Topics

46

Newbie / Greven Introduction!

« on: April 27, 2005, 10:24:54 AM »

I had just written a very long post, about my background in Artificial Life!

And what happened? My computer did shutdown, because of low battery
(Do always remember to plug it in, and do not remove you possibly warning!)
OMG  :angry:  :angry:  :angry:  :angry:  I AM SO ANGRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :angry:  :angry:  :angry:  :angry:

 :shoot:  GREVEN!

So it would only be some of it.

My story begins 5 years ago. At the age at 16 I discovered AL.
I did so AL-programming based on 'Tierra' by Tom Ray & 'Avida' by CalTech, later on 'Echo' by Holland.

A few years ago I found DarwinBots among others (DarwinsPond etc.). No help at that time, I lost my interest fast, dispoinnted I deleted it, I could see it had potential, but with no help....

January 2005 I found DarwinBots once more! This time with help, and very improved!

I have read book after book, article after article on artificial life and search the web thin for artificial life simulations/software! And I must say that the most 'living' software is DB.  :D

(This is a very short version, alot is left out! Because I am still  :angry: )

~Greven!

47

Dead-End and Solved Suggestion Requests / Seed valus!

« on: April 26, 2005, 11:26:14 AM »

I have said it before and now I say it again:

Some times I want to re-run a simulation, but it is not possibly in DB! :(

If you guys implement a seed value, it would be piece of cake!

In the options panel a frame with "Seeding Value", were you can enter a number of generated.

The you just have to make following changes:

Code: [Select]

Randomize Timer to

Code: [Select]

Randomize varSeedValue
where varSeedValue is the variable in which the "Seeding Value" is stored from the options panel!

And it will be SOOOOO much easier tracking errors, overflows, bugs etc. and reproduce them!

Thank you for reading! :D

~Greven

(This suggestion is very important!!! If you dont understand or realise it just ask me to be more specific, because my last topic about this, people did seem to have misundersood something)

48

Suggestions / Threshold species!

« on: April 26, 2005, 11:16:39 AM »

I would presume most of you have tried either Avida or Tierra, or both.

I don't want to give a description, but those of you who have tried them know that they save new 'genomes' if they get above a certain threshold (normally 3).

This could be really nice to have when running evolutionary simulations, because often you dont what to sit and watch the screen for 6 hours or more, and push the snapshot button, now and then.

The bestbot save is extremly useless too. And I am not talking about a snapshot, but all possibly evolved 'bot-species' which will reach a user defined threshold will be saved. When you want to just look at evolution alone, the snapshot feature is useless, only the different genomes are interesting.

I know you will add more database recording etc., but beginning with this simple feature, you will be able to build onto this at a later stage in the developement, and it will be easy to implement.

I know I can add this to the source code, and I have alot of experince with VB, but I cant get the source code to function properly and when I compile it is even worse.
 :(   :shoot: VB :pokey:

This could be really nice! :clap:

~Greven

49

Dead-End and Solved Suggestion Requests / Tracking Errors / Bugs etc.

« on: March 22, 2005, 05:05:00 PM »

This is a bit diffucult to describe, but I will give it a try:

I have gone through some of the old source code (2.35 I think) of DB and it seems DB just use:

Code: [Select]

Randomize Timer
This leads the random numbers are based on the what the "Timer" currently is, what you all know, but my suggestion is therefore:

Have an option when you setup the simulation, where you can choose which value you would like or just use the timer, or none at all...

And why is that????

Because it enableds the possibility to make complete re-runs of the same simulation, with exactly the same outcome.

1. The programmers can detect problems, such as run-time errors

I do not know that running two simulations on different computers with identical
settings will produce the same result.

Just some thoughts

Hope you will understand it!