Greetings and other miscellany

[JRaccoon]

I'd like to say hello and nice to meet you all. That feels a little strange since I've been lurking for years now (almost a decade  ) watching the project develop from the sidelines. I just have to say that I'm really impressed with the work started by Carlo and continued here in this community. I've really enjoyed the concept and execution of the program.

That said, I'm going to try and transition into a programming related job after spending time in the healthcare field. This means I've been looking for a project that I can work on for the next couple of months to show potential employers that I'm capable of developing a medium sized, multifaceted product from the ground up. I'd love to do a simplified clone of Darwinbots as my self-assigned showcase. So my most pressing question at this point, what is Darwinbots license? I don't intend to use any of the code for obvious reasons, but I would like to "borrow" much of the design as the basis for my simulator. Any guidance (legal, creative, professional) from the current developers would be greatly appreciated.

Now that I've bothered to make an account after all this time, I should be at least a little more active. Expect to see more of me in the future. 

[Numsgil]

Hi!  Glad you finally posted  

The current version has an odd license that Carlo put in place way back when.  See this.  That said, the license only covers the code and derivatives of the code.  The core ideas are not protected (or protectable), so you can feel free to steal them and remix them however you like.

In terms of the technical challenges involved, do you know what language you'll be programming in?  And how important is the physics-based simulation to you?  A couple people have experimented with a grid based simulation based on Darwinbots with some success, for instance.  But if you want the physics style universe you might look in to something like Box2D as a drop-in physics engine.

[JRaccoon]

Love the quick response!

Thanks for the link to the copyright notice. I wasn't too worried about strictly violating the license seeing as I'm not reusing any existing code, but I'm no IP expert and the specifics of open source licenses have always been a fuzzy area for me. I just don't want to cause unnecessary drama by creating a feature-derivative copy when there are literally hundreds of other projects I can choose. I'm glad that it doesn't look like any of that will be an issue though.

In terms of the specifics, I will be programming my simulation in Java due to familiarity (or maybe another JVM language like Scala if I'm feeling adventurous). I haven't settled on any one representation of the universe yet as I wanted to handle the legal bits before continuing onto anything too involved. Since it was the dynamic nature of Darwinbots that first caught my eye, I'm going to attempt a physics based simulation rather than grid based (I may revisit this decision if it impacts the rest of the design).  I do know of the Java port of box2D, and thank you for reminding me of its existence.

[Numsgil]

Java is a good choice.  The other large piece is DNA.  You'll want a scripting language for the bots that you can mutate easily.  I'm not sure of options for Java off hand, so you might need to build your own. Which is a project but manageable.