Messages

31

Darwinbots3 / Darwinbots 3 Progress

« on: May 27, 2009, 10:17:00 AM »

Ah the physics...

Well, I suppose I should commit what I have of it so others can build off of that.

I'm positive it still compiles because I hate not being able to compile after finishing a section of code, so I will send what I have done.

32

Bugs and fixes / 2.44.1a Release!

« on: May 27, 2009, 10:05:03 AM »

Wheeee!

I feel special now (although in another release or two I was gonna ask for access anyway.)

Important question:

When I made this version I had to break (I think) the code for splitting species because the methods and functions used didn't exist.  How in the world did EricL manage to create a .EXE from code that wouldn't perform a full compile?

Also, why would he do that knowing it meant the system had serious bugs as a result?

33

Bugs and fixes / 2.44.1a Release!

« on: May 26, 2009, 10:38:12 AM »

I've never seen a working league myself, so I honestly have no idea if they work.

I think an option to disable sexrepro per species is pretty simple to do, so when I find the time, I may try to get that working.

DB3 is still well in progress, and at the moment we are dealing with the issues of collision handling.  Progress has slowed down quite a bit due to recent events, so things are taking longer than (I) expected, but it is still under construction, and you will know as soon as we have any big news to share

34

DNA - General / Bots with Arrays

« on: May 26, 2009, 10:30:18 AM »

It will probably limit by putting a maximum size on a call stack.

When you call more than your share of codules, they just stop listening to the calls.

35

Bugs and fixes / 2.44.1a Release!

« on: May 26, 2009, 10:21:13 AM »

Here it is.

Basically just removed missing or broken features and fixed several bugs.

It should run faster and better, with fewer errors.

36

Suggestions / Notable Improvement Possibilities

« on: May 26, 2009, 08:40:23 AM »

Self modifying code should be easy.

Just for clarity though, is self referring to the bot or to the user?  Either way, it can be done quite easily, in fact, I could trick the program into thinking it is a kind of mutation, even allowing it to be tracked

The first thing I am looking at is the ties; I want to make a global variable to determine how many ties a bot may have, rather than the currently hardcoded 9's and 10's (Yes Numsgil, that is right, you can only have up to 10 ties, although we both thought otherwise before :/ )

One problem though; when I ramped the number to 100 there was a small but noticable decrease in simulation speed.  I don't know what to do about this, so I am going to keep it at 10 but use the global variable I made to do that.

Also, there are broken sysvars that will be fixed by the time I am done, so expect DNA to act more like it should.

I also want to fix point mutations so that numbers are random, not normalized and modular.  It should be easy, but as far as I can see, it isn't for some reason.


EDIT:

I am going to look into fixing vision, since some things seem to be invisible when they shouldn't be.

37

Untagged bots / Anthropophagy

« on: May 26, 2009, 08:23:23 AM »

Yep, new version coming when I find enough time to iron out the bugs from 2.44.1

I am in college though, so I am pretty busy at the moment.

As far as this bot is concerned, I don't doubt it origins one bit.
High mutations do strange things to bot DNA.

Speaking of which, I need to find a way to prevent mutations from using only low number values when changing type to number from something else...

38

DNA - General / Bots with Arrays

« on: May 26, 2009, 08:18:12 AM »

Codules will basically facilitate this.  They can be called from within other codules, so they can be called recursively to simulate a loop, or can be used like a goto.

39

Suggestions / Notable Improvement Possibilities

« on: May 19, 2009, 01:22:12 PM »

Well, if I just got the compiler running yesterday, and I already have a deeper understanding of the source, then I guess it leaves me with no choice other than to fix it my self.

What I plan to do is take all of Eric's crazy constants that were hard-coded, and replace them with global constants (Once I know how to do that in VB).

Also, I might remove several of the less useful and less functional features, and if necessary redo them from scratch.

Don't expect anything too soon (Certainly not today ), I don't even know how to write VB properly yet (but by the end of the week you can be sure I will be above the level of amateur VB programmer; that's just how I am )

Any disagreements should be stated now, so I don't get too much done before you state your worries (Although I will get started right away).

40

Darwinbots3 / Vision

« on: May 19, 2009, 01:15:55 PM »

I think Testlund is right.

Here comes a new idea:

Keep the concept of rods and cylinders.  Scrap the idea of multiple eyes.
I say each bot should get only one eye; after all, in real life an organism doesn't even get that, so if DB3 decides to evolve usable vision, it will have to evolve eye cells.

Even tough is a sense reserved for multicellular organisms, but due to computing limits, I think it is permissible in DB.

If we do decide on bots with individual eyes, we will need to be able to garuntee that ties will work precisely as they are supposed to, and can be controlled very delicately.

Finally, if we need to, I think each bot could specify a unique eye codule in its DNA that would have input values given by the eye, and would process those values.
These input values would be like sysvars, but they would be accessible only to the eye codule, and perhaps only one store value could be written to by the eye codule to prevent overuse of that codule.

41

Suggestions / Notable Improvement Possibilities

« on: May 19, 2009, 11:43:04 AM »

I finally have VB6 running on vista (somehow).

I looked at the code and these immediately came to mind:

-Smiley mode is 100% broken, and should be removed

-Translocation and amplification mutations exist, but must be fixed before being usable

-Point mutations should be redone so that the result is more random (no casting from number to type and back that would result in lower end values)

-Only nine ties may exist at once, and one of the sections of code for the ties has an incorrect value (might be hard to find again, but there is definitely one in there, I think on tie 3)

-Some of the sysvars don't do anything, while others I think do stuff but are hidden from the user (Not 100% sure about this one)

I know very little VB, so I can't imagine fixing these properly myself, however, I may give it a try.

For those wondering, I am referring to the 2.44.1 code on the repository.

42

Darwinbots3 / Vision

« on: May 18, 2009, 09:37:24 AM »

Well, for protection how does an eyelid sound? I would imagine if sand came in contact with eye it would also decrease its usability, and that eyes would deteriorate over time.

For reproduction, why not keep the newborn inside the parents body until it develops, then "birth" it by sending it out of the parents body.

43

Interesting behaviour bots / TieRotation

« on: May 15, 2009, 05:18:57 AM »

 

You were right!  I can't believe I had such a fundamental misunderstanding of the bool stack, and still managed to make semi-working bots...

44

Interesting behaviour bots / TieRotation

« on: May 14, 2009, 07:32:56 PM »

If store, dec and inc popped the boolean stack then inline conditions would be anoying to work with, you would need to use dupbool constantly so you don't "loose" your condition every time something is executed.
No bot with inline conditions I've ever made would actualy work if what you say is true.

It would be very easy to test, if a store pops the boolean stack then this gene :

start
true
false
70 .aimsx store
50 .repro store
stop

Should cause the bot to reproduce cancerously as false would be popped by the first store.

Yeah, well I even checked whether or not it clears after genes finish, and if you try that code, you should see some reproduction happening.

45

Bug reports / Internet Mode error!

« on: May 14, 2009, 04:54:57 PM »

Bump!

But seriously, every time I use internet mode with a username in the username box in options (or in the intsett.txt file's first line) DB2 Crashes, not error dialog, just a windows vista program has terminated in an unexpected way or program cannot continue message.

If I leave the box empty it seems to work though (not that it is any good without any other sims ever being connected)