Internet Sharing

[Numsgil]

These are mostly directed at Carlo, since he seems to be on the ball about how the internet works and how to communicate with it using VB.  I've been trying off and on to figure it out with no luck.

1.  I have an FTP we can use for Darwinbots.  My sister donated darwinbots.imodd.net for our use.  I've had it for a while, but I can't get it to work with the current program.  I'm not sure why.  I can connect to it using my own FTP client, but darwinbots pretends it doesn't exist.

2.  If we wanted to run a Darwinbots 'server', that is, something that allows computers to connect to one another (like the way Battle.net allows computers to connect to each other, or how huge MMOs work), how do we do that?  Is that MySQL, PHP, or what?  Can we use the current darwinbots.com webspace for that?

These are free discussion:

What kinds of sharing methods can we have?

1.  There's the current dl/ul gates.
2.  Open movement from computer to computer.  If a bot leaves the corner of a simulation, it reappears in a new computer.  Different computers will be running at different speeds, which should have interesting effects on mutations.  Some computers could even be running different settings.  When a computer disconnects without saving those robots, it's sort of like a natural disaster.

Are there any others you can think of?

[Shen]

I suppose it depends on what your trying to achieve. I would like to see the server dedicated to the evolution of basic bots so we can see what it produces. On the other hand other people might want a free for all, any bot in any sim, though this would bring its own problems. Limiting the control over what bots people upload to the server is pretty important unless we want to see DIN smashing up all my delicate evo sims. The best way seems to be using the hash protection and only allowing the uploading of bots evolved from a selected few base bots.

As for methods of sharing. The open movement way would be interesting if you can manage it. It seems to be a lot more difficult than a system like the current one. I think an improvement of the existing transfer method would be best, but if your feeling ambitious go for it. :)

[shvarz]

From what I remember the program paused for quite some time when it was transferring bots, if we allow unlimited exchange by bots simply leaving the screen, then my guess would be that it will slow things down substantially.

I think the most important thing is the ability to share bots only with people you want to share with.  This would allow creation of specific projects, like starting with a very simple bot and evolving it without the fear that some very good pre-designed bot comes in and eats everything in sight.

Sharing does not have to transfer a lot of bots, but it should have a fairly big storage to allow many different genotypes to be stored.

[PurpleYouko]

Most of that pause was while the program logged onto the internet, found the site, logged in, entered a password, then logged out again.
The actual transfer of a single robot file takes milliseconds so if the computer is constantly connected to the server or to another IP address (for direct sharing), the slowdown should be very minimal even if every robot that goes out the side of the screen is transferred.