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DB3 Questions

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Prsn828:
I put this poll together real fast, so if you want to add something, please do.

I appreciate any feedback.

Arzgarb:
A species forking system would be interesting, but not that important. It could be left optional, or evaluated only on user command.

I think there should not be specifically assigned veggies, but instead just bots with their body consisting largely of chlorophyll. This has been the single most important feature I've been waiting for in DB3. No more zerosims with complicated feeder shepherds, they can now take care of themselves and still evolve to animals! Chloro, on the other hand, should have some kinds of movement slowing/shot weakening/other downsides, to prevent veggyism from becoming the automatic best solution.

An in-sim DNA editor would definitely be helpful, so that one wouldn't have to constantly reload a sim when tweaking with a bot. As of DNA visibility, it could be done pretty much like it's now: the DNA itself is invisible, but certain aspects of it can be seen through ref-sysvars.

DNA should be quite flexible, allowing complicated structures and maybe some obscure stack manipulation (stacks are preserved betweed codules, perhaps?). But, on the other hand, the sysvars need to be redesigned so that an exact value is seldom needed for a task. If shooting is implemented, it should be broken into as many sysvars as there are shot types, for example. This way, mutations on the control flow and conditional structures could be dramatic, but changing numbers little by little probably wouldn't.

Numsgil:
We still need to tweak the pros/cons for the different substances, like chlorophyll (which I think we'll call leaves from now on, since that's easier to spell), shell, fat (body), muscle, etc..  It's on my to do list.  Mostly there's a lot of thick science-y writing I (or anyone else who wants to) need to plow through.

Not in the immediate future, but at some point I think we can do a bot debugger to let you step through bot DNA and see changes to the stack as they happen.  And an edit-and-continue feature.  For the immediate future, we should be able to let you edit bot DNA and recompile it inside the program.  That should be very straightforward.

Codules work sort of like a function, except that the stack isn't modified calling into the codule.  So it should allow some complex calls.  I'm also playing conceptually with the idea of some sort of preprocessor defines, so you could essentially create your own commands as either a macro or a codule call.  So if you want a command that isn't provided, like abssqrt, you could do something like: def abssqrt abs sqrt.  At this point I'm mostly considering how it should play with mutations.  If the macro is an actual physical codule that mutations can learn to call and mutate, or if it's just inserted into the code like a C/C++ macro.

For sysvars my goal is to "normalize" every one of them to have useful output over the range -1000, 1000.  Or maybe -10000 to 10000.  And for this range to be continuous without any "magic" values.  For things like .shoot, I'll separate out each shot type as its own sysvar.  So you'd do .nrgshoot, .venomshoot, etc. etc.

Prsn828:
Nums, you never cease to amaze me.  Honestly though, I have a feeling that if we get a few more votes, it will be clear that the options I intended people to want will be chosen the most

I have a feeling we all want the same things here, give or take an option or two.

Testlund:
How important is species forking?

A nice addition. It's nice to be able to keep track of species through generations and it could increase competition between new species that evolves, which could show interesting behaviors. If the number of species are fixed from the beginning it will only end up in species going extinct until you only have one left, at least if you're running a smaller sim. In a larger sim on the other hand you may be able to overcome that by seperating various populations of species into areas where bots can occasionaly wonder between but not completely whipe each other out. Something I haven't tried yet myself though.

Veggies should get energy based on surface area as it is now and should definitely be greenish to resemble clorophyll. The less green the less efficient they should be at getting energy from the sun. Maybe you could make it so they can evolve to change slowly from being autotrophs to heterotrophs for instance (should be able to evolve into animals somehow)?
I would vote for slower veggies, but not as a forced restriction on moving speed, instead the accumulation of sun energy should be too slow for a bot to waste it on swimming around. In my own sims I have restricted the energy intake to 1 per kilobody point for veggies so they can't afford to waste it on swimming.

The DNA questions I have no opinion about but I had to click on something there to make a vote so I chosed other.

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