Author Topic: Variable Tie Transparency  (Read 2973 times)

Offline PhiNotPi

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Variable Tie Transparency
« on: August 14, 2010, 10:32:40 AM »
After seeing some large multibots form in some of my sims, I decided that it should be possible for bots to change the transparency of their ties.  Transparency from the robot's point of veiw.  Currently, ties can form across other ties and bot can see and move through the ties.  I think that bots should be able to limit this by changing their ties to make a limit on how many ties can go through their tie.  Once this limit is reached, the ties act like phyiscal objects and connot be moved through. 

Here is an example of how this might help.  Take a triangle shaped multibot. If one bot was looking inside the triangle and the transparency was set to 0, it  would only see ties, and not through the ties.  You could program the bot to rotate if it sees a tie the is very close to it.  It would then automatically turn to look out of the triangle.

This could also help to make more organized multibots.

The default for transparency should be what it is currently, so the old multibots can still work.
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Offline bacillus

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Re: Variable Tie Transparency
« Reply #1 on: August 17, 2010, 04:36:44 AM »
I can see the uses for transparency - the problem is, there's a lot of features that can improve almost every aspect of the simulation, at the cost of efficiency.
Just as an aside, DB3 will no longer use ties, instead bots become attached on their surface.

Making ties 'conditionally' collide, as well as other tie calculations, could also make multibot simulations (for which they are intended for anyway) a nightmare... :wacko:
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