Topics

31

Bugs and fixes / What? No bug reports?

« on: November 18, 2005, 03:09:42 PM »

So, Am I to assume that the total and utter lack of overflows, runtime errors and other crap being reported for V2.37.6, is an indicator that it is finally stable?  B)

Or is everybody just too lazy to comment?  <_<

32

Off Topic / Story Sanctum project underway again

« on: November 17, 2005, 09:08:30 AM »

[shameless plug]

Finally! My Story Sanctum project has been rejuvenated again.

I have begun to revamp the site a little and have uploaded a couple more of my own short stories.

Anyone fancy themselves as an author?

If so then go to The Story Sanctum and submit your story.

(there is also a link to the site in the "non-DarwinBots Links" forum.)

I started the site because I couldn't find any place that was willing to showcase my own work for free. The service I offer costs nothing so  :P  to all those sites that charge a fee.

Go check it out.

[/shameless plug]

33

Announcements / New search function

« on: November 15, 2005, 04:45:51 PM »

I added a new search function to our forum.

I seems to work marginally better than the Google search provided under the search menu.

I think that is because I can specify the domain(s) that it searches.

In a couple of test runs I managed to find a whole lot more stuff than the built in one does.

Try it out for yourselves and see if it is any better.

34

Announcements / 2.37.6 Ready to go

« on: November 15, 2005, 12:43:58 PM »

This time I think all the rest of the bugs from 2.37.4 have been squished.

The GUI has also been fixed such that all the buddy boxes work with the right text boxes.
Mutations window displays the correct status for your bot now.
Mutations slider retains its value.
veggies now repopulate in the originally defined position.
Possible to define multiple veggie species and have them all repopulate in their own originally defined position.

Get the executable here [span style=\'font-size:12pt;line-height:100%\']DarwinBots2.37.6[/span]

Get the source code here. [span style=\'font-size:12pt;line-height:100%\']DarwinSource2.37.6[/span]

Alternatively you can do it the long way and go to DarwinBots.com through the links section. (wouldn't recommend it though. My way is much quicker.)

Please do your best to break this software. If you do then please continue to report your bugs as exactly as possible and I will endevour to fix them all.

I am knackered now so enjoy!

35

Bug reports / GUI Bugs

« on: November 15, 2005, 10:00:01 AM »

Here is a list of the GUI bugs that I have checked out and fixed so far.

• Veggie placement. Veggies now respawn only in the designated area where they first started (bug reported by Griz). It is also now possible to have multiple species of veggies and have them all randomly respawn in their own designated zones.
• A whole bunch of controls weren't "buddied" properly with their up/down arrows. Now fixed and working.
• Mutation slider fixed. Now the value stays the same after you start a new sim.
• Mutations enabled/disabled fixed. Now you can open the mutations panel at any time and see the current state of this toggle displayed accurately.
• Light gradient display now shows proper gradient instead of a blue rectangle.

That's all for now.

36

Bugs and fixes / Mutation multiplier GUI error

« on: November 14, 2005, 04:40:34 PM »

Remember that bug with the slider in the mutations window?

The one that always goes back to the centre?

I found the reason.

It seems that every time you run or load a sim, the value of "SimOpts.MutCurrMult" (the variable attached to the slider) is set to 1 by the program.

Now why the heck would somebody DO that ?  :blink:

It looks like it might have always been that way since all the way back to V2.11.

I just commented out the offending lines and now it works just fine.

I hate bugs like this.  :angry:

37

Darwinbots Program Source Code / covered up gradient.

« on: November 14, 2005, 04:08:13 PM »

Hey Num!. Why did you place a blue rectangle over the gradient light display in the options panel?

38

Off Topic / Inteligent design Exposed

« on: November 11, 2005, 10:35:04 AM »

I found the link I was looking for.

I saw this on Good Morning America today.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. Nov 11, 2005 — Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson warned residents of a rural Pennsylvania town Thursday that disaster may strike there because they "voted God out of your city" by ousting school board members who favored teaching intelligent design.

Well there goes any semblence of a distinction between ID and religion.

Assholes like this are the reason that Scientists get so pissed when they try to insert this non-scientific mumbo-jumbo into our science classes.

If ID is a science then why the heck can't they treat it like one?

Propose a theory then test it to death like we do with every other branch of science.

• Not one jot of evidence has ever been put forward.
• Not one scientific theory has been proposed.
• Not one prediction has ever been made based on Inteligent Design theory
• ID is not falsifiable!
• ID is Not science. It is at best philosophy but more likely a careful and specific ttempt to circumvent the laws separating church and state.

If we accept this unscientific thinking into our science classes then we might just as well burn all the science books and then go back to teaching Geocentricism and a flat Earth.

ID = Thinly disguised religion. Period.  :angry:

That is why we get pissed off at it.

39

DNA - General / Sysvars explained.

« on: November 10, 2005, 03:46:35 PM »

There have been a number of posts lately which have indicated a possible lack of understanding about the way that the sysvars really work.

Here is the inside scoop.

The sysvars.txt file is nothing more than a list of numbers and names, stored alternately.
The number represents the memory position and the name is simply a label that corresponds to that number.

When DB runs, one of its first tasks is to load the sysvars.txt file and save the labels and addresses in an internal array so that the DNA parser (and a few other select parts of the program) can take the text values from the DNA files and convert them to numerical values that the program can understand.

You can think of the sysvars.txt file as an English to DarwinBots translation dictionary if you like.

In the earlier versions of DB (up to about V2.21 I think), the program uses "sysvars.txt" and has an internal limit of 100 sysvars. If you were to add more than 100 values into the text file then it would crash.
For this reason, when we ran out of space for new sysvars in the newer versions, we had to expand the internal array to 200 and then start using "sysvars2.21.txt"

Any version that uses "sysvars2.21.txt" will run with the latest copy of the file since all it does is to download a list of memory locations.

In other words older DB versions such as 2.21 will run with the latest "sysvars2.21.txt" but newer DB versions like 2.37.5 will have limited workability with older sysvars files. It will run but many of the DNA commands will be non-functional.

In short, you cannot cause the program to crash by using the wrong sysvars version unless you try to run a pre-2.21 version with a sysvars file containing more than 100 locations OR you add more locations to sysvars2.21.txt such that it exceeds 200 locations.

Questions please?

40

Announcements / 2.37.5 executable also available

« on: November 08, 2005, 02:22:38 PM »

get it Here

41

Off Topic / 3D studio Max

« on: November 08, 2005, 11:16:55 AM »

Anyone know where I can get an extremely cheap (preferably free) download of 3D Studio Max?

42

Announcements / 2.37.5 sourcecode available now

« on: November 08, 2005, 09:02:00 AM »

Modded 2.37.4 source code has been uploaded to the FTP as Darwinsource 2.37.5

Haven't uploaded the executable yet. It will be added later.

43

Solved Bugs / New bug with shot power

« on: November 01, 2005, 09:21:18 AM »

My sim crashed again.

At least this one is completely unrelated to the velocity bug.

It would seem that shot power is sometimes exceeding the realms of decency (32000 that would be)

The culprit routine is "releasebod" in the "shots" module.

find this piece of code near the top of the routine.

Code: [Select]

If SimOpts.EnergyExType Then
   power = Shots(t).nrg / Shots(t).range * Shots(t).value
Else
   power = SimOpts.EnergyFix
End Ifand add this line immediately after it.

Code: [Select]

If power > 8000 Then power = 8000
Why 8000 and not 32000?

Because later in this same routine, shots fired by corpses get a 4X multiple. Not really sure why that is. This section was added by Num in one of the recent releases.

Anyway, limiting the power to 8000 prevents the crash.

44

Solved Bugs / Nextelement crash

« on: October 31, 2005, 08:58:51 AM »

Here is another one.

Over the weekend, I got a crash in "Nextelement" subroutine in the "mutations" module

Code: [Select]

Public Function NextElement(ByRef DNA() As block, beginning As Integer, tipo As Integer, value As Integer) As Integer
  'takes the input for the first value in a gene and returns the position of the next statement
  'as defined by tipo and value
  Dim k As Integer
  Dim uboundarray As Long
  
  uboundarray = UBound(DNA())
  If DNA(uboundarray).tipo <> 4 And DNA(uboundarray).value <> 4 Then
    ReDim Preserve DNA(uboundarray + 1)
    DNA(uboundarray + 1).tipo = 4
    DNA(uboundarray + 1).value = 4
  End If
  k = beginning
  
  If beginning > 0 And beginning < uboundarray Then
    While Not (DNA(k).tipo = 4 And DNA(k).value = 4) And Not (DNA(k).tipo = tipo And DNA(k).value = value)
      k = k + 1
          Wend
    If Not (DNA(k).tipo = tipo And DNA(k).value = value) Then k = -1
  Else 'beginning wasn't valid
    k = -1
  End If
  
  NextElement = k
End Function
for some reason 'k' was getting bigger than the maximum array size (defined in 'uboundarray')

Below is the fix for it.

By adding a conditional to exit the while loop if 'k' exceeds the allowed value, we can prevent the crash. Not sure if this will cause other problems further down the line by the function returning the wrong value. Shouldn't though because the conditional outside the while loop should set 'nextelement' to -1 anyway.
on jumping out of the while loop, 'k' has to first be set to a usable value so I set it to the maximum possible value of 'uboundarray'.

Code: [Select]

Public Function NextElement(ByRef DNA() As block, beginning As Integer, tipo As Integer, value As Integer) As Integer
  'takes the input for the first value in a gene and returns the position of the next statement
  'as defined by tipo and value
  Dim k As Integer
  Dim uboundarray As Long
  
  uboundarray = UBound(DNA())
  If DNA(uboundarray).tipo <> 4 And DNA(uboundarray).value <> 4 Then
    ReDim Preserve DNA(uboundarray + 1)
    DNA(uboundarray + 1).tipo = 4
    DNA(uboundarray + 1).value = 4
  End If
  k = beginning
  
  If beginning > 0 And beginning < uboundarray Then
    While Not (DNA(k).tipo = 4 And DNA(k).value = 4) And Not (DNA(k).tipo = tipo And DNA(k).value = value)
      k = k + 1
      If k > uboundarray Then k=uboundarray GoTo jumpout
    Wend
jumpout:
    If Not (DNA(k).tipo = tipo And DNA(k).value = value) Then k = -1
  Else 'beginning wasn't valid
    k = -1
  End If
  
  NextElement = k
End Function

45

Bugs and fixes / Leaving for the weekend

« on: October 28, 2005, 01:42:06 PM »

I have to leave in a few minutes. I will be gone (mostly) till Monday.

I will leave my source code running on this machine over the weekend to see if my latest fix worked or not.

Bye for now.