Digging into the egrid

[Numsgil]

I'm working on the egrid right now.  Currently

A couple of issues:

1.  How should you be able to dig into dirt, etc?  Is it:

A.  Shots.  Maybe a -1 or -6 shot, or maybe even a whole new one!
B.  Ties.  Fire a tie at the ground and begin sucking.
C.  A special new interaction method.

2.  How long should it take to dig?  Pretend you find a grid square packed to the brim with dirt.  What kind of time frame should it take to clear it?

3.  How do you spit it back out?  Where do you store it?  Are you allowed to feed while carrying a load if dirt or whatever?

4.  About how massive is dirt, etc.  I'm thinking that carting around a full load of it should slow you down as if you had built a bunch of shell.  However I don't know what a full load is.  How many trips should it take to clear out an egrid square?

Egrid squares are a little smaller than a regular bot.

[2122]

I think ties make the most sense.
I have no idea about the other questions though.

[shvarz]

OK, what do we learn from nature?

Who digs dirt? Two diggers come to mind: a mole and an earthworm.

Mole pushes the earth apart.  It applies some energy to move dirt from where it was to some other place.  Would it be possible that dirt from the square containing a bot is moved to neighboring squares?  Bot bumps into dirt - dirt moves.  Other organisms do that too: roots of plants, bacteria....

Earthworm swallos the dirt ahead of him, runs it through his digesting tract and leaves behind.  Less common, but an idea anyway...  And the bot needs to span multiple env.grids...  maybe a multibot?  If we simply allow bots to absorb anything from env.gird, then the head of the worm can "absorb" dirt, then share it back to its butt and the butt would "waste" it.

This is just the first thing that came to my mind.  Let's see if other people have better ideas.

[Numsgil]

The system I'm thinking of can allow the 'mole' method of packing the dirt harder at the sides pretty easy.  There's a zone between 'packed hard enough you can't get through it' and 'solid brick of material'.

Earthworm type methods can merge with ant like methods.  They differ only in what is done with the 'eaten' material.  That's my main emphasis.  Trying to get a method for building ant nests.

[shvarz]

Hmm, one way is to make "dirt" just another substance on e-grid.  We were thinking about "absorb" commands that would grab a portion of stuff from the current square and place it in the stomach.  These commands would be either very specific, addressing a particular layer of env.grid (say, to absorb only glucose) or very general, where a bot would just grab a piece of "whatever is out there".  Then the bot could digest whatever it can and dump out "waste".  So bots would run out, "absorb" dirt, run back and "waste" it out.

Or we can make special rules for dirt.  Right now I am OK either way.

Maybe special rules is better, because dirt "will" be special - it will have characteristics that distinguish it from all other substances on env.grid, right?

P.S: 2.36.5 runs fine for me for 3 hours already.  It is just 600,000 cycles (becuuse I am running size 12 with > 300 bots), but so far not probs.

[Numsgil]

I'm hoping to allow the env grid to have such broadly defined materials that things like dirt, etc., that seem special cases are in reality just subsets.

Absorbing dirt, however, can only be done from adjacent squares.  So we need a way to absorb from grid squares adjacent to the current one.  And then of course you have the issue of fat bots.

So are we thinking a custom absorbing method then?  Something like ties would be neat, but it might be difficult to implement.

[Zelos]

I think it should kinda be 2 layers, one is the upper one where you start, and one is a lower one where you can use a dig command to dig down to the lower dirt level.

You keep digging as long as .dig = 1 and you're there and there is dirt in the way.  The energy to move will then be higher since you're digging.  When set .dig = 0 then you dig up again, back to the surface.  If you then enter the hole you dont need to set .dig to anything.

[Numsgil]

That's an idea, but it's a little flat still.  You're either above ground or below it.  That works for some behaviors but makes ant nests more difficult (I'm thinking I'd want nests like simant has).

[PurpleYouko]

Let's not get into 3d just yet. Don't really like the layers of "depth" idea much. Should be more like the side view of a very thin ant farm.

[Zelos]

its not 3d, we just simply have a few levels of 2d, we can have more levels if we want. like if there is 4 levels then 3 .dig would mean we dig to the deepest one

[Zelos]

whit that way we can create enourmus nests whit mazes and other stuff

[PurpleYouko]

whit that way we can create enourmus nests whit mazes and other stuff

But you would only be able to display one level at a time on the screen so your bots would keep bumping into invisible objects on other levels  :blink:

[Zelos]

im sure the pc can handle different levels and keep them seperate, but yeah you wold only be able to see one, unless you add an option to split the screen so all levels get a part of it

[Carlo]

Please, can somebody (best of all Nums, I think, since he's directly working on the project) give me a rapid (but possibly complete) description of the features of the environment grid you're going to implement? I don't exactly know where to look to find one.

Thanks

[PurpleYouko]

E-grid overview.

The new e-grid is a multi (infinite actually) level array measuring 12 X 90

Most of the levels cover contain representations of concentrations of environmental stuff such as Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide, temperature, waste products like ammonia, Nitrates and Nitrites. Calcium and Silicon for use in building shells.
We are also intending to make at least one level represent walls of some kind to which robots can tie or dig into.

Robots will be able to interact with the grid square which they currently occupy.
Some interactions will be automatic such as veggies using sunlight and CO2 to make energy, growth and Oxygen.
Others will require input from the robot to actively gather something or poop waste to the grid.

Beyond this we plan to have an active "enzyme" system in which robots can specialize in various different types of metabolism. While not strictly enzymes, these processes will still be controlled by a mutating bit pattern stored in the DNA file. Eventually this will completely blur the distinction between plants and animals since each can use multiple methods but with greater or lesser efficiency.

Energy will be able to be derived from such diverse things as the nitrogen cycle and Sulfer metabolism such as found near black smokers.