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Topics - shvarz

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31
Suggestions / "Download a bot" button
« on: December 17, 2007, 01:22:17 PM »
Sometimes I experience a total population wipeout and have to wait until something comes from internet to populate my sim. I think the way IM teleporter is set up is that it d/l some bots in exchange for bots leaving the sim, so that if your sim is almost empty it takes forever for teleporter to bring new bots into your sim. Can we have a button, that would allow one to "download a bot from internet" manually?

32
Bug reports / Crashes in empty sims
« on: December 12, 2007, 01:16:59 PM »
I've been getting "overflow" errors recently in the 2.43v version. It is probably related to recent things I did to my sim:  I jacked up the day/night cycles and removed repopulation by veggies in my sim. As a result, I often find my sim empty of any bots (usually some arrive from internet, but sometimes they die right away).
error. rar is attached as error.txt

33
Off Topic / New virus?
« on: December 10, 2007, 05:22:07 PM »
I had a surge of virus infections in Alga minimalis this morning. Since the internet mode is supposedly not working, then I could not get it from some other sim. The virus is absolutely rampant, it reached over 300 copies in Alga and it killed off all of bots that were in my sim (Flypaper, Lionfish, Anemone and others).

I am just curious whether this virus appeared on its own or was designed by someone.  Here is a representative copy:

start
 *.thisgene 335 *.tie sgn 1 sub abs mult inc
 *.nrg 100 div 338 *.vtimer sgn 1 sub abs mult store
 0 7 *.in3 sgn 1 sub abs mult store
 stop

34
Off Topic / DB gains popularity
« on: December 10, 2007, 12:38:29 PM »
Just started a sim and I see 11 sims going in internet mode!  Of course 3 of them are from EricL, but it's still the highest I've ever seen. Woo-hoo!

35
Bugs and fixes / Screen shifted OPEN
« on: November 20, 2007, 12:53:51 PM »
In 2.43s the playing field is shifted to the right by about 30%. There is nothing on the left, just words "Internet mode". If I unlock the field, then I can move it back so that it fills up the screen the way it should, but when I lock it back and click anywhere on the field, it moves to the right again.  Do you want me to save the sim and attach it?

36
Suggestions / Internet mode as default
« on: October 25, 2007, 01:54:50 PM »
I think it would be very helpful to make new installs to default to internet mode. The new user would start the program and get a list of current (or recent) sims on the internet. He would then choose to "Join sim", which would download all the settings for him, plus several bots and start the sim. No need to figure out how DB works, instant gratification, instant fun and feeling of being in a community.

Once we get that, I'd be happy to promote DB (again) on my blog, which is regularly read by ~100-200 people, many of them scientists and programmers.

37
Bugs and fixes / Strange thingie RESOLVED (BY DESIGN)
« on: October 24, 2007, 05:36:52 PM »
Not sure if this is a bug or a feature   Just noticed strange thing in my sim - a bot apparently connected to hundreds of other bots throughout the whole sim. As I zoom in on the bot the ties disappear, zoom out - appear back. See the attached pictures.

38
Bug reports / costs
« on: September 19, 2007, 04:22:10 PM »
My sim was growing out of control, so I started jacking  up the costs for everything. Interestingly, sim was loosing energy at the same rate (very slowly) no matter what the costs were. So I set them all up at 10,000 and still the total loss of energy in the sim was ~60 per turn.  Strange.  Check it out.  Especially take a look at huge veggies on the right side - they have massive bodies, but even though they should be charged 10,000 per body per turn, they are not loosing energy.

39
Off Topic / Spore
« on: September 04, 2007, 02:03:51 PM »
Hi all!  How is everyone doing?

I just wanted to give a link to this hour-long lecture about a cool new sim game that's in plans for next year.  It simulates the whole development of life starting from single-cell organisms and ending in interstellar travel. It is going to be pretty much a huge sandbox, where thousands of people would be able to play simultaneously. Right now the "evolution" part is pretty much limited to the intelligent design of creatures by players, but all the tools are there to turn it into a real evolutionary sim.  

Anyway, check it out when you have time: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2...184348066&hl=en

40
Biology / Diversity in plain environment
« on: March 15, 2007, 07:13:21 PM »
Hello everyone!

It's been a while since I came here last time.  Hope things are going well...  although I do see that it appears to be one of those "slumps" that we get.

Anyway, I have a question that I'd love to talk through with someone.  We've all seen that the flat and boring environment of DBs leads to selection of bots that are very alike.  That's not surprising, because that's exactly what a darwinian selection should do.  Even if you start with two bots that are exactly the same, one of them is going to win in the end because it would be the lucky one that got a mutation that gave it a temporary edge over the competitor.  

Yet I have an idea on how a fairly homogeneous environment can maintain survival of two (or more) species for fairly long periods of time. The idea is that instead of having one single continuous well-mixed environment we create an environment that consists of a large number of small temporary niches of food that allow only a limited number of progeny to be produced.  Kind of like a veggie spawning in a random spot in the sim, dividing for a while and then dying.  

This would achieve two things:

First, the competing species would rarely directly interact.  Each organism would randomly encounter a niche and use the available resources completely.  Whoever is first one, gets the whole niche.

Second, the stochastic effects of encountering a niche would cancel out any beneficial mutations that may be acquired by one of the bots.  This is because a more fine-tuned bot, a bot that is better adapted, has a lot more chances to create a progeny that is less fit than parent, than a less-fit bot.

Does that make sense?  I feel like I did not explain it very well, so please ask questions to clarify.

I'm actually thinking about testing this hypothesis in a number of ways. I can do some real experiments with viruses to test that.  I have a math-wiz guy working with me who is maybe interested in doing some modeling of this situation.  And I also have a buddy who is interested in writing a cellular-automata program to simulate that (kind of like DBs approach to modeling life).

But I just want to run this idea by as many people as possible to see if there is some flaw in the logic that I'm missing.  So I'd really appreciate your comments

41
Bugs and fixes / 2.42.9 s>t bug
« on: January 16, 2007, 03:08:47 PM »
Some recent change done when going from s to t version completely kills my current evo-sim.  Try loading this sim in these two different versions and you'll see the difference right away.

http://www.darwinbots.com/shvarz/01-15.rar

Edit: can't make the link work - just copy/paste the above into your browser, including the empty sapce between 15 and work

Edit 2: Name changed and sim RAR-ed to save traffic.  Thanks, Sportiel.

42
Biology / Five Rules for the Evolutionof Cooperation
« on: January 15, 2007, 05:03:55 PM »
uploaded for your enjoyment: http://www.darwinbots.com/shvarz/1560.pdf

43
Bugs and fixes / Mutation rates
« on: January 10, 2007, 02:54:59 PM »
Not sure if it's a bug, but I see skewed ratio for types of mutations.  I started with (almost)zero-bot that had just reproduction gene and a bunch of random nonsense and after a while looking at my bots I see in mutation details the following:
Quote
Minor Deletion deleted a run of 1 bps at position 15 during cycle 6582423
Major Deletion deleted a run of 4 bps at position 20 during cycle 6578974
Minor Deletion deleted a run of 1 bps at position 13 during cycle 6553210
Minor Deletion deleted a run of 1 bps at position 14 during cycle 6550116
Major Deletion deleted a run of 4 bps at position 20 during cycle 6547061
Major Deletion deleted a run of 3 bps at position 14 during cycle 6535936
Major Deletion deleted a run of 3 bps at position 18 during cycle 6513640
Delta mutations changed Point Mutation from 1 in 5000 to 1 in 4562.133
Minor Deletion deleted a run of 1 bps at position 35 during cycle 6493622
Minor Deletion deleted a run of 1 bps at position 8 during cycle 6483567
Minor Deletion deleted a run of 1 bps at position 4 during cycle 6469072
Major Deletion deleted a run of 3 bps at position 15 during cycle 6468389
Point Mutation changed number from 8 to 16 at position 33 during cycle 6468055
Minor Deletion deleted a run of 1 bps at position 26 during cycle 6467012
Copy Error changed the number: .robage to the flow command: cond at position 23 during cycle 6460197
Major Deletion deleted a run of 5 bps at position 15 during cycle 6438109
Major Deletion deleted a run of 3 bps at position 12 during cycle 6408242
Delta mutations changed Copy Error from 1 in 5000 to 1 in 4660.702
Major Deletion deleted a run of 6 bps at position 33 during cycle 6382245

As you can see, mostly deletions.  I would understand that if the costs of maintaining DNA were high, but they were actually set pretty low, at around 0.000001.   Weird, huh?

44
Simulation Emporium / Look at my sim
« on: January 09, 2007, 02:56:01 PM »
Just wanted to share a screenshot of my current sim with you for no particular reason.  Look at them go!!!

45
Suggestions / Costs
« on: January 07, 2007, 07:03:03 PM »
I don't like imposing costs on DNA maintenance, so in my sims I usually try to reduce all the command-related costs and bring the cost of "doing things" up instead.  My thinking is that most costs should apply to physical actions in the world, not to having some commands in DNA.  But we are quite limited in the amount of physical costs.  There are shots, tie formation, movement and creation of some substances, but that is about it.  So as a result, the energy does not go out of sim quickly enough and I have to come up with other ways to drain energy, such as impose age-related costs or higher friction.  

I think we should simplify the costs for DNA by charging some flat cost for DNA maintenance/command and instead add more physical costs.  So far I came up with the following: Costs for rotation, costs for pumping energy through ties, differential costs for different kinds of shots, costs for expelling waste, costs for moving ties around.

Any other ideas?

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