Messages

16

Bugs and fixes / "Best bot" in veggie-only sims

« on: November 29, 2006, 07:05:56 AM »

Then perhaps we should have a discussion on what counts as "best". Perhaps a formula that takes into account age, offspring, kills and body. Heck, how about an option box where we can assign weights to various factors to use in best bot calculations?

17

Evolution and Internet Sharing Sims / Zerobot sims

« on: November 29, 2006, 07:02:08 AM »

I agree.  That's a prime example of some mutated DNA at work.  It looks like it's trying to arrive at the magic 1000 number that would be the start of when it loses nrg.

Ah, that would also explain why it loses this trait fairly quickly when I put it into the second sim in which it isn't a veggie - it no longer has any reason to hold off for at least the first 1000 cycles. I was wondering why this particular bit of dna is so tenacious in the first sim but just evaporates in a few tens of thousands of cycles in the second one.

That's some comparatively sophisticated behaviour from a randomly evolved dna script. Now if only I could find a way to select for using eyes...

BTW, I've started referring to this type of carefully-managed environment sim as a "bonsai" - carefully managed simulations intended to evolve a particular behaviour or set of behaviours.

18

Bugs and fixes / "Best bot" in veggie-only sims

« on: November 28, 2006, 08:09:05 AM »

The "Best bot" button doesn't work in veggie-only sims. Which is understandable, I guess given the heterotroph orientation of the program, but if you hit "best bot" then try to call up Robot Info, the program crashes.

19

Suggestions / Cost multiplier slider

« on: November 28, 2006, 08:05:26 AM »

Can we have a way to manually set the costX for a sim? I'd like to be able to start a sim off with super-low costs and then gradually increase it to try and temper some bots that can survive costs. The current way involves changing the vaules in a load of text boxes, but if there was just a simple slider that we could drag to increase or decrease costs it would be a lot easier.

20

Evolution and Internet Sharing Sims / Zerobot sims

« on: November 28, 2006, 08:02:49 AM »

Okay, here's my current leading evolved bot from the sim described above.

else
1 1 15 store
12 0 0 -3 1 -32 start
add 23 *.robage 24 57 mult sub add .repro store
cond
start
0 and
1 -10 -24 angle 13 .up store
stop
9 1 1 -16 start
start
<
0 1 not
.shoot dec
rnd dist -7 -6 1 2 0 start
stop
-2 -1 - 8 0 1 1 *20 1 9 2 -16 0 stop
start
20 0 angle 8 13 0 1 11 & 23 -23 1 add cond
stop
else
1 1 1 *.up 0 -1 and
*.up 0 1 1 %=
else
start
16 add -1 0 30 start
1 -13 0 0 1 0 1 *-9 start
1 1 11 19 1 7 add and
store
.up inc
0 8 -1 *-18 start
1 0 angle 1 15 5 start
angle *-4 and
~ 0 *.up inc
sqr


Strangely, the repro command was placed in the middle of the dna, so either the reproduction commands migrated to the top of the dna somehow or a mutation wiped out the original repro instruction and later on created a new one higher up the dna in a sterile bot.

This bot reproduces every 1300 or so cycles, and it is being plunged into sims with slowly-increasing costs to try and temper it a little.

I think it overflows the value in .repro based on its age until it happens to hit a >0 value.

21

Evolution and Internet Sharing Sims / Zerobot sims

« on: November 28, 2006, 07:07:43 AM »

How about a cost for dna length during reproduction then? Subtract a rate dependent on dna length from the child's and parent's nrg and stupidly long dna suddenly becomes a lot less attractive - but not actually lethal.

22

Evolution and Internet Sharing Sims / Zerobot sims

« on: November 27, 2006, 10:51:29 AM »

Sure, I'll bring in my current top performer tomorrow morning. It acts a little weird (they end their lives in an explosion of cancerous reproduction, which seems to occur randomly - even in sims without mutations! I guess this must be a survival trait somehow. Natural selection works in mysterious ways, sometimes), but who knows - it may have straightened itself out after a few more hours tonight.

23

Evolution and Internet Sharing Sims / Zerobot sims

« on: November 24, 2006, 10:26:40 AM »

I've been experimenting with ways of slightly speeding up the process of getting something worthwhile from a zerobot, and I've come up with something useful, but I don't know if this would be considered a "cheat" and get me hounded out of town by a bunch of pitchfork-and-torch-wielding ex nihilo simmers!

I only have the one bot type in the sim, a zerobot with a slight modification - the line 50 .repro store is added about half way so it will constantly reproduce with 50% nrg offspring. This bot "zeroHeadstart" is introduced into a sim as the only bot, with Blocked set off and Autotroph set on. Veggies are capped at about 200, repopulation set to about 10 with a repopulation delay of 100 cycles. The sim is set up to feed 2 nrg/cycle to autotrophs, all as nrg (no body). Then in costs, all costs zero, except an aging cost of 2 nrg/cycle to start when the bot reaches 1000 cycles old, no increases. So what happens here is that for the first 1000 cycles of a bot's life, it is given 2 nrg/cycle to get it started, then it's on its own and gets no additional nrg input in this manner.

What will happen is the first 30 bots will reproduce. Then the sim will do nothing for a while because the offspring and the parent are now blocking one another. After a little while, point mutations will make one of them move... and at that point, that bot gets to reproduce so we've selected for movement. The population will reach the veggie cap pretty quickly, and then stay stationary, until one of them evolves a way to feed off and kill others, whereupon that bot suddenly has an advantage and will take over the sim over the next hour or so. When it has proven its superior fitness by making up a sizeable percentage of the population, save out a healthy-looking specimen and put it into a new sim with alga minimalis, make the evolved bot no longer a veggie and introduce F1 costs, with no costs below 50, reintroduce above 100. Then let the sim run from this foundation.

Yes it is a slight fudge, starting from a not-entirely-helpless bot, and the sim is set up to seriously encourage certain traits, but apart from the one little nudge at the beginning the result is entirely evolved. In fact, I find that the original 50 .repro store vanishes after enough cycles have passed in the second sim, unconditional reproduction is selected against. The current example of this bot I've been baking has put a .timer in the dna nearby that I think controls reproduction.

Sorry for the long post, its a little complicated but may inspire ideas.

So, do I get the pitchfork-and-torches treatment?

24

Suggestions / DB Screensaver?

« on: November 24, 2006, 08:40:27 AM »

Just a random thought that popped into my head literally seconds ago: DB would make a great screensaver if you took away the toolbars at the top and just maximised the sim area. Any chance?

25

Suggestions / .xpos and .ypos/depth

« on: November 24, 2006, 07:51:32 AM »

And it wouldn't break existing bots in small sims too. Always a plus point!

/me likes antbots

26

Suggestions / Ties to corpses

« on: November 24, 2006, 07:40:46 AM »

That's a good point above, about not having to kill every last cell of a multibot to break its structure. Perhaps allowing ties to corpses, but upon bot death making sure that all current ties are severed would work.

27

Suggestions / Should shots be saved in sim files?

« on: November 24, 2006, 07:38:20 AM »

Amen, I can't say I've ever had a problem with shots not being saved, but I'd rather have shots saved than an extra handful of megabytes free on my gazillion-hundred-gigabyte hard drive.

28

The Gene depository / Demo of new .eyeNwidth sysvars

« on: November 24, 2006, 07:19:13 AM »

Yup that's what I meant. And I wonder why none of my hand-written bots never work!

Oh, and when it comes to evolution having a hard time with all these new sysvars... I've learned never to discount the possibility of evolution doing the most insanely complicated and unlikely things with a bunch of bitwise operators, timers, and seemingly-irrelevant numbers.

29

The Gene depository / Demo of new .eyeNwidth sysvars

« on: November 23, 2006, 07:55:21 AM »

Apart from needing to explicitly have a reference to an eye to turn on eyes, I can't see it breaking existing bots. These are just additional features that if not used, which default to the original standards. I could be wrong here of course

And of course, older bots are all of a sudden going to become very, very vulnerable to having their eyes messed with. Can even something fearsome like the top tie feeder beat a bunch of T. Preservans which has been modified to shoot, say, -4 into .eyef?  

30

Suggestions / "Rain"

« on: November 22, 2006, 10:47:09 AM »

If energy (or, say, photons for plants) is introduced into a sim in the form of a constant drizzle of something like shots which start at the top of the screen, move directly downwards and give energy to the first bot they touch, that might encourage more interesting plant evolution. The current closest equivalent, pond mode, does not allow for "shadows" and tactics for stealing "light" from competitors. This way would encourage plants to grow upwards and outwards, and a multibot would have a definitive advantage over a singleton - a multibot could cover a larger area and grow into a taller structure than a singleton confined to rolling around the "floor". The problem I have always had with pond mode is that the lower regions are always so energy poor that if gravity is introduced the sim is so energy poor little happens. This way, even bots at the bottom of the screen get a decent energy input... as long as there's nothing above it.

This post was rushed because I'm about to leave work, but the idea behind it wasn't