Author Topic: DB looks like it is slowly dying  (Read 9129 times)

Offline Botsareus

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Re: DB looks like it is slowly dying
« Reply #15 on: April 02, 2014, 02:47:18 PM »
They used to be 40(F1) and 30(other)
I changed them to 80 and 60 for reasons I outlined above. (Sorry, I need to start posting everything in one post)
But the cool thing is, these buttons now only change the settings. So really, you can have any settings you want now. Anyone up for a pondmode league?

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Actually liked the semi hard coded folders

I had to do something about that for two reasons:
  • Main one being that it is hard to catch program crashes if the system runs everything in one process run i.e. no restarts.
  • Second reason is that why waste time time moving everything to a specfic folder if you can just pass a path to the system? You are going to create a folder anyway. Now you can have your MB's SS's and others floating around your file system somewhere in nice separate folders.

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(ofc. not all 600 bots are necessarily)

The changes to the program with chloroplasts are so drastic that I prefer (and will soon) run a tournament league first to get some handle on what robots are actually good now. A little more work for me as I will have to go trough the leagues and download each robot, but I will be happy doing it.


Offline Peter

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Re: DB looks like it is slowly dying
« Reply #16 on: April 02, 2014, 03:24:21 PM »
Isn't the lower area taken at start not enough to offset the costs of making chloroplasts?

Edit: Is it possible stop DB from popping up every time it restarts?
« Last Edit: April 02, 2014, 03:25:55 PM by Peter »
Oh my god, who the hell cares.

Offline Botsareus

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Re: DB looks like it is slowly dying
« Reply #17 on: April 03, 2014, 08:46:44 PM »
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Isn't the lower area taken at start not enough to offset the costs of making chloroplasts?

I am not worried about the costs, I am worried about the fact that robots are loaded in with zero. They will have to wait to reach 16K to start getting there normal amount, as I did not expend 'special chloroplast settings' to leagues as I want it to be more natural.

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Is it possible stop DB from popping up every time it restarts?

Thank you for testing it, I was not sure it will work at all.  :P

Try this one, hope it works:
« Last Edit: April 03, 2014, 09:23:40 PM by Botsareus »

Offline Moonfisher

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Re: DB looks like it is slowly dying
« Reply #18 on: April 04, 2014, 07:31:49 AM »
I actually couldn't get the stepladder tournament to work... not sure what I did wrong. Followed the instructions. It restarts, but doesn't start the stepladder league.
I don't have the source checked out, and not gonna go there at this time. No time for it, and remember how much the global variables in VB6 bugged me last time I had a look at it.

On that other subject, we wouldn't need to keep updating bots all the time, but would be cool there was a default path set, pointing at a folder with the top 30 F1 bots from some date (Wouldn't need to be updated all the time, should just have something).

Basically the first thing I did when I downloaded DB the first time was to start working on an F1 league bot, and I kept running the F1 league in stepladder mode to see how far it would get. When it got beat I would be running it against the bot who beat it, and once I could beat that bot I would go back to running the stepladder, eager to see how far it would make it now.

Like an old school Van Dam movie or something.

For me this had a lot of appeal and I really enjoyed that part. And I think there may be a lot of people who are into programming games who would enjoy this part as well, so would be cool if it was just ready to go. Basically just add your bot and hit some button to run it against the F1 league. (Could be a button bellow the 3 buttons who adjust the settings that simply launches the stepladder league with the bot you have added as the contender.)

Btw, will chloroplast be enabled for the competing bots in F1 mode?
Seems like there would be some endless battles. Basically any bots that amass chloroplast and aren't able to kill the opponent will end up fighting forever. Some fights can take ages already, with endless nrg supply it'll just be endless for some fights. You could enter bots that only run away and defend themselves but never attack, and any bot that can't keep up with it would have an endless match right there already...
(But gonna see how my new version of Fruit Flies does on IM though)
« Last Edit: April 04, 2014, 08:29:36 AM by Moonfisher »

Offline Botsareus

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Re: DB looks like it is slowly dying
« Reply #19 on: April 04, 2014, 10:20:05 AM »
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It restarts, but doesn't start the stepladder league.

Give me zip of your robot folder you used. Would not hurt to give me the global.gset file also. I am assuming your settings are default F1 settings.  I'll see if I can figure it out.

edit: For now you can try deleting your 'autosaved.gset' and 'safemode.gset' files and see if it works. Program gets grumpy if it was end tasked while trying to setup a league.

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but would be cool there was a default path set, pointing at a folder with the top 30 F1 bots from some date

I'll consider it for the next time I do a install drop.

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Btw, will chloroplast be enabled for the competing bots in F1 mode?

Yea, just realized I have to disable them for leagues. Am planning to work on it today actually.



 
« Last Edit: April 04, 2014, 10:24:47 AM by Botsareus »

Offline Botsareus

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Re: DB looks like it is slowly dying
« Reply #20 on: April 04, 2014, 10:49:05 AM »
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and remember how much the global variables in VB6 bugged me last time I had a look at it.

Well first of, thank you for finally replying. It was beginning to get me worked up a little. I did not even know you helped on vb6 at some point. I know the 'visual' part of vb6 is lagging big time, but, I do prefer to program that way (just me.) All I am saying is it will not hurt for you to give it a shot if we do not figure it out in the next couple of days as I got plans.

Thank You
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Offline Numsgil

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Re: DB looks like it is slowly dying
« Reply #21 on: April 04, 2014, 01:11:30 PM »
The F1 arena is small enough that I'm not sure it is actually possible for an endless battle, even with infinite nrg (well, as long as combat does more damage than chloroplasts could gain).  Could run like molasses but eventually I'd expect one or the other bot to win, if for no other reason than they'd physically run out of space to do anything but battle.

May be worth considering adding it until such time that the problems become evident.  And then we can either rebalance the chloroplasts or remove them from league combat, depending on the exact situation.

Offline Botsareus

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Re: DB looks like it is slowly dying
« Reply #22 on: April 04, 2014, 04:42:15 PM »
The other problem with having chloroplasts is that some robots (in relatively rare cases) may use these memory locations to do something else.
I think we should just add a chloroplast enabled version of the F1 league honestly. Call it the 'Chloroplast League.'

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Some fights can take ages already

I did add time limit on a league round btw.

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may need to rebalance the chloroplasts

Fun fact:

As you may be aware I am experimenting with my survival evolution methods again. On two occasions the 'mutating' robot evolved chloroplasts vs the 'base' robot. Which basically led to a nice stable ecosystem where none of the opposing robots where losing. This is what led me to put that 'disable chloroplasts' check-box in the first place. Therefor, imo the chloroplasts are very well balanced right now. They suite there purpose.



Moonfisher, if you still can not get it to work and I am away:

Look under
Code: [Select]
MDIForm1 > MDIForm_Load() > Select Case x_restartmode
If it makes it this far then the league round should start up correctly.
« Last Edit: April 04, 2014, 04:49:57 PM by Botsareus »

Offline Peter

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Re: DB looks like it is slowly dying
« Reply #23 on: April 04, 2014, 04:56:46 PM »
Indirectly the alge bot that's in a fight can be used as a infinite energy source. The main reason I was interested in the feeding rate was because I assumed league bots could use it too. I think the damage league bots can do should be quite a bit more than chloroplasts could generate. If chloroplasts can I'd say they're overpowered.

Edit: just as a clarification.

1. Pick bots at 'random(or whatever order)' and generate a stepladder league one by one.
2. Bots are deleted from the initial picked folder then put in the db/leagues folder, with 1 -, 2 - put in front of filenames to show the position.
3. No support to run against already existing stepladder leagues, to update a league with a new bot.

Try this one, hope it works:
nope, still popping up in front at each restart.
« Last Edit: April 04, 2014, 05:31:54 PM by Peter »
Oh my god, who the hell cares.

Offline Botsareus

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Re: DB looks like it is slowly dying
« Reply #24 on: April 04, 2014, 08:48:39 PM »
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I think the damage league bots can do should be quite a bit more than chloroplasts could generate.

I get it now. Good call. I will lower the chloroplast rates to what they where before.

Offline NotLegalTender

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Re: DB looks like it is slowly dying
« Reply #25 on: April 07, 2014, 12:25:07 AM »
I had promoted this site at the speculative evolution forums in the past. Also, I just posted a topic about this simulator on the species forum.

http://www.speciesgame.com/forum/index.php
« Last Edit: April 07, 2014, 12:28:15 AM by NotLegalTender »

Offline Moonfisher

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Re: DB looks like it is slowly dying
« Reply #26 on: April 07, 2014, 01:32:18 AM »
Ok, if I have time I'll check out the code and run from source.
But will try the other things mentioned first.

Concerning Chloroplast I think sooner or later there will be the issue of 2 bots who are fairly evenly matched and also use Chloroplast.
Normally starvation and general luck with alge spawn will tend to determine a winner.
But of course I only know the chloroplast settings for 2.47.00, so not sure how much it'll be lowered.
The ones I tried went up to 16K chloroplast, but smaller bots started getting heavy around 2-300
However if your energy consumption is very low, then 100 chloroplast is actually enough to sustain you.

In either case off the top of my head, a  bot that produces chloroplast and a lot of slime would likely be able to survive against Fruit Flies, but it would never be able to kill them all. The energy gain from Chloroplast would have to be very low to avoid this.

Offline Henk

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Re: DB looks like it is slowly dying
« Reply #27 on: April 30, 2014, 10:34:28 AM »
This is pretty much the level of activity we've always had.  As old members move on to other things new ones come in.

As proof: I'm such an old member... I'm amazed to see this software still going after 11(!) years. :)

Recently I re-downloaded Darwinbots and I am again having fun, together with a friend. A lot has changed in how stuff works, though!
cond
*.DBbugs 0 =
start
.rejoice inc
stop