Viruses

[Numsgil]

Well, technically real viruses are/were specific to their hosts.  If we do this, then viruses only really become interesting in evo sims.

[shvarz]

The sad thing is that I can't come up with any rules that would allow making viruses and still be useful to bots :(

But I do have an idea on how to define what DNA to place into viral particle.  Whenever the program encounters .mkvirus, it looks at the sequence of 5 previous commands, say they are "1 2 > * stop".  Then it looks for exact same 5 commands downstream of .mkvirus and copies the whole stretch into the particle.  The particle has the following DNA: "1 2 > * stop -viralDNAhere - 1 2 > * stop".  If the commands are not found downstream, then no viral particle is made.

Whenver the viral particle hits a bot, then the program looks for the first 5 commands of virus in the DNA of the bot. If it finds it, then it inserts the viral DNA in that spot and duplicates the 5 commands on both sides.

So that if bots DNA used to be:

blah-blah 1 2 > * stop blah-blah

Now it will be

blah-blah 1 2 > * stop -viralDNAhere 1 2 > * stop blah-blah

If it does not find the 5 commands then virus can't infect that cell.

This system is very flexible and it allows a lot of real-life things to happen to viruses.  Like they can get stuck in DNA (if infected cell divides and mutates the second 5 commands) and then they can get re-activated.  They can pick up some bots DNA with them.  They allow cells to create "traps" for viruses, placing them outside of valid conditions.  They allow natural viral-host co-evolution.

[Greven]

And as before it should be. Evo over game! Sorry that is just the way I am. I can se that it is funny and interesting to build bots from scratch and find all small un-balances in the símulation and use them to their benefit. But it will be much more (for my point of view) interesting that the bots will all that by them self! Darwinbots were created with evolution in mind, not gaming. Stick at least a little to it, and forget for a second all the bot makers.

If it is, there are plenty of xxx-robots etc. programs, were they would be able to program their own little super killer bot. But want about us evolutionist? Were is there anything like DB???? NONE!

I have search the net utterly thin to find a such a system, but no one can get DB to its knees. E-den is a possiblity, but to slow, and to abstract (in sense that it is extremely difficult to find out why a bot is a succes).

Then Avida, but there is no physical bounderies as in DB (they only need to replicate and then make some computations -> more points -> more execution time -> more offspring etc.)

Please! I beg you Num!

But then again, I might then have to make another kind of DB from scratch, but the original DB will always stay close to my heart.

[Greven]

I know it is a bit off topic!

[PurpleYouko]

If it is, there are plenty of xxx-robots etc. programs, were they would be able to program their own little super killer bot. But want about us evolutionist? Were is there anything like DB???? NONE!

That is where DB is so good. It allows for both.

The fact is that if we don't thoroughly test all the possibilities by programming killer bots then we will never know if the systems work properly.
Once it is all functional then evolution can play with it to it's hearts content.

DB will never become a pure battle-bot game. It will always be primarily an evo sim.
But in order to do that better, we have to allow battle bot programmers (like me) to hash it all out and get stuff working properly.

[Greven]

I see you point PY, and yet again I dont.

This should be evolutions job!

Say: you run a evo sim. Some bot gets the upper hand and is totaly a killer, no other bot can beat it. Then you analyse the bot, sees that "Oh, here it takes an advantage of a flaw, and rushlessly exploit!, you change that piece of code, then you run a sim again.

Only when bots are countuailly evovled /co-evolving the "game" is optimum, or whatever.

[Numsgil]

Thing is it's the battle-bot sort of stuff that attracts new people.  I found it for that reason.  Same with alot of us here.

I think DB balances the two quite well.  Neither is predominant over the other.  There's no reason it can't be interesting from both point of views.  If something is only interesting from the POV of battle-bots or for evo sims, then it probably needs to be fleshed out more.

[Numsgil]

The sad thing is that I can't come up with any rules that would allow making viruses and still be useful to bots :(

But I do have an idea on how to define what DNA to place into viral particle.  Whenever the program encounters .mkvirus, it looks at the sequence of 5 previous commands, say they are "1 2 > * stop".  Then it looks for exact same 5 commands downstream of .mkvirus and copies the whole stretch into the particle.  The particle has the following DNA: "1 2 > * stop -viralDNAhere - 1 2 > * stop".  If the commands are not found downstream, then no viral particle is made.

Whenver the viral particle hits a bot, then the program looks for the first 5 commands of virus in the DNA of the bot. If it finds it, then it inserts the viral DNA in that spot and duplicates the 5 commands on both sides.

So that if bots DNA used to be:

blah-blah 1 2 > * stop blah-blah

Now it will be

blah-blah 1 2 > * stop -viralDNAhere 1 2 > * stop blah-blah

If it does not find the 5 commands then virus can't infect that cell.

This system is very flexible and it allows a lot of real-life things to happen to viruses.  Like they can get stuck in DNA (if infected cell divides and mutates the second 5 commands) and then they can get re-activated.  They can pick up some bots DNA with them.  They allow cells to create "traps" for viruses, placing them outside of valid conditions.  They allow natural viral-host co-evolution.

But at the same time it becomes more difficult to program them as a weapon for the leagues...  Like they'd really only be useful against others of your same genome, wich is exactly opposite of how a weapon is supposed to work.

I think we must first define what we want viruses to be used for, then figure out the implementation.  Viruses as methods for copying genes seems the most obvious.  Viruses as methods for transporting code snipets is also possible.  I could go either way, but I think the first makes more sense.

And as far as implementation: mkvirus accepts some sort of number that presumably represents the location of the DNA to be copied into a virus.  But if viruses are flying around, the only location in the genome you can be really sure of is your own.  You're always going to be *.thisgene.  All other gene positions can change quite dramatically.

[Botsareus]

And as before it should be: Evo over game!
Please! I beg you Num!

Strange, people will not say this things unless: hmmm, do the new mutations sux or what?

P.S.

sorry for being of topic too.

[Numsgil]

Strange, people will not say this things unless: hmmm, do the new mutations sux or what?

What on Earth makes you say that?

[Botsareus]

Anyone else got stuff to say because I can take that as sarcasm...

(I can't check them out myself yet because people say some of them don't work)

[Numsgil]

Greven's comment wasn't anything but an plee that the evo sim part of the program be left the primary concern.  It was not a criticism in any way of the evo parts of the program past or present.

[shvarz]

I don't think viruses should be weapons.  Why should they?  Makes no sense to me.

I can see only three needs for viruses:

1. To simulate virus vs host evolution
2. To allow horizontal gene transfer
3. To introduce more meaningful junk DNA

[Greven]

Num is right Bots, you need to read the post's more closely, or were I unspecific, maybe a hard to read post? Please comment, and I will try to make it better.

About Shvarz... I agree... Evolution or whatever just dont say to a cell or bot: here now you have a very usefull weapon (virus), you were lucky, because your fitness will now increase very much.

I can understand, that coding is intersting, I my self study Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen, which is the orgin of the Mac system, if anyone knows that, love to code my self.

But my main goal/concern/ideas/interest/whatever has always been AL!!!! I read a book about 6 years ago about matematics, and a small paragraphh were dedicated to AL, or some very strange sort, but I did get the idea. Then I search the net about this, getting Tierra, which were amazing, at that time, with everything in it, then I began to program (on and off) some very simple AL sims (now I not even know if I could call them AL), but in short, pure AL is my thing, to prove that creationist are wrong!!!!!!!!!!

[MrMound]

I was thinking about viruses and what they do is envade a cell and use it to reproduce themselves so why not make a comand that allows your bot able to go into a bot and take it over and use it to reproduce.  a rule we could use with this is that viruses cant have a reproducing gene and so that they will have to take over bots to survive.