy, if it sees the ant, becomes slightly more hostile and marks the ant. The marked ant may or may not be slaughtered by its own hive, depending on how hostile the hive is. When hostility reaches a certain point, it overrides the "good of the species" instinct and starts killing all ants from different hives.
« Last Edit: April 30, 2008, 09:16:52 PM by bacillus »
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan

Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #5 on: April 30, 2008, 09:13:44 PM »
It isn't too hard to form a line of bots.  I've seen it done a couple of times with some rather primitive bots.

Offline EricL

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« Reply #6 on: April 30, 2008, 09:19:58 PM »
Quote from: Numsgil
Not sure if it's the best strategy or not, but since most sims have a veggy cap, if you can coral and defend all the veggies from other species, so that no veggy repop events occur, you can starve out your opponent.
This is one of Seasnake 1.2's low priority strategies.  It's a SG bot, so the whole thing is shot as a virus.  It takes a long time sicne the genom eis over 1500 base pairs, but eventually, the veggies get infected, their genoems go away and they become Seasnake's themselves and form up as cells in the mutlibot, symbiotically providing the larger snakes with sun nrg and defending and attacking non Seasnake species.  Cool, huh?
Many beers....

Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #7 on: April 30, 2008, 09:26:50 PM »
A little wicked, too

Offline gymsum

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« Reply #8 on: May 01, 2008, 12:05:59 AM »
I like your ideas, but lose the workers. I am currently working on something similar to a gps system, where a bot stores several points before finding food, then stores the points as a route, those creating a highway for others to follow using the out sysvars. Ideally your scout could find the food, marking every 60 or 30 cycles a point to remember that is the return route both ways, also may give them more security since your 'army' coudl focus around those points so that your scouts dont lose the food. Also, gardening usually involves creating more veggies with the ones you have, which means you want an internal veggie counter for your queen so that it doesnt over produce and require too much food. Also, routes could be dominated by a colony or hive, so if another hive or colony is seen following the route, they are stopped or killed.

Offline bacillus

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« Reply #9 on: May 01, 2008, 06:36:07 PM »
The workers will become more essential in the next version I'm planning to make. When a hive attacks another hive, only the drones go and attack enemy ants. The workers must stay back and provide the queen with food. Remember, it's up to the drones to replace the queen if she dies, and if no-one feeds or is there to replace the queen, the whole hive will die.
Btw. I am still experiencing difficulties with "ghost bots", bots that are invisible/have died and still update a bot's eye. I think I posted it as a bug a while ago, but it was apparently fixed.
« Last Edit: May 01, 2008, 06:51:53 PM by bacillus »
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan

Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #10 on: May 01, 2008, 07:04:38 PM »
Definitely post in the bugs forum if you can provide a sim demonstrating incorrect behavior.  Bugs are bad.

Offline bacillus

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« Reply #11 on: May 01, 2008, 08:50:05 PM »
I never upload sims because they are comparatively huge and my pathetic internet takes ages to do so. I think I just posted an image of a bot looking at nothing.
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan

Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #12 on: May 01, 2008, 08:51:23 PM »
Are you zipping the sims?  They compress down quite a bit.  A 50 meg sim can usually give you a zip of only 3 or 4 megs.

Offline bacillus

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« Reply #13 on: May 01, 2008, 09:08:16 PM »
Usually I don't post anything above 100 Kb because it just takes too long.
I solved the problem. Some bot had a stupid mutation that caused its color to change to the background color. There was a bot there, it was just really hard to see.
I just had a look at the FTP link. 3333 hits!!!
« Last Edit: May 01, 2008, 09:09:33 PM by bacillus »
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan

Offline Numsgil

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« Reply #14 on: May 01, 2008, 09:13:45 PM »
I sort of figure there is probably a user base of 10x the active forum posters, so 3000x hits on that link would make sense to me.