Messages

31

Specialization, Metabolism, Digestions and Env Grid / THE 50/50 SYSTEM

« on: March 18, 2005, 09:57:59 PM »

Actually, half the time I don't get what you're talking about.
But I blame that on me. 'Cause everything's obviously my fault :D

32

Specialization, Metabolism, Digestions and Env Grid / Genetic Metabolism

« on: March 18, 2005, 08:57:44 PM »

No offense, but I think the stacking system was thought of as the bonus that mutated bots have over programmed bots.

33

Specialization, Metabolism, Digestions and Env Grid / Genetic Metabolism

« on: March 18, 2005, 08:07:53 PM »

That is another factor, yes. But complexity's a problem too.
Look at the Civilization series (and it's clones.)
Two nations that're exactly the same in every possible way except that one has a wonder that doubles one of their city's research. Now, if that city just happens to be the nation's biggest research city, then that could really speed their research up.

Now, in Darwin Bots, a similar advantage would be a method of keeping Body actively fed when energy's needed, or made when there's an abundance of energy.

(All of my bots do that, ironically. Much like I prefer having a double-research wonder in Civilization games. :D )

[Edit] I forgot to make my point. :rolleyes:
Anyway, the point is that mutation has a very low chance of creating an active body-energy exchange system thing. It's possible, yes, but very improbable.

34

Specialization, Metabolism, Digestions and Env Grid / Genetic Metabolism

« on: March 18, 2005, 07:48:05 PM »

Not really. Cockroaches are really amazing programmers. :D

And another reason we don't get too many good mutants is 'cause they die off before they can evolve. DarwinBots isn't simple enough, it's so complicated that small advantages don't mean much.

35

Specialization, Metabolism, Digestions and Env Grid / Genetic Metabolism

« on: March 18, 2005, 07:17:58 PM »

Sudden appearence? You think too highly of evolution.
As far as I know, T Preservans is a mutation.
And it's a piece of crap, really. :)
I could outprogram that even in the version it was designed for!

And I'm definately not a biologist. I think we should first understand how real cells do it. That, or just dive in, and say, "Forget how nature does it, this is just an Artificial Life Sim, not an actual perfect simulator!"
Unfortunately, we seem to be doing both, and yet neither. As far as I've seen, everyone except me wants it to be a really good simulation of life, but unfortunately, not many people seem to know much at all about how actual cells use enzymes, proteins, and all the other stuff they use.
This might be due to the fact that half of us are programmers, and the other half are biologists, or something on that level.
(I know only the basics of biology, but I'm a pretty darned good programmer. Go ahead and look at Duo Minimalis for proof; it's not as good as Deathgrip, or even DIN, but I take pride in how little energy it uses.)

I'd much prefer a simple system (well, simple in the way Assembly Language is simple) over a realistic one. :P

36

Specialization, Metabolism, Digestions and Env Grid / Genetic Metabolism

« on: March 18, 2005, 07:01:07 PM »

You are talking only about digestion.  Well, what about making stuff?  Another ten enzymes?  Another 10 sysvars?  What about enzymes for taking up stuff from the grid?  Another ten? What if you decide you want some more reactions?  We run out of memlocs very quickly.  

Remember, we wanted to introduce metabolism to increase complexity of the system.  It has to involve a lot of molecules with a lot of different properties and with a lot of different enzymes acting upon these different molecules.

I didn't think gathering stuff from the environment used enzymes. In fact, I almost mildly thought that you'd simply gather a small percentage from the environment, allowing toxic environments of a sort.
For making stuff, I guess you would need more enzymes, if you wanted to do it that way.
And, if you make the system too complicated, then mutation'll be out, and newbies won't know what to do.

Personally, I don't really like the idea of adding a metabolism at all yet.

37

Specialization, Metabolism, Digestions and Env Grid / Genetic Metabolism

« on: March 18, 2005, 06:29:22 PM »

I dunno how the actual metabolism will work; this is an idea of implementing the metabolism to a bot.

First, you have to set up to ten enzymes. These can change via mutations, and are set after the genetic code.
Each enzyme'll probably be one line.

Once the enzymes're set up, you can use them via a bunch of sysvars.
EnzA, EnzB, EnzC, etc.
The more you store in the system variable, the more it'll digest.
There could be a method to alter enzymes, but I doubt PY would accept such a system. <_< :P

38

Specialization, Metabolism, Digestions and Env Grid / General approach to metabolism

« on: March 18, 2005, 06:12:24 PM »

Erm. May I say something? If not, then tough. :P
Anyway... I think that we need simplicity. Variability, but simplicity.
And I personally think it wouldn't be much of an improvement to make enzymes automatic.
If real organisms actually create enzymes automatically, without any influence from their DNA, then I'd be rather surprised, as well.

Personally, I think digestion should be handled by genes. So what if all the bots go obsolete? Have you seen how pathetic I Flamma is? When I first got this program, I was amazed by how dangerous it was, but now it's sorta crappy.
And also, we are going from 2.35 to 3.0, which is a rather large jump. Either way, bots'll become rather obsolete.
Even my two uberfied bots Duo Minimalis and Deathgrip, will probably need to be rewritten!

Anyway, I'd much rather like it if DNA handled digestion. It'd put more challenge into it!

And also, other then making it a bit easier to program (and I don't think it'd be that much harder to make digestion manual), what advantages do automatic enzymes have?
I don't even think it's really lifelike.

Now, if you propose that we do some kind of system where a bot gets up to 10 enzymes, which their DNA can control, but can't modify, that'd be pretty neat.
In fact, that's not a bad idea.

39

Dead-End and Solved Suggestion Requests / Bitwise Functions

« on: March 18, 2005, 05:24:56 PM »

No one can think of an idea on the top of their heads. :P
Heck, I'm sure they had no idea what use writing would've had, and yet it's one of the most used inventions ever, well, invented. :P

40

Dead-End and Solved Suggestion Requests / Bitwise Functions

« on: March 18, 2005, 10:47:16 AM »

Like AND, OR, and XOR.
Infact, just AND, OR, and XOR.

(And not just in the conditions, in the actual gene itself too, darnit.)

(For those who don't understand how they work, you hafta look at the number in binary to fully understand.
AND checks each bit of two values, and unless both are 1, the result will be 0.
I.E.
10100101 AND
00101101 equals
00100101.

OR checks each bit of the two values, but unlike AND, only one of the two bits have to be 1 for the result to be 1.
I.E.
10100101 OR
00101101 equals
10101101.

And XOR checks each bit of two values, but unlike AND and OR, it only results in 1 if ONE (and no more then one) of the bits is 1. (They basically have to be different. The bits, that is.)
I.E.
10100101 XOR
00101101 equals
10001000.)

41

Suggestions / More realistic mutations

« on: March 16, 2005, 05:18:50 PM »

Hm. Then on the account of that, I say we have two types of changing a value.
Relative changes, and relative-to-0 changes.
The former would be limited to small changes with an improbability of having a very very large change.
I dunno how the other one'd work though. :P

42

Suggestions / More realistic mutations

« on: March 16, 2005, 04:56:11 PM »

1. ?
2. Read it better. That's how much it'll add or subtract, not how much it'll add. That's just the basic theory, and it's rather stupid to ignore an idea simply because it's not detailed enough. I just suggested it because no one seemed to have brought it up.

And also, I more or less meant a safety system with store, and inc, and etc. so that if the targeted memory location is greater then 1000, then it'll divide it by 1000 and use the remainder. Though now that I think about it, that'd reduce all the junk DNA, and possibility of genetic diseases, so it might not be as good as I previously thought it was to implement.

43

Suggestions / More realistic mutations

« on: March 14, 2005, 10:34:41 AM »

Er, not to sound simple or dumb, but you could a random number between one and one million, take it's square root, and subtract 1000 by it, then add or subtract the total value.
Or in mathematical/programming form:
1000-(sqrt(rand()*1000000))
That'd certainly make it be in favor of smaller values. In fact, the chances of it changing by a mere one is  1/500, while as increasing/decreasing by 1000 is a full 1/1000000.
(And of course there'd be a safety system to make sure it doesn't get higher then 1000.) (And also, of course, it'd be rounded too.)

44

Off Topic / Evolution

« on: March 13, 2005, 05:21:42 PM »

New features are usually great, right..?
The only problem is they add up over time, turning something simple into something complex.
And complex things can become complicated.
And unfortunately, with the current mutation system, which is pretty much totally random as far as I know, only bad mutations seem to sprout.
Now, this will hopefully be fixed in version 3.0, but even so....
As a mere oppinion, I think that if someone decided to run an older version of DarwinBots, before Poison, and Venom, and such were added, as well as the current version of DarwinBots, the older version would have more good mutations then the newer.
So, for more "good" mutations, we either need a better mutation system which has more of a chance to make smaller, more related changes more frequently then larger, more drastic changes....
Or we need to make less commands. Which could be very difficult.
Or, on a third hand, we could consider it blessing that good mutations are rare. (Though, if you read another point I recently made, then hopefully you've figured out that good mutations can die off before they even start, thus making a mess of the whole natural selection idea.)
As yet another option, we could consider it a curse, and do nothing about it at all, and hope that programming methods will evolve in such a way that actual genetic mutations won't be needed for a species to "evolve."

45

Off Topic / A point on movement in Darwin Bots

« on: March 13, 2005, 05:11:10 PM »

I've often seen an arguement being used.
That arguement just happens to be that most organisms can't go from one point to another quickly. If their food source vanishes, the organisms that feed off of that food source most often should die along with it.
However, if you watch any Darwin Bots simulation, that isn't the case. Most bots can survive a trip across the field. Even if it's a very large field!
And also, most bots can generally do this rather quickly.
In fact, some energy efficient bots that convert body to and from energy efficiently enough could survive for generations!

It's my belief that this is one of the reasons that stable ecosystems only consist of an omnivoric predator, and a plant that unfortunately usually depends on the system for survival in more ways then one. (Approximately two to be precise.)

In fact, I think that the next challenge will be making a bot that can actually remember things, and pass such knowledge off to children, to the point where in mere generations, the species will have mapped out the entire field.

I'm not technically saying this is all bad, but it does make it less of a life sim. (Though the last paragraph means that there're more forms of evolution, which is good. By the time you read this, I should hopefully have written a point about evolution in Darwin Bots.)

I'm simply saying that, in Darwin Bots, most life forms can, and DO, go from food source to food source plenty of times.
I'm also saying that the advantage to this is that we can develop smart bots, that can map the environment, and gain an intelligence advantage over other bots.
Unfortunately, the consequences to this might make such an advantage useless in practice, since powerful bots can often make short work of everything else.
(Though I suspect that once permanent waste is fixed, powerful bots will be rather inefficient.)