Author Topic: Reallowing delgene weapons  (Read 7535 times)

Offline Numsgil

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Reallowing delgene weapons
« on: February 23, 2005, 02:37:20 AM »
I'm working on balancing combat and defenses enough that delgene weapons can be reallowed.

However, fact is that delgene is the most destructive weapon available to a robot, by far.

Therefore, I think delgene needs to be a time based command, like .mkvirus is.  This makes sense since that's what it was made for, anti virus commands.  This makes the delgene more on par with other weapons.

What's yall's thoughts? (Thought I'd be okie for a sec).

Offline Anonomous Guest Person

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Reallowing delgene weapons
« Reply #1 on: February 23, 2005, 10:20:31 AM »
I think it should be instantanous when used in a gene/virus.
And I don't think it should be fireable with weapons as a settable thing.
Rather, I think that you should consider deleting genes a whole new weapon, different from the virus .delgene, or the .delgene defense.
How it would work is that, it would have to get past shell, slime, and even body (to a very minor extent.)
By minor, I mean that, for purposes of a defense, the target's body would be devided by their DNA length. So simple bots are practically immune to such assaults, while as uberbots that have an innate defense to viruses should be too 'bulky' to kill easily with it, but should generally always take damage.

How it would work is simple.
Simply storing -7 in .shoot will send off an attack, rather then an attempt to eat.
It's strength (which is, as all other shots, based on body, and should be improvable by expending some energy. In fact, that last one's a definate.) will be divided by a quarter of the target's Shell, then divided by a tenth of the target's Slime, and then divided again by the target's (Body / Gene Length).
This will build up until it equals 1, where, instead of a random gene being deleted, a random part of the DNA will be. (Such as an = in a condition, or something.)
Or it could just delete the gene, either way.

Anyway, that type of shot will also remove a bit of Shell, Slime, and Body. Not a lot, but not a little either. Perhaps equal to how much the shot's strength was divided by (except in the case of Body, which would probably decrease by (Body / 50) or (Body / 100), or something.)

Though all that's just an idea to keep .delgene a weapon, without having to use a virus.
« Last Edit: February 23, 2005, 10:20:56 AM by Anonomous Guest Person »

Offline PurpleYouko

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Reallowing delgene weapons
« Reply #2 on: February 23, 2005, 10:28:37 AM »
Sounds a bit overcomplicated to me. The idea is to try and keep things simple as possible while attempting to simulate some kind of life form.

DarwinBots will never be the equivalent of any living life form but we still need to stick to certain guidelines.

A while ago, I restricted .delgene to virus attacks only by only allowing delgene to be activated from within the robot's own DNA. This was in response to a devastating venom attack that I used in one of my robots. One good solid hit would wipe out every gene in the target robot.

Delgene in any form of shot attack is too powerful and somewhat unrealistic. It is useful (in theory) from within a robot's own DNA so this opens the door for virus attacks.

I vote that it stays that way.

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Offline Numsgil

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Reallowing delgene weapons
« Reply #3 on: February 23, 2005, 10:52:02 AM »
To be honest I've only seen delgene be used as a weapon.  Has anyone found a constructive use for it?

Offline PurpleYouko

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Reallowing delgene weapons
« Reply #4 on: February 23, 2005, 10:54:44 AM »
That is why I said "theoretical"

So far I haven't found a way to use it constructively although it has been suggested that ant-bots could have a number of their genes wiped by the queen to preserve energy.

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Offline Anonomous Guest Person

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Reallowing delgene weapons
« Reply #5 on: February 23, 2005, 10:57:25 AM »
It's impossible to use it constructively.
A virus enters as a random gene.
It's nearly impossible to track it down, since you can't get information about individual genes.
Which is why I say you store the virus's new gene number into a system variable.

Offline Numsgil

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Reallowing delgene weapons
« Reply #6 on: February 23, 2005, 11:09:57 AM »
I kind of like viruses being untrackable.  Most bots have to kind of adapt.

I would like to add a command that returns the current gene number being executed, so you can make self-propagating viruses.  (*.thisgene .mkvirus store)

In the future if I can get chromosomes finished, so that sections of code can be turned on/off easily, we may not need a delgene at all.

Offline Anonomous Guest Person

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Reallowing delgene weapons
« Reply #7 on: February 23, 2005, 11:11:47 AM »
That'd be better.
That way, a bot could defend itself, but not against all viruses.
But good luck programming it. :P :D

Offline PurpleYouko

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Reallowing delgene weapons
« Reply #8 on: February 23, 2005, 11:24:53 AM »
Quote
I would like to add a command that returns the current gene number being executed, so you can make self-propagating viruses. (*.thisgene .mkvirus store)

Not an easy trick since the entire DNA is parsed prior to actually changing values in the robot's memory. The idea there was to attempt to make the gene activations as simultaineous as possible.
Nice idea if you can work around this though.

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Offline Numsgil

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Reallowing delgene weapons
« Reply #9 on: February 23, 2005, 11:25:44 AM »
Work around is the key word here, I think.  Not sure how it'd work.

Offline PurpleYouko

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Reallowing delgene weapons
« Reply #10 on: February 23, 2005, 11:36:45 AM »
BTW

How do you like the new stars? I copied them off the old site  ;)

They turn blue later when you get enough posts  :P

There are many more ranks on this site.

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« Last Edit: February 23, 2005, 11:37:57 AM by PurpleYouko »
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Offline Numsgil

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Reallowing delgene weapons
« Reply #11 on: February 23, 2005, 11:43:46 AM »
Haha!  Sometimes I amaze even myself.

*.thisgene is finished!  Wasn't hard at all, had the memory location update for each execution of corpo .


Can't wait to climb through every available rank PY  :D

Offline k0zm0

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Reallowing delgene weapons
« Reply #12 on: February 24, 2005, 03:43:48 AM »
I have a constructive way to use delgene.
My form of specialization. 1 bots specialization into 2 different.

Code: [Select]
gene1

cond
*.robage 0 =
start
100 rnd 50 store
stop

gene3

gene 4

cond
*50 50 <=
start
*.genelen .delgene store
stop

cond
*50 50 >
start
1 .delgene store
stop

gene7

gene 8

gene 9  

end

I belive, with right programing, Ican make multi specializations.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2005, 03:49:11 AM by k0zm0 »
I'm not crazy and I'm not normal.
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Offline PurpleYouko

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Reallowing delgene weapons
« Reply #13 on: February 24, 2005, 09:15:59 AM »
Quote
Can't wait to climb through every available rank PY


It'll take a while.

The highest rank right now has 9 stars and takes 5000 posts to reach.

When you get there I migt add a 10 star rank at 10,000 or something.  :P  Hehehe

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Offline PurpleYouko

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Reallowing delgene weapons
« Reply #14 on: February 24, 2005, 09:24:03 AM »
K0zm0

That was the kind of thing I was talking about.
To be honest, this is the only reason that delgene is even there. If it was only a weapon then I would have got rid of it by now.

Limiting it to working within the robot's own DNA seems the only answer. We DON'T want poison or venom setting off delgene reactions in another robot and we don't want delgene shots either.

Viruses are different and should be allowed to use delgene. At least there is some kind of protection avalable for these.

Another possible protection would be the introduction of .copygene as a sysvar.

Think about it.

The best defence against a delgene virus is for the last gene of the DNA to have a condition that resets delgene to zero. If the virus come in after this gene then it becomes useless though. However a robot has the ability to know how many genes it has and with Num's new .thisgene sysvar, the robot can tell if the delgene protection gene is the last one. If it isn't then it could use .copygene to copy itself to the end of the DNA and re-protect itself.

 :D  PY  :D
There are 10 kinds of people in the world
Those who understand binary.
and those who don't

:D PY :D