Topics

16

DNA - General / Question on Ties

« on: December 21, 2006, 12:27:45 AM »

Proving there's always more to learn...  

Which tie exactly is acted upon, if all the ties have the same tie number? Assuming readtie/tienum match the tiepres number, does it go based on the last bot your bot tied to?

17

Suggestions / Epigenetic Memory Suggestion

« on: December 18, 2006, 08:04:28 PM »

Submit a suggestion and I'll tweak genetic memory or add a few new values that are instantanious. Beats having to rev your own fork every time a new drop comes out...

I've been using 550-554 myself, although it wouldn't make much difference really if the original locations were revised. It's relativly easy to code, just copy the values right at birth.

18

The Gene depository / Patterns from Turning

« on: December 18, 2006, 07:04:32 PM »

While working on an evobot I noticed turning different degrees can result in different patterns of shots.

The first one is probably the most interesting since it creates a rotating five pointed star pattern. The other novel one is the rotating triangular form.
 

Code: [Select]

cond
start

'rotating star pattern
500 *.aim add .setaim store

'rotating tri pattern
'800 *.aim add .setaim store

'Highly randomized rotating pattern
'900 *.aim add .setaim store

'4 points -- very dull
'314 *.aim add .setaim store

'rotating star
'255 *.aim add .setaim store

'Standard single spiral
'224 rnd *.aim add .setaim store

-1 .shoot store
20 .shootval store
stop
end

19

Announcements / 2.37.7g Ready to go!

« on: September 11, 2006, 04:22:48 AM »

Finally, I've been able to post this. Nice version with tons of features designed to make it more ecological/evolution based. Some stuff like being to directly copy bot dna in game and see multiple memlocs simultaneously in the console, are just plain great to have around.

Found one really oddball "bug", just recently even though it's been there since at least the original 2.37.7. Basically the bot that is first in the list of loaded species list will be repoped whenever the veggies are... If there are no veggies that bot will be repoped continaully.  

Haven't figured out exactly where that bug is located. Doesn't appear to occur in Eric's vers. On the plus side I've been able to make sims where the battles never stop.  The One evolved into an even more vicious bot after evolving against Din for awhile  

Changes:

Fixed continual sexreproducing veggie bug
Fixed various nrg related bugs
Increased sexrepro distance
Allows reverse feeding of slime, shell, poison, venom
Robot Data allows Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-X copying of dna
Bots with no dna are penalized by having a continual nrg drain based on their age.
Has mobile blocks and walls working correctly
Countdown/Countup timer - 555 will inc/dec by 1 each cycle until it reaches zero
Fixed veggie nrg feeding problem

Modified Veggie feeding to divide total nrg amongst the individuals;
ie. Max energy times numbers of allowed veggies / actual number of veggies =
Nrg received by individual veggie
Therefore as numbers increase less food to go around

Memvals 550-554 automatically copied from parent to child
Poison able to affect family members

Dna storage locations expanded dramatically. For example: 56 -31007 store == 56 7 store
All positive and negative numbers are absoluted and those greater than 999 are truncated to last three numbers during storage.
Multiples of 1000 are equal to zero.

In the console questioning negative one to 4
ie. ? -1
Readbacks about 200 memory locations of the selected bot.

Problems:
Clicking on Robot Info without having a bot selected then looking at the dna causes a bug
If a bot other than a veggie is the first bot in the list, that bot will be repopulated whenever the veggies are.
If no veggies are on the list the first listed bot will repopulate continously...

I'm going to be heading away for awhile; I'll try to post when I'm able to.

Have fun playing while I'm gone,

Endy

20

Darwinbots Program Source Code / 2.37.7g Finally up

« on: September 11, 2006, 04:21:14 AM »

Finally I've been able to post this. Nice version with tons of handy features designed to make it more ecological based.

Found one really oddball "bug", just recently even though it's been there since at least the original 2.37.7. Basically the bot that is first in the list of loaded species list will be repoped whenever the veggies are... If there are no veggies that bot will be repoped continaully.  

Haven't figured out exactly where that bug is located. Doesn't appear to occur in Eric's vers. On the plus side I've been able to make sims where the battles never stop.  The One evolved into an even more vicious bot after evolving against Din for awhile  


Changes:

Fixed continual sexreproducing veggie bug
Fixed various nrg related bugs
Increased sexrepro distance
Allows reverse feeding of slime, shell, poison, venom
Robot Data allows Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-X copying of dna
Bots with no dna are penalized by having a continual nrg drain based on their age.
Has mobile blocks and walls working correctly
Countdown/Countup timer - 555 will inc/dec by 1 each cycle until it reaches zero
Fixed veggie nrg feeding problem
Modified Veggie feeding to divide total nrg amongst the individuals;
ie. nrg times num of allowed veggies / actual number of veggies = Nrg received by individual veggie
Therefore as numbers increase less food to go around
Memvals 550-554 automatically copied from parent to child

Problems:
Clicking on Robot Info without having a bot selected then looking at the dna causes a bug
If a bot other than a veggie is the first bot in the list, that bot will be repopulated whenever the veggies are.
If no veggies are on the list the first listed bot will repopulate continously...

21

Biology / Sexrepro (Real Life) questions

« on: August 25, 2006, 02:43:45 PM »

How come sperm don't asexually reproduce themselves. Wouldn't that make it more likely that their own individual traits would be passed along the line?

22

Multi-Bots / TierMBt2 (MB)(Endy) 08.24.06

« on: August 24, 2006, 11:15:03 AM »

Code: [Select]

'TierMBt2
' Bot is a test model able to join with family members into either a line or triangle
' When there's too many ties it'll deltie one of it's ties.
' Bots are able to independently spin while being attached via use of .setaim


cond
*.robage 0 =
start
.numties .memloc store
.tie inc
stop

cond
*.nrg 3000 >
*.body 100 >
start
50 .repro 1 rnd 2 mult add store
stop

cond
*.myeye *.refeye =
*.numties 2 <
*.memval 2 <
start
.tie inc
stop


cond
*.myeye *.refeye !=
*.eye5 45 >
start
-1 .shoot store
stop


cond
*.myeye *.refeye =
*.eye5 0 >
start
314 rnd *.aim add .setaim store store
stop

cond
*.numties 2 >
start
.deltie inc
stop

cond
*.nrg 3000 >
*.body 100 <
start
100 *.body sub .strbody store
stop

cond
*.eye5 0 >
*.myeye *.refeye !=
start
*.maxvel *.vel sub 2 div .up store
stop


cond
*.myeye *.refeye !=
*.eye5 0 >
start
*.refxpos *.refypos angle .setaim store
stop

cond
*.eye5 0 =
start
314 rnd *.aim add .setaim store
stop

end

23

Bot Tavern / Workable MB

« on: August 22, 2006, 11:07:29 AM »

Figured out how The One mutants were managing to form some amazing MB forms. These had the capability to turn individually as "Single Cells" but still maintain a co-hesive tied structure.

The trick is to use .setaim instead of aimdx/aimsx. This allows the whole group to move as one, when the bots that don't sight food are pulled along with the ones that do.

Code: [Select]

' vision genes used with tier bot
cond
*.eye5 0 =
start
'from something similar in One
314 rnd *.aim add .setaim store
stop

cond
*.refeye *.myeye =
*.eye5 0 >
start
314 rnd *.aim add .setaim store
stop

cond
*.refeye *.myeye !=
*.eye5 0 >
start
*.refxpos *.refypos angle .setaim store
stop
The bots I've designed have been also fitted with a deltie capability allowing them to delete a tie whenever they wind up with three impeding ties at the same time. They also tie to family members at birth or to bots existing singularly.

Still working on the turning and movement commands, I think it'd help if they could better co-ordinate their actions.

24

Veggies / Smart Plant (V)Endy-27.07.06

« on: July 27, 2006, 09:31:30 AM »

' Smart Plant
' Been working on this one for awhile, great for evo-sims
' Evolves amazingly fast and avoids repopulation well

cond
*.robage 0 =
start
10000 .tielen1 store
stop

cond
start
99 300 2 rnd add store
314 rnd 5 rnd store
stop

cond
*.refeye *.myeye =
*.eye5 0 >
start
.tie inc
stop
' careful with this it's out-evolved the animals multiple times... takes a well designed bot to compete against
end

25

Off Topic / Alife wiki

« on: June 24, 2006, 03:59:06 AM »

Anyone think it'd be a good idea to create a general wiki/forum/site combo focused on alife?

Maybe if there's a central location for discussion progress will be quicker and more co-ordinated than what exists now. There used to be alife.org but they seem to have closed their doors awhile ago.

26

Darwinbots Program Source Code / Blocks and Walls existing together

« on: June 08, 2006, 01:53:47 AM »

Horray  

In a version I've been developing I've manged to duplicate and alter the wall subroutines enough to make mobile blocks.   Haven't done a full scale run with them yet, but during testing, The One began using them to form stable MB type structures. Very cool looking  

Think I've also stoped both walls/blocks from dying. I still need to do some longer sims to double check.

I think we can do alot more with the wall creation tool. It looks like it'd be possible to add in any type, wall, corpse, veggie, bot. I'll keep tinkering and see what I can come up with.

Oh yeah, I've modified the robdata to allow direct copying of the dna from there. Still buggy when dealing with the mysterious numberless bot. Besides that it works great for rapidly grabbing evolved dna.

27

Biology / Evolution of Evolution

« on: June 07, 2006, 02:23:23 AM »

Evolution of Evolution

Here's another good link on Grey Thumb. Talks about far-sighted versus short sighted traits and the evolution of each.

It says it's possible for evolution to self-regulate these bad traits. It even mentions another alife simulator being used to prove this. Seems like they gave the creatures the ability to have check-point alles that directly block the negative traits. They also mention that it requires a hierarchy/group regulation to work, since it's in the groups best interest rather than the individual.

I'm going to try and load up a bot with a bunch of counter-attacks not biased by the species attacking. The One is similar to this already and seems to evolve better than most others.

28

Evolution and Internet Sharing Sims / Snap Sharers Communicating

« on: May 17, 2006, 03:16:44 AM »

In an evosim I'm running with a Snap-Sharer(Snap tie gene plus normal share feeding) they appear to be using shots to naturally exchange some sort of information.  

Not sure what they're saying, but it's a sim-wide phenomenon; presumably benneficial since it's not being selected against, as you'd expect given the cost involved. Pretty impressive especially since even the basic capability to shoot wasn't in their dna at the start.

I'm going to try and work through their dna to figure out what they're sending. It's a crazy mess, even worse than normal. The changes I made are rearing their head with all sorts of larger and negative numbers being stored/inc/dec.  

Alright, I'm heading out to sea again. I'll be back in a couple of weeks about.

29

Bugs and fixes / Sexrepro

« on: May 07, 2006, 08:54:00 PM »

Found at least part of what was causing plants using sexrepro to be able to continually reproduce, disregarding their population limit. The code has a limit in place for repro but not sexrepro

Code: [Select]

If rob(robA).Veg = True And totvegs > SimOpts.MaxPopulation Then Exit Sub
Here's the corrected code. It's basically the code from repro modified to use robA instead of n. There's still something oddball with nrg going on, and I'm not sure they're sharing dna properly. I'm running a longterm evosim with sexrepro'ing bots to see if anything else causes an error.

30

Off Topic / Working on 2.37.7

« on: April 26, 2006, 04:29:12 AM »

Finally got VB working, and so I've been able to start coding for myself.   For once I can act on my own suggestions without having to bug everyone and their brother  

Been using 2.37.6 as my basis, but I'm planning on a more evolution oriented program eventually coming from it.

The thing I'm most happy about is the expanded feeding options available to the bots. I managed to modify the code for strvenom/strpoison/mkshell/mkslime to allow bots to regain energy from the resource. I haven't fully checked every single one, but for mkshell it works great with no mysterious nrg creation. Created a shell-sharefeeder, that gains nrg from feeding on shell taken from plants.   Very cool to see. I'm planning to start a sim up with only slime-sharefeeders and shell-sharefeeders. Since the two species won't be able to eat one another, I'd imagine they'll grow to form a decent ecosystem.

Another change is that bots can now store into the -999 to -1 sysvars. Relativly simple change with Abs used to make the storage location positive. This increases the odds of a bot affecting mutation by about double.

(999/64001) normal; 1.5%

(999/32001) Endy's; 3%

(64001 = All possible storage locations = all possible negative numbers + all possible positive numbers + zero)

Still not the greatest odds, but I can't do much until I learn more about VB.  

The last fix has to do with a bug in strvenom/strpoison. It would cause free waste to be created for the bot, without sacrificing previously made venom or poison, that could later be transfered to a Veggie for a free meal. The new code uses a modified mix of the old code and the code for mkshell/mkslime to ensure there are no free lunches for the bots.

After some more testing I'll see about having the download posted.