Darwinbots Forum

Welcome To Darwinbots => Newbie => Topic started by: Enyawnej on August 06, 2005, 10:28:47 PM

Title: Basic issue
Post by: Enyawnej on August 06, 2005, 10:28:47 PM
Hi,
     I am a newbie and have encountered a fundamental problem. Everything works fine EXCEPT when I try to load a saved session nothing happens. Can anyone advise me on this?
        Thanks
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Numsgil on August 06, 2005, 10:32:39 PM
You are running 2.36 I take it?  Whichever 2.37 says "internet ready" is the one that can load and save sims.  The problem was that we modded the program such that loading and saving stopped working.

Then we fixed it.  :D
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Enyawnej on August 06, 2005, 11:54:19 PM
Thank you. I can load and save great now. I am new so I hope you'll excuse what will probably be a flurry of naive questions over the next few days. I notice that sometimes the robots are bound to algae with white lines similar to what bind the cells of multicellular creatures to each other. Am I correct in assumeing that this does not indicate a hybrid plant-animal entity but rather the robot is feeding off the algae? If this is so will one multicellular creature also do this to another multicellular creature as well, and if that is the case how does one tell where one creature stops and the other begins?
     Again, thank you
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Numsgil on August 07, 2005, 02:46:13 AM
Quote
...a flurry of naive questions...
A furry of naive questions?  That sounds like a comic strip to me (jots down for use in own webcomic)

Feel free to ask any questions you feel like.  We all have thick skin around here, you can't get us mad or annoyed (unless you happen to be Botsareus, in which case it's your entire purpose in life :P (JK Bots))

The lines you are seeing are ties, and you are correct in assuming that the bots tying to veggies are feeding.  Ties are sort of like hollow rubber bands that connect two bots, and can be used to form permanent structures or temporary feeding holes.  I guess if you use them to feed, you can think of the tiebot as a kind of leech or mosquito.

Organisms don't become connected (and thus MultiBot (or MB)) until the ties are ~20 cycles old (or maybe it's 40, I can never remember).  If a feeding tie lasts that long, most bots will 99 .sharenrg store which transfers 99% of the combined veggie/bot energy to the bot, so it's rare to see many Bot/Veggie hybrids.

But it's not impossible.  Maybe PY built one at one point.

Give the PY tutorial on the FTP a look see.  It teaches you how to build somoe simple bots, and works up in complexity.  We also have a wiki help system, but it's rather limited at the moment.  Look at darwinbots.xwiki.com (http://darwinbots.xwiki.com) (most complete) or www.darwinbots.com/WikiManual (http://www.darwinbots.com/WikiManual) where we're (slowly) moving all the wiki contents to.

ABE Links fixed by PY :D

Thnx I forgot to double check them :P Num
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Enyawnej on August 07, 2005, 04:28:26 AM
Thank you for the quick reply. (By the way it was flurry not furry :) )
What do the different colors of the ties mean?
     Thanks
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Numsgil on August 07, 2005, 05:55:25 AM
Quote
(By the way it was flurry not furry :) )

:P

Quote
What do the different colors of the ties mean?

They tell you what the tie is doing.  I believe Red means its transfering energy.  The other colors escape me at the moment since they tend to be multibot exclusive.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Enyawnej on August 07, 2005, 01:08:01 PM
Is there a manual that addresses things a newbie might ask?
    Thanks
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Ulciscor on August 07, 2005, 05:36:48 PM
You could mosey on over to the Wiki manual, which I believe has a link near the bottom of the forums page.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 07, 2005, 05:57:41 PM
Quote
What do the different colors of the ties mean?
Thanks
Red = energy transfer
White = information transfer
Yellow = sharing (Applies to energy, waste, slime or shell)
Title: Basic issue
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 07, 2005, 06:02:43 PM
Quote
Maybe PY built one at one point.
I have built quite a few hybrids that rely on a bot feeding a captive veggy with all its waste then skimming off 90% of their combined energy.

The most notable was probably T-Swimmer. (Not sure if this is actually in the beastiary or not) It might not work properly in 2.37 though as it was built to highlight and utilize a free energy bug that has since been fixed.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Enyawnej on August 08, 2005, 08:43:42 PM
When creatures are sharing as indicated by a yelllow connecting bar, how does one know whether it is sharing waste, slime or shell?
Sometimes I notice an extremely long connecting line which disappears almost instantly. It is too fast for me to tell what it's doing. Is the creature attacking someting far away? or reproducing long range?
     Thanks
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Numsgil on August 08, 2005, 09:17:42 PM
Quote
When creatures are sharing as indicated by a yelllow connecting bar, how does one know whether it is sharing waste, slime or shell?

You can't really.

Quote
Sometimes I notice an extremely long connecting line which disappears almost instantly. It is too fast for me to tell what it's doing. Is the creature attacking someting far away? or reproducing long range?

Sounds like an annoying bug I fixed a while ago.  Which bot and settings are you using?
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Enyawnej on August 09, 2005, 08:17:59 AM
I am on cycle 938937 and began with the ancestral bot with plants. Do you need any other info?
Title: Basic issue
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 09, 2005, 08:54:26 AM
I think he means which version.

The phantom tie bug was fixed in the early 2.36 versions.
For some reason robots would tie to points on the screen now and then or become tied to an impossibly distant bot.
Ties automatically snap if they get longer than 1000 twips so these would only last for a single cycle.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Enyawnej on August 10, 2005, 01:12:38 AM
This is an amazing program. Are there plans for further development?
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Numsgil on August 10, 2005, 02:49:07 AM
You bet your sweet ass there is!  (Oh, that was presumptuous of me.  I assumed you had an ass and that it was sweet.)

It's in more or less constant development.  Constant meaning as often as the two programmers (PY and myself) have time to actually program and feel like it.  Whcih tends to be oftener than you'd think, but still not nearly enough for the veracious DBers.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 10, 2005, 08:42:01 AM
I am actually taking a bit of a back seat for a while and letting Numsgil get the next major update out. It is kind of pointless to get involved in this right now as he is modifying pretty much everything.
After that I will jump back in with both feet and help debug/improve it.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Enyawnej on August 14, 2005, 12:15:53 PM
Recently you were kind enough to tell me the meaning of the colors of the ties between the cells of the multicellular creatures. White means the exchange of information but what information is being exchanged?
    Thanks
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Numsgil on August 14, 2005, 02:36:30 PM
Could be anything.  Basically when one bot writes directly to another bot's memory, the tie turns white.  What is being written is much harder to guess.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Endy on August 14, 2005, 09:57:01 PM
The number the tier puts in tieval is being to transfered to the memory location (memloc) specified by tieloc. To find out this you "should" be able to look in the debug console(not sure on this, some stuff resets every cycle) or look directly in the dna.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Ulciscor on August 14, 2005, 10:05:16 PM
Does anyone think it might be a good idea to have the address and information displayed by the bot being written to? Although it might not be easy to see when running normally, running cycle by cycle would allow you to get this important info.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Enyawnej on August 20, 2005, 01:06:55 PM
A while ago you said that Darwinbots is being largely rewritten for its next incarnation. Do you have any estimate as to when it will be released
     Thanks
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Numsgil on August 20, 2005, 06:20:32 PM
There isn't a whole lot more work needed on it.  The only problem is I have school starting soon, so it'll be a while before I can really sit down and start working on it.  I'm sure PY is in the same situation at the moment (maybe not with classes, I dunno.)

So maybe next month-ish.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Enyawnej on August 20, 2005, 08:08:08 PM
This is a great program. I am truely looking forward to the next edition. Good luck. If you need any beta testers I'm available.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Numsgil on August 20, 2005, 11:13:38 PM
In the mean time don't be afraid to play around with 2.37.4.  I'd like to get it fairly stable so it can become the next stable release.  To do that I need people isolating bugs.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Ulciscor on August 21, 2005, 12:08:46 AM
Just wondering, would you prefer any bugs posted as they are found, or a list made over time and then posted? Or does it make no difference to you?
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Numsgil on August 21, 2005, 08:59:16 AM
As you go works better.  And if you have a few seconds you can even tryr to isolate where in the code the problem is occurring.

Be sure to set the user seed for the random number generator so your bugs can be reproduced reliably.  And the autosave works wonders as well.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 21, 2005, 12:31:11 PM
My problem right now is that I have a massive interactive Radio-Isotope database that I have to finish designing by the end of September.

I haven't even had the chance to look at the new code yet.  :(
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Enyawnej on August 28, 2005, 12:37:51 PM
When I add a wall to a run the program halts and I get a message "run time error 6 Overflow"  What would advise I do?
        Thanks
Title: Basic issue
Post by: PurpleYouko on August 29, 2005, 10:14:01 AM
Quote
What would advise I do?
Stop putting walls in.  :rolleyes:

Sorry if this isn't helpful but we know the program is full of bugs. They will all be fixed eventually but for now we will just have to work around them.

Incidentally the last time I used walls they worked just fine. How big a wall did you add.

[little known fact]Walls are actually made of robots so if you make them too big you run the risk of filling up the robots array and getting an overflow[/little known fact]
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Numsgil on August 29, 2005, 02:12:58 PM
Walls are about the only thing left that I haven't rewritten from top to bottom, and it's incedentally one of the most buggy aspects of the program.

The obvious conclusion you're drawing isn't correct.  It's that my modifying all the other code made this old code not work right.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Enyawnej on September 24, 2005, 02:05:57 AM
Any sign of the new rewritten version yet? If so where can it be gotten?
     Thank you,
          Enyaw
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Numsgil on September 24, 2005, 07:38:10 PM
On the 1st I'll have a finished, complete version of 2.4 ready.  Until then you can kind of scope out an incomplete version (in source) on the FTP.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Enyawnej on November 24, 2005, 02:42:03 PM
Would you please explain how the Darwinbot brains work. I'm not computer technical so could you explain it in lay terms?
     Thanks,
         Wayne
               P.S. This is a great program
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Numsgil on November 24, 2005, 03:33:31 PM
You mean the DNA of the bots?

It's basically a really simple computer program that places values in a memory array.  Certain memory locations correspond to certain actions.

Check out the tutorials in the wiki (www.darwinbots.com) for some more info.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Enyawnej on November 25, 2005, 04:45:15 AM
What I meant was that the bots perceive their world and make decisions based on input. I remember learning that they do not have neural networks. That being the case what structure is used for allowing them to make "decisions?"
     Thanks
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Ulciscor on November 25, 2005, 08:59:15 AM
The behaviour is all dictated by the DNA; inputs are fed into memory locations which are used by the DNA to produce actions.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Numsgil on November 25, 2005, 11:19:04 AM
The DNA is a procedural program with a great degree of robustness, so that mutations are minimally likely to create a great degree of havoc in the program.

In this regard it's similar in some ways to Avida and Tierra.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Endy on November 27, 2005, 03:56:09 AM
Quote
In this regard it's similar in some ways to Avida and Tierra.

Yeah, but much more fun :D  ;)
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Enyawnej on November 27, 2005, 09:10:17 PM
So...everything is running great. Nevertheless, I have encountered something weird.  I have a nice long run going but a species has evolved that does not change. The number of mutations remains at 11 with a DNA length of 140 and nothing new evolves despite the fact that I have made the mutation parameters pretty liberal.  Please advise.
     Thanks
Title: Basic issue
Post by: shvarz on November 27, 2005, 10:27:07 PM
Just means that it's perfect for the environment.  Change the environment and it'll start evolving again :)
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Numsgil on November 27, 2005, 11:32:47 PM
It's moderately possible that the species has found a way to lock its mutation rate to disabled.  Perhaps a glitch perhaps not.

Right click on one of the buggers and check out its mutation rates.  See if they're enabled/disabled or anything like that.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Enyawnej on December 05, 2005, 02:33:29 PM
I have been using 24A and I have a problem. Runs quickly breed MANY little low energy creatures that slow down the program badly, and do nothing interesting. I have tried reducing the amount of energy in the universe but no luck. Please advise.
       Thanks,
          Wayne
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Numsgil on December 05, 2005, 06:10:05 PM
Be sure to check that you have costs turned on to something.

Go into the costs/physics panel and go to advanced costs.

If all entries are zero, your bots are just about immortal.  That's not good.

Hit default rates.

If that still doesn't help, feel free to jack up costs some more.  Eventually, you should reach a happy medium between death and lazy immortality.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Griz on December 06, 2005, 10:11:59 AM
Quote
Be sure to check that you have costs turned on to something.

Go into the costs/physics panel and go to advanced costs.

If all entries are zero, your bots are just about immortal.  That's not good.

Hit default rates.

If that still doesn't help, feel free to jack up costs some more.  Eventually, you should reach a happy medium between death and lazy immortality.
yeah .... and please pass on your findings. ;)

btw Num's ...
in 2.4.A ... trying to run League crashes me ...
never even gets there.
I have the League folder and all in the DarwinBotII folder ...
but it seems it can't find something or other.

still have to try it in VB mode and see if I can get an
error or some debug info to send you.
[keep forgetting to uncomment the error.sim writtin' thing and recompile! ;)
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Numsgil on December 06, 2005, 12:34:19 PM
I'll look into league mode and see why it's crashing.
Title: Basic issue
Post by: Griz on December 06, 2005, 01:32:40 PM
Quote
I'll look into league mode and see why it's crashing.
could be me I suppose ... some setting or required folder not present ... who knows?
but it would be of help to know if it works for you ...
that would give me a starting place.

first thought it was because I tried to start a new league that didn't exist ...
and it crashed when trying to write one.
but then it did the same with the existing F1 league.
that's all the farther I got so far.

no time to play lately.