Status of IM mode

[Peter]

What's the bit that doesn't work in IM, anything I can do? 

We using Delphi?

[Botsareus]

Ok, so IM was php/java based. That did not work very well and Ammeh was fixing it it until she started work.
I honestly do not care about simulation info being passed by pipe as long as the IM actually works, we can always pass info by file as we do the robots themselfs.
DB has two folders: The out folder and the in folder.
I currently have "local IM" shifting robots from the 'out' folder into the 'in' folder. But all computers in local IM must use the same file system.
What I really want is to have IM shift robots from the 'out' folder to the 'in' folder of any computer p2p connected to our network. If we follow this approach we will not need the php layer or even a online buffer to hold robots. All robots will be instantly transferred.

[Peter]

Is the sourcecode available of the full solution?

edit: so including the server code.

[Botsareus]

The only source I am aware of on this is "Darwinbots2IM" which is c# in the DB2 repository. Now that I think about it was Ammeh just trying to replace c# with java? Is there any other source on these Numsgil?

[Peter]

Source of the server(php?) files. For me server client is easier to handle than p2p. May not be elegant, but it only has to work.

Also is it correct if I miss dependencies in the darwinBots2IM. Using vb10 instead of vb08, so may be a result of some weird version mismatch.

[Botsareus]

Fear warning: There was some serious scaling issues using this method.

[Peter]

With how many users?

[Numsgil]

I think Ammeh and Shasta were setting up a client/server system.  The Darwinbots web server would act as the server and the clients would use the IM to route bots from the local folders to the web server.  You might ping Shasta and see if he remembers the specifics.

[Botsareus]

Peter figured it out! 

[Peter]

Does the pipe stuff still exist? Or some other way that helps with moving stats.

I'd like to have stats of the populations/specie/sim.

[Testlund]

We used to have stats about the total population in IM mode, as well as being able to see what user was sending the bots. What happened to that? It would be nice to have.

[Billy]

Agreed, that would be awesome.

[Peter]

Aye, what's left of EricL's code surrounding this, bots?  Is there any way you could easily hook up these graphs if you had the data from other sims.

I could add a name to receiving a bot in IM, but that needs a change in the server as well. Making them incompatible(edit, with current versions). I'll include it when I can send sim stats as well.

[Botsareus]

Sorry, posted in a wrong place.
The best way to go on this imo is to post a file every 15 seconds to the IM out folder.

[Peter]

From the other topic,

Peter, I can add the list of users to the message box I configured in help menu. That second request is a bit more tricky as I hate named pipes after Ammeh. We can consider writing a file once in a while with info. timers are not too intensive when they are not running code. Please give me a file name I can use and a place to put it. I am thinking the IM out folder is as good as any.

How can you add the list of users to the message box? Wouldn't you need communication through the /in folder as well?

IM /out folder is good with me. Would a *.stats file be ok?

Sorry, posted in a wrong place.
The best way to go on this imo is to post a file every 15 seconds to the IM out folder.

I wouldn't use a set time. You could write to the file anytime the graph is also updated. Slow sims and quick sims would send enough datapoints this way.

Ok, time for a list!

Location?
IM /out folder.

What format to use?
The JSON format, Sammeh named is fine by me. I'm open for suggestions, though.

What to put in the stats files?
I'd like (at least)
population,
cyclenumber,
sim id(not sure what could be used for it, the random seed value seems to be a decent match)
unixtime
Other suggestions?

Edit

It would look something like this.

Code: [Select]

{"simId": 4934934, "unixtime": 1410000000,"cycle": 1000000, "population":[{"botName":"Einstein", "count":550},{"botName":"The One", "count":450}]}