Author Topic: alive ?  (Read 6066 times)

Offline peterb

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alive ?
« on: July 03, 2010, 06:12:45 AM »
alive software, stands for life simulating software.
not wanting to put pressure on anyone here but i wonder if this project is still a live.
or that it lost its sparkle of life, wellwe know species dont live forever.

i think i can conclude there are many ideas of how it could / should work, but ideas are easier to create then programs.
as a last idea i propose a modular design.


Above all, modules should be first explained in clear text of what they do, so even beginner programmers can use them, how to call their functions, and put explaining of their functions inside the code in readable english. (explain every function)

Good explaining might me be equal or even more important then the code itself, a requirement is other people even wit low programming skills should be able to use the code, or improve it by introducing new ideas to it. I would sugest using phyton for this since it has an easy modular format, and it is free so anyone can develop with it.

Offline Numsgil

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Re: alive ?
« Reply #1 on: July 03, 2010, 02:40:38 PM »
Yeah, things are still going (slowly).  Most of what needs doing right now is sort of technical, which makes it hard for programmers to just jump into, which is unfortunate.

You can look at the SVN tree to see both the code and the dates for various checkins.  Right now the main hurdle is fleshing out the physics and graphics systems.  If those were in place we'd be in a good place to start mucking about with an actual program.

Explanation wise, the unit tests generally provide a better basis than comments, since they represent a test of exactly what the expected inputs and outputs to a function is, and they don't "expire" as the code evolves, so I've been fairly sparse with comments.  Have you peeked at the code?  Are there any specific questions you have about it?  I should be able to answer any questions you have.

Offline shvarz

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Re: alive ?
« Reply #2 on: July 21, 2010, 03:51:37 PM »
It's good to see that this thing is still (somewhat) alive.
Too bad not much is happening... at least on the surface...
"Never underestimate the power of stupid things in big numbers" - Serious Sam

Offline Welwordion

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Re: alive ?
« Reply #3 on: January 25, 2012, 05:03:39 PM »
Heh just wanted to ask whats the current status is, even though I sometimes check the board I not really got in the mood to read up on all the details.(And I still suck to much to get much out of trying to read sourcecode).

Offline Numsgil

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Re: alive ?
« Reply #4 on: January 26, 2012, 01:34:16 PM »
I'm probably past half done; maybe more like 66% done.  As I get more pieces in my pace seems to pick up (I'm a better coder now than I was years ago, and there's more infrastructure in place so I don't have to go off on a tangent to build some new tech all that often).

I have about 65K lines of code.  A final line count of 100K to 150K seems probable. But there's still a lot of GUI code to write, and that's usually little effort per line of code because it's so verbose.

For physics, I have a "solver" more or less done, and I'm working on the collision detection now.  After the solver and collision detection are done, I need to combine them into an actual simulation.  There's probably another, say, 3 months of work here to get to something I'm comfortable calling "done".  Most of the hard problems have been solved, though, so I don't anticipate any blocking issues (for the solver, I actually had to go off and spend a good 2 years learning linear algebra and implementing that in code).

For graphics, I have drawing of basic primitives (triangles, rectangles, and ellipses).  And it has some cool antialiasing stuff going on that makes zooming in/out look pretty good.  I still need to work out how I want to draw polygons and have them look good (right now there's some seems in places that look terrible).  And I still need to work out drawing points, and drawing lines.  I've also got a triangulator working (for decomposing the polygons into triangles).  So it's maybe 66% done, and needs another few months of work, too.

For the simulation, I have the DNA done.  I need to extend the triangulator I mention above so I can break pieces off of polygons (so bots can tunnel in to shapes, for instance.  And reproduction might work by bots splitting along an axis into two even halves).  That's not too much extra effort.  I still need to write something for bot vision so I can query for nearby bots that can see each other.  And I still need to write most of the actual "gameplay" logic (but that relies on physics being done).  And I need to write the front end that combines everything together into an actual DB3 program.  So there's probably a good 6-12 months of work there.

The backend stuff that isn't all that interesting to talk about is about 90% done.  Just a few rough APIs I need to clean up and refactor, and the occasional bug fix.

And then probably another 6 months for things I'm not thinking about right now.

And when I say "month" I don't necessarily mean calendar month.  Sometimes I don't really feel like working on Darwinbots.

So realistically I'd say something like 2-3 years from a feature complete version.  But I'll probably have some early alpha versions with a stripped down feature set earlier than that to test some things.  I'll probably release a physics playground app, for instance, to have people test the robustness of the physics engine.  That's maybe 6-12 months out.

If you want to see a work log as I work on things, you can look at this .  If the dates are all pretty old there bug me on the forum.  Sometimes I just need a kick in the butt to get going again.

Offline ikke

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Re: alive ?
« Reply #5 on: January 27, 2012, 04:39:37 AM »
Just out of curiosity, how much time do you spend on DB3?

Offline Numsgil

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Re: alive ?
« Reply #6 on: January 27, 2012, 12:41:40 PM »
Maybe 10 hours a week usually.  Sometimes it's more like 30 and sometimes it's just nothing, but 10 is a good guess.

Offline ikke

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Re: alive ?
« Reply #7 on: January 29, 2012, 04:30:23 AM »
You program for a living and spend 10 hours per week programming DB? You love programming or darwinbots. Probably both..
There is no loved one objecting?

Offline Numsgil

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Re: alive ?
« Reply #8 on: January 29, 2012, 06:21:21 AM »
I like programming, but yeah, it's hard to do it 40+ hours a week for work and then come home and do it some more.  I think it'll be pretty cool when it's done, which drives my motivation some.

No significant others right now, no.  Leaves lots of time for screwing around being productive :P

Offline shvarz

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Re: alive ?
« Reply #9 on: January 30, 2012, 10:56:35 AM »
Wow, I can't wait to see what it looks like! If that would motivate you, know that there's at least one fan who will d/l the version as soon as it's released :)

"Never underestimate the power of stupid things in big numbers" - Serious Sam

Offline ikke

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Re: alive ?
« Reply #10 on: January 31, 2012, 03:51:47 AM »
I think it'll be pretty cool when it's done, which drives my motivation some.
It's not just the amount of work/time you spend on DB3. For me a motivation needs to be on a different time scale than it'll be pretty cool when it's done in 2 years time. I need to see results much quicker than that.

Offline Numsgil

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Re: alive ?
« Reply #11 on: January 31, 2012, 04:43:17 PM »
My superpower is inhuman patience :P

Offline ikke

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Re: alive ?
« Reply #12 on: February 01, 2012, 02:43:32 AM »
Yes it would appear so..