Messages

61

Suggestions / Tides, as an addition to the weather aspect.

« on: August 21, 2014, 01:38:38 PM »

So I was watching this last night

Dr. David Deamer - "Systems biology, synthetic biology and the origin of life" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SHHfnIHXQI

He talks about the chemistry of early life, and how tidal pools may have moved it along through repeating wet/dry cycles.

Now I know Darwinbots has no "water" but it does have gravity and light.

So my proposal for tides would involve an "increase in gravity < increase in light < decrease in gravity < burst of Brownian motion < decrease in light < timer"

So the water goes out, leaving behind shallow water, increasing the sunlight and gathering all the bots at the bottom of the tank. Then a wave of water rushes back in, stirring everything, throwing bots upwards, and decreasing the availability of the sunlight, then a timer setting to keep the tides flowing (X cycles before next tide, duration of Y cycles)

Just thought a feature like this could be easily implemented, and add more variety to the darwinbots environment.

62

Suggestions / Re: Proposal: New chloroplast engine and DB2.48

« on: August 21, 2014, 01:14:45 PM »

I may be a newb, but so far my experience with evolving Darwinbots has made me realize the major limiting factor is the environment. Anything to stir up the environment a bit, and add variables, I'm happy with.

Well as long as the new tactic doesn't end up being "light chasing" I can see why you're worried about that.

63

Newbie / Re: Hi! From a new guy, and of course a few questions!

« on: August 21, 2014, 01:06:37 PM »

When you are using .light, what are you expecting from that, the amount of light it is receiving because of how far away it is from the top?

Yes. I had the light set to a gradient in the pond mode. At least that's what it appears to be. I have no clue about the values, or if .light is even usable in that manner (tied to movement, instead of chloroplasts)

My understanding was 100% light at the top, tapering off towards 0% light at the bottom, based on the "light intensity = 100" setting for pond mode. I also have sediment set to 10 and magnitude sent to 6, which leaves the example picture showing a fairly nice gradient.

On the sysvar's wiki page, it lists .light under the "chloroplasts" heading. Which is leading me to believe the .light variable is only used to refer to .chlr, .mkchlr, etc.

64

Newbie / Hi! From a new guy, and of course a few questions!

« on: August 20, 2014, 12:39:40 AM »

Hello! Firstly, I cannot say how much I love this program! It is very interesting, and seems to have a ton of potential.

Now for the inevitable question questions.

I've been trying to make a basic bot, I've never made one before, so I thought I would approximate yeast using pondmode.

It's 1 cell, should be simple right? Well I broke it down as; absorbing light instead of sugar, giving off waste (maybe .nrg to), floating to the surface and sinking back down to the bottom, and budding to reproduce.

So everything went smoothly, except for making it sink and float.

I wanted to attach that to light, so when it got under a certain amount of light it floated, and when it got to another percentage it started to sink again.

I tried

cond
*.light 10 <
start
32000 .setboy store
stop

cond
*.light 90 >
start
-32000 .setboy store
stop

I've also tried a lot of differen't combinations based on that, but I've also fiddled with .sun a bit, lower values on the .setboy, playing with the values on the .light, but I can't seem to get it to float and sink based on the light energy.

However as I have no clue what I'm doing, and don't know the values for .setboy or .light, as well as not being able to find much info about them, does anybody know if that is even possible? Or if I'm heading in slightly the right direction?

I know .setboy has a max value of 32000, but to get back to 0," 0 .setboy store" didn't seem to work so I used -32000

My brothers solution was to just tie .nrg to .ypos. When it gets too low on energy it moves up, and when it fills up to a certain point it shoots energy to drop down. Then stops, and starts moving back up. It actually works very nicely, and he's onto fiddling with reproduction.

I'm being stubborn though, so any tips towards the .light vs .setboy would be much appreciated.

65

Internet Mode Commentary / Re: IM is kinda, sorta working

« on: August 18, 2014, 06:12:07 PM »

First time posting but I've been following, and fiddling with, Darwinbot's for a few years now. Would be interested in seeing a server go up.

Went looking for a good a-life simulator after watching Richard Dawkins 'The Blind Watchmaker', as he fiddles with a few amazing ones dating back over 20 years now. First assumption was that there must be dozens of amazing a-life simulators out, and there are a few interesting ones, but to me Darwinbot's was definitely one of the more interesting ones.

Looking forward to an internet mode guys!