Messages

556

Darwinbots3 / New bot shape

« on: February 27, 2008, 05:52:22 PM »

Wouldn't making it 3D increase the physics calculation too much ?
Anyways, from what I understood the bot has one tie and can form 2 of these links (One on each side)...
Or can you make several links in each end ?

Either way it seems to me like it would be cool if you could adjust the length of a bot, so you could use the conventional round shape or make your bot longer.
This way a round bot would also be able to serve as a joint for several longer bots. Having small round joints in between the long bots would also increase manuverability.

The downside of only creating links through birth would be that small organisms who infiltrate larger complex organisms would have no way in.

I'm also trying to figure out where the "canon" would be located... if it's in the midle it will be more effective at covering the sides... if it's in one end the rear will be very vulnerable forcing bots to keep on the move, and creating a dilema when linking complex organisms...
Maybe there could just be 2 possible shapes, you could just pick one when giving birth, this way a long bot could have a canon in each end and cost more to grow...
Either that or you could just have 2 canons all the time, and stretch the bot as needed, if it doesn't make short(round) bots owepowered compared to the longer ones.

I definately think it would be a shame to remove round bots altogether, I can't imagine the longer bots would be as easy to controll... single cell organisms would get knocked around all the time, wouldn't they ?

557

Newbie / Tie controll

« on: February 27, 2008, 02:39:34 PM »

I'll try to make something realy basic to test it, I'll post the code if I'm having problems.

And make the free tie angle thing, that would be VERY usefull... to me atleast.
And I hope you're not making something too similar to what I'm working on

BTW: It seems like only the bot forming the tie has a fixed angle, the target of the tie seems to have a free angle, is that correct ?

558

RANT / Why do otherwise bright people beleive stupid things?

« on: February 27, 2008, 02:28:32 PM »

It sounds like we basicaly agree then, since what you're mentioning on the right side of the spectrum are examples of people believing what other people are telling them to believe.
As long as people form their own opinions.
Ofcourse faith can be used as an excuse, not just for lazyness but for anything realy.
But all humans have an ego and too few are aware of it and able to seperate their rational thoughts from it (To some extent atleast).
So religion or no religion, people will always find a way to justify the most horrible of actions.

But as an atheist I would speculate that religion is the result of our egoes.

Ofcourse religious or not, everyone should try to be aware of their ego, that litle voice in your head that convinces you that you're always right and that everything you do is right, no matter how wrong it is.

559

Newbie / Tie controll

« on: February 27, 2008, 01:53:40 PM »

How does fixang work ?
.fixang - allows bot to change angle of the tie once hardened

So... I was guessing if I push a value into fixang it will set this angle relative to my aim... or world space or something...
But just throwing a value in there just seems to have an odd effect...
At the start of the code execution it writes the value in 468 (fixang) and at the end of code execution it's value is 32000...
But I figure that is sposed to happen since several other locations hold the same value at that point.

But I must be doing something wrong... what range does the angle have ?
If I just wanted a 90 deg angle would I write : 341 .fixang store ? Doesn't seem to work that way...
Does anyone know of a topic on this or a bot somewhere using fixang ?

560

RANT / Why do otherwise bright people beleive stupid things?

« on: February 27, 2008, 11:36:07 AM »

I don't think blind fate is harmfull, the problem is that you're leaving your most important decisions in life up to someone else... what makes it harmfull is that this person often lived thousinds of years ago and thought the earth was flat, so usualy this person is in no way qualified to make any decisions for anyone.
The best form of faith you can hope for is when people say they believe there's someone or something out there, but they also believe that anyone who claims to know ANYTHING about it is full of sh..... #2.
This is also why I like confusionism, since it encourages people to question confusionisme itself, which is the exact oposite of all other religions I know of.

I guess what I'm saying is, there's nothing wrong with blind fate, as long as you don't place it in another human.

561

RANT / Why do otherwise bright people beleive stupid things?

« on: February 27, 2008, 03:11:07 AM »

This is an endless debate, in the end noone is 100% sure of anything, but if you had to pick between theories formulated by a man who traveled and studied nature, a collection of oraly transmitted stories (Get your mind out of the gutter) from about 1938 years ago (That would be the bible) or one of the older books, or believing something that was written by a crazy old lady on wellfare with 50 cats, or a science fiction novelist.... and the list of options could go on....  (If I HAD to pick a religion, I think I would go for confusionism)
I would probably pick Darwin over all of the above, and I wouldn't call myself an anagonist, I would definately call myself an atheist, since I don't believe that any diety exists.
Latelty it seems like a lot of people are afraid to call themselves atheists, because some guy somewhere was realy arogant about it, so now people hate atheists. But I've met a lot more arogant religious people, that just take it for granted that anyone who doesn't share their beliefs is either retarded or evil...

In the end you can't prove or disprove anything, all you can do is prove that evolution is possible, and that it's more likely than... well... magic.
And if you think I'm being arrogant by calling it magic.... what would YOU call it ?

Edit :
I almost forgot, the reason atheists are often eager to join this debate is because religious rulers through time have had a nasty habbit of burning atheists whenever they couldn't find someone with other beliefs too burn. I'm personaly relieved that this year the "Christian Democrats" party in my country didn't even qualify to stay in government, since if I did believe in the devil I would believe he worked through religious leaders. As long as religion keeps out of politics and education I usualy stay out of the debate, but the second anyone tryes to tell people what to do or not to do, based on their beliefs, then I can't keep my mouth shut. And if people start arguing that schools should teach X religion because of it's fine moral codex, they're forgetting that any religion can be interpreted freely and often to the point where people with the exact same religion (Usualy one that teaches you never to kill) kill eachother over minute differences in opinion. A religion has nothing to do with moral, most christians don't even know all of the 10 comandments, because they don't care, they'll do whatever they want and find a passage in the bible that can justify it.

562

F2 bots / P. Delicious

« on: February 26, 2008, 07:36:17 AM »

I have a virus in Pacifist (The second one), it hides it's presence while deleting all other genes, and only starts to spread itself whent here's one gene left.
If the oponent removes the gene nr saved in mkvirus it will delete the genes in between the virus and the antiviral gene (Deleting it's own antiviral gene in the end).
That way any delgene inhibiters would most likely get deleted by the antivirus gene
Problem is the virus is very long... but the primary purpose isn't realy to kill anyone though, I only made it lethal because otherwise it had a hibernating effect on oponents which just prolonged most league fights...

563

Internet Mode Commentary / The State of the Simulation

« on: February 26, 2008, 02:49:24 AM »

I would suggest making a stronger antiviral gene before using your Pacifist.

Pacifist uses no antiviral gene or slime, it doesn't need it.
It's problems in IM aren't the viruses, it's more the fact that it's a pacifist, so if an enemy is present and controlls the alge it won't be able to get to the food.
Works well in leagues though, except it takes a while, again because it's a pacifist

And it sounds like I'm having the whole "not shutting down correctly" problem... DB always freezes when I try to close it after IM.

564

F1 bots / My First Attempt at a Bot

« on: February 25, 2008, 04:25:27 PM »

I almost forgot, I think the and's and or's use "reverse notation" or whatever it's called, so basicaly you would need to move them all down a row.
But you don't need to and anything together unless you need to or several and'ed conditions... what I'm trying to say is that all conditions get and'ed automaticaly.
Damn those sentences ended up making no sence...
Also I remembered, you can't use ties to feed, but you can use them for other things...
You should either start out with :

cond
*.numties 0 >
start
*.tiepres .deltie store
stop

To avoid ties altogether, or you could think of something that would mess people up, but then you also need to take defences into account (While you mess with them, they mess with you).
At some point you should also keep an eye out to see what kinds of venoms or memmory shots the other F2 bots are using to beat yours.
If you want it to compete in F1 you'll need to start worrying about viruses and stuff, I would sugest starting with F2.
And F2 bots can also come a long way in the F1 league, just add some slime.
Theres also lots of neat tricks if you look around the forum, like compensating for physics during turns with : *.velsx .dx store
You can adjust it to overcompensate a litle to stay on track. And using the enemy's *.refvelup to adjust your speed when chasing is also very usefull.

565

F1 bots / My First Attempt at a Bot

« on: February 25, 2008, 04:03:06 PM »

It'd not bad, although it has a lot of stores for aim controll, and the turn values need to be adjusted.
I think maybe you could start out with :

cond
*.eyef 0 =
*.refeye *.myeye =
or
start
*.robage 9 mod 4 sub .focuseye store
stop

cond
*.eyef 0 !=
*.refeye *.myeye !=
start
*.refypos *.refxpos angle .setaim store
0 .focuseye store
stop


This is less effective, and is of more use if you cange the eye(1-9)width and eye(1-9)dir values to cover a wider angle.
You can just "steal" something from the bestiary, I don't think anoyone would mind, either way you're welcome to use the eyes from Pacifist if you want.
You should add some shell and poison too, it's simple to add and does wonders.
And venom can be very usefull aswell. A good comon use is to lock peoples shoot value to -2 (Energy shots).
It's hard to measure your bot against league bots if it doesn't use shell, poison or venom.

566

Bot Tavern / Deadliest Virus -ever-

« on: February 25, 2008, 02:53:30 PM »

It can take a lot of nrg to shoot a virus.  If you do something like 1000 .vshoot store, your virus will usually be more than capable of infecting all the nearby veggies, and you'll be able to produce more viruses.

But that's not what I want, try running Ebola and see what happens.
The alge has just enough time to reproduce before it kills itself and spreads the virus.
This way the infected alge will become very hard to kill... it just reproduces and kills itself all the time.
And there will be plenty of virus shots in the air since a shot lasts a long time.
You could try running Ebola with it's current virus and then try dropping the vshoot value to see the difference.
But it's true that a lower shoot value will be more overall compatible, Ebola is prepared for the effect the virus has on the alge.

567

Short bots / Pacifist (5G) (Moonfisher) 19-02-08

« on: February 25, 2008, 02:36:28 PM »

Ah ok, well disabling viruses will definately stop it's advance... 2 of it's 4 genes are viruses
And having mutations enabled for it will have a harmfull effect 99% of the time I would think...
I can see how that would be a problem...

I don't think I can do much about the mutation, it's just not suited to evolve...
I did have an idea for making a virusless pacifist with 1 gene, but early tests sugest that just using a virus on the alge is a lot safer (And a whole lot easyer).
It is possible though, but I think I'd rather try to use the strat in a new bot.

And ofcourse releasing it in an environment full of enemies isn't realy it's strong side, it is after all a pacifist so it isn't suited for breaking down and established bot colony. It doesn't fight it's way through to the alge, and if it did it wouldn't realy be a pacifist

I guess it isn't very strong in internet mode, I can't get IM to work right so I can't realy test that part properly...
The point was to release it in an empty environment with some alge and hope for some infected alge to cross over and stay alive and spread in the next environment, but the infected alge can't compete with custom buildt evo alge. It's too dependant on the presence of simple alge to survive, it can feed on shrinking violet... ocasionaly...
So overall I guess it's a flop for IM, but it still beats F1 I think... haven't run the "released" version of pacifist through the league, it takes ages.

And there's room for a lot of improvement, this version does as litle as possible.
And BTW I'm sorry for the sloppy version I'm posting, but copying the code from inside the game was a very easy way to clean up wierd comments and old outcomented (Is that a word?) code.
If they ever run the leagues again, and my bot is still in there by then, I'll make a neat broken down version, with all the explanations asf...

568

Short bots / Pacifist (5G) (Moonfisher) 19-02-08

« on: February 25, 2008, 09:35:55 AM »

Hmmm, ran it against Excalibur a few times, doesn't realy seem like Excalibur has a chance.
I tryed activating mutations on Pacifist and it still managed to beat Excalibur even though it's code is broken down rather fast since each of the 5 starting bots reproduces into 32 specimens...
Either I've been running the wrong kind of environment all this time, or you did something different in your end...
I would think I have standard F1 conditions, since they should be set automaticaly when you enable the league.

I'm still curious to hear what kind of environment allows Excalibur to beat Pacifist though...
I know it completely falls appart from mutation, but if there's an environment it has problems with I would like to know so I can tweek it a litle...
And remember, just because it doesn't kill it's adversary it doesn't mean it can't win.
It may be a pacifist, but it knows Thay Chi and doesn't want to share it's food with anyone.
So... eventualy the oponent should die from starvation.

569

Short bots / Pacifist (5G) (Moonfisher) 19-02-08

« on: February 25, 2008, 05:33:29 AM »

Oh right, and it's good to hear the Pacifist is getting laid

I'll run more tests, but I'm almost positive you must have had mutations enabled or something (Pacifist completely falls appart if it mutates).
A good way to verify if it's working correct is to check that it reaches 159-160 units from the first 5 spawned pacifists.

570

Short bots / Pacifist (5G) (Moonfisher) 19-02-08

« on: February 25, 2008, 05:14:43 AM »

If you run it in F1 league mode against Excalibur, it should definately beat it...
If Excalibur is winning against Pacifist there must be something wrong, it can't be under normal F1 conditions with mutations disabled...
I've run about 100 fights with pacifist against Excalibur.... Pacifist has never lost.... in fact Pacifist has never lost against anything that I've seen... not even once...
I admit the fight can take ages against some of the less agressive oponents, but I've never seen it loose.