Author Topic: Howdie  (Read 3868 times)

Offline Mathonwy

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Howdie
« on: June 29, 2005, 08:14:10 PM »
Howdie folks, I'm completly new here, found my way from a review on the Underdogs website (yes I filled in the poll). I have to admit that I'm not a biologist, or a programmer, or ever likely to understand all of the posts I have so far read, let alone those I have yet to get to.

However I have had some thoughts. It seems to me that there is anassumption that energy gained by vegies is equally distributed accross the field, and that the proximity of veggies to one another is irrelevnt to their ability to gain energy, and this seems illogical to me. While for simpilsity I can see the need for an ability to feed seemingly on nothing, would it not also make sense a vegie bot to gain less while it is in the thick of a crowd ? ie for a veggie to gain the maximum possible each cycle there would have to be no other vegies within a distance (whatever distance seems appropriate to the source of energy being modeled). Of course there maybe advantages to crowding, if you're alone and a predator arrives you're definatly the target.

I have had more thoughts as I've been reading, but I think I shall keep those to myself for the moment as I don't want to make too much of a fool out of myself in my first post.

Thanks for reading,
Math

Offline PurpleYouko

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Howdie
« Reply #1 on: June 29, 2005, 09:03:17 PM »
Hi Mathonwy

Welcome to DarwinBots.

You have some good points there. They have all been touched on before at least once but good points all the same.

We have discussed things like shadows preventing lower veggies from seeing enough sunlight.
We even hav "PondMode" where you can control the amount of light filtering down to lower parts of the pond. In this mode the closer the veggies are to the top the faster they get fed

All the other stuff is in the pipeline along with many more goodies.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world
Those who understand binary.
and those who don't

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Offline Numsgil

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Howdie
« Reply #2 on: June 29, 2005, 09:28:17 PM »
It depends what kind of energy source you're modelling.  If it's the sun, and the veggies are in a flat plane perpindicular to the sun's rays, crowding has no effect.

If, on the other hand, you're feeding from organic or inorganic materials just flaoting around, crowding indeed does have some large consequences on how much you can get to eat.

So maybe this will be a consequence whenever an env grid is up that allows chemotrophic feeding.

Offline shvarz

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Howdie
« Reply #3 on: June 30, 2005, 03:01:30 AM »
I'll chime in and say that it is a very good point and that it may be possible to implement, but like Nums said - it all depends on what you think bots are and how they get energy.  One of the (great many) advantages of DBs is that it is completely up to user to imaging what bots are - they can be bacteria living in drop of grease, or they can be cows roaming great planes...

Anyway, welcome to the board!
"Never underestimate the power of stupid things in big numbers" - Serious Sam

Offline Mathonwy

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Howdie
« Reply #4 on: June 30, 2005, 03:47:58 AM »
Thanks everyone for your kind welcome.  My apologies for posting the idea without having read everything... could you point me to where it is being or has been discussed as I had some thoughts on how to approach modeling it.  Though before I give I want to check that they're original (and not entirly embaressing) before I post them.

Thanks for reading
Math

Offline Mathonwy

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Howdie
« Reply #5 on: June 30, 2005, 10:21:36 AM »
I think I found the right thread, at least I hope I did as I have posted my ideas to it;

The thread I posted to

If its the wrong place I'll have to figure out how to move it...

Thanks for reading,
Math

Offline PurpleYouko

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Howdie
« Reply #6 on: June 30, 2005, 11:10:42 AM »
It looks like a good enough place.

Besides, only admins can actually move posts.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world
Those who understand binary.
and those who don't

:D PY :D