Topics

196

Off Topic / Good morning

« on: May 14, 2006, 02:56:05 AM »

It's a wonderful spring morning today. The sun is shining and the temperature is 17.1 degrees celsius. That whould be... Let's see where I have that converter....62.78 degrees fahrenheit. We're all on the northern hemisphere here, right? I'm wondering if I'm going to sit at the computer the whole day or if I'm going to take a stroll through the woods.  

197

Biology / Energy distribution to offspring.

« on: May 11, 2006, 01:02:55 PM »

When my veggies reproduce the offspring are very tiny and they are given very little energy from their parent, like 200-300 energy. Also they can't gain any energy from autotroph when I have it set to 12 nrg per kilobody point. Only the large ones gain energy. Why is it that the offspring have so little energy from start and why don't they gain any energy? In other sims I've run the parents usually give half their energy over to their offspring. Is there some gene that desides how much energy to give, or is it some bug? Ofcourse if I set the energy to veggies per cycle instead all gain energy. But then no veggie will die and the population will stay at maximum forever, wich makes it quite boring. I don't have any bots in the sim to keep it down.

(This is the second time I try to post this. The first post got deleted!)

198

Bugs and fixes / Energy distribution to offspring.

« on: May 11, 2006, 12:17:55 PM »

When my veggies reproduce the offspring are very tiny and they are given very little energy from their parent, like 200-300 energy. Also they can't gain any energy from autotroph when I have it set to 12 nrg per kilobody point. Only the large ones gain energy. Why is it that the offspring have so little energy from start and why don't they gain any energy? They only lose energy. In other sims I've run the parents usually give half their energy over to their offspring. Is there some gene that desides how much energy to give, or is it some bug? Ofcourse if I set the energy to veggies per cycle instead all gain energy. But then no veggie will die and the population will stay at maximum forever, wich makes it quite boring. I don't have any bots in the sim to keep it down.

199

Biology / A question about the age costs

« on: May 09, 2006, 03:01:34 PM »

I'm wondering how the age costs work exactly. For example: I have a bot that is 131913 cycles old. I've been running this sim without any age costs selected, but for 3000 cycles ago I decided to put in some aging costs. I set the 'age cost to' 0.25 and 'Begin upon reaching' to 20000 cycles. Will this start counting from the moment I set it and click change in the GUI? If that's the case then this bot should start ageing at 148913 cycles. Also I'm wondering what will happen if I save and quit, and then load the sim again. Will the ageing continue to count where it left off or will it start from the beginning again? Also I'm wondering what the 'Increase cost log(age)' mean exactly. I presume it is some kind of acceleration on the cost value over time. If so, how much?  

200

Off Topic / Overriding the upload limit!

« on: May 06, 2006, 09:54:27 AM »

I'm running Firefox and there is a way to upload larger files then I'm supposed to. If I upload a large file Firefox asks me if I want to terminate a script that can cause problems. If I click ok then the uploading proceeds. Sorry if I'm breaking the rules this way, but you can delete the files from the server after you have checked them out. It's mainly files for bug reports that are a little large sometimes. There is no way to get them smaller anyway.  

 

201

Bug reports / Corrupted saves again!

« on: May 06, 2006, 09:48:45 AM »

Saves still get corrupted sometimes. I'm running 2.42.3a but I don't think this has been fixed in 2.42.3b. I have uploaded my save here if you want to check it out.

202

Bug reports / Getting stucked bug

« on: May 06, 2006, 09:34:08 AM »

I have found out that whenever a bot or veggie produces an offspring they will get stucked on the screen and unaffected by brownian motion. That must be a bug. I don't think that has been addressed in 2.42.3b either.

203

Off Topic / Thoughts about other a-life progs.

« on: April 27, 2006, 11:38:11 AM »

I've been thinking about some other a-life programs out there that needs a lot of improvements. It seems to me that this a-life business goes damn slow and I get frustrated that it's so difficult to find any good ones. Has anybody here heard about El-Fish? It was allmost impossible to get it but after many hours of searching on the web I managed to find this link:

http://www.antiqueclockshop.com/virtual/elfish.htm

It's an abandonware and you can download it for free if you want to check it out.

There are 3 things that makes this the best aquarium simulation software out there.

1. You can evolve fishes with different kinds of shapes and colors.

2. You can create unique plants for your aquarium.

3. You can create your own tank with lots of different stuff to put in.

But otherwise the fishes are just animations that swim around in the same way and they don't need to eat or sleep, and they can't reproduce. Also there is a compatibility issue with todays computers with fast processors, wich limits the amount of fishes you can put in the aquarium. For instance I could only put 1 big fish and only 4 small fishes in my aquarium. Sucks! So it gets boring after a little while. The only fun part was to try and make a fish look like some real species. I managed to create this one. It looks like a swedish species called Abborre, wich I guess you call Bass in USA. I'm not sure. (See screenshot)

Well... The reason why I write about this is just to see if any of you talented folks here whould be interested in making something like this or improve the programs that exists.

There are a couple of other similar programs I've checked out. One is at this link:

http://www.fearby.com/products/3dfishtank/evaluation.shtml

I voluntered as a playtester for this program and the maker said he whould send me a copy to test but I haven't heard anything from him since last year. It seems like a dead program. It wont even run on my computer.

Another one I've been looking at is something called Aquazone. It's difficult to get information about how much a-life-like this is. I was thinking about maybe purchasing it, but I don't trust that it does what I want it to do.

So... I was just wondering if any of you whould be interested in something like this? Maybe after you've completed Darwinbots.  

204

Bug reports / Error overflow in 2.42.2

« on: April 23, 2006, 06:09:03 PM »

Suddenly when I was running a sim I got an error message saying 'Error. Overflow. Saving file as error.sim.' Maybe you can find the cause in the error.sim file.

205

Bugs and fixes / A question about fixed bots

« on: April 21, 2006, 12:57:24 PM »

Everyonce in awhile some bot appears fixed on the screen while the rest are affected by brownian motion normally. It appears to me to be a bug, or maybe the bot has evolved to be fixed, wich I think is odd. Here's a gene for a fixed bot:

 sub inc
 cond
 xor
 dist * store
 xor
 add mult ~ 1 sgn or
 ceil

206

Bugs and fixes / The 'Born' counter

« on: April 16, 2006, 02:33:22 PM »

The thing that shows how many have been borned into the sim will reset to 0 whenever I click change in the GUI. A little bug perhaps.  

207

Off Topic / Screenshots in the blog gallery

« on: April 14, 2006, 07:11:52 PM »

Just wanted to say that the screenshots looks crappy in the blog. It whould be nice if one could zoom in like when you're viewing pictures in the forums.

208

Off Topic / Some cool aquariums

« on: April 14, 2006, 03:09:33 PM »

Wanna see some cool aquariums? A company in Sweden is renting out aquariums to other companies.

http://www.akvarieleasing.se/spec1a.htm

209

Off Topic / Just started a blog

« on: April 14, 2006, 10:37:41 AM »

I have made my first entry in the blog, but it says 0 entries.  

210

Bug reports / Total cycles counter acting odd

« on: April 13, 2006, 12:48:38 PM »

When total cycles displayed 260 000 cycles I went into the GUI and made a change then clicked Change. Then the Total cycles changed to 57 000 cycles!