Darwinbots Forum

Welcome To Darwinbots => Newbie => Topic started by: AZPaul on March 18, 2005, 06:58:25 PM

Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: AZPaul on March 18, 2005, 06:58:25 PM
Howdy y'all.

     I found Darwinbots v2.3 a few days ago and am getting used to the function.  Nice program. I have coded up a small number of Bots that actually live, feed, reproduce and like that. At this point I am running some simulations but am having some difficulties with a major item.  I'm hoping y'all can set me right.

Sexual reproduction.

     I use the .in/.out as species ID.  According to the docs the genome of the "closest body" is taken as the sex partner. I assumed (silly me) that I could ID this "closest body" using .in/.out.  It don't work. Appears the .in is populated from the last bot I "saw" which, in too many cases, is not the closest body when .nrg reaches the threshold set for my .sexrepro gene. Right so far?

     Mutation in allele frequency is the source of almost all genetic change (most being deadly), but sex (shuffeling of complete genes from those that have survived their mutations to form a unique genome) is the prime vector of "survivable" variation within a large speciel population.  OK, so a couple hundred Bots is not really a "large" speciel population, but, we deal with what we got, right?

     For my simulations I cannot have my Alpha mating with some wayward Delta.   Especially a mean nasty Delta that feeds on Alphas.  Poisons the gene pool doncha know and that's just bad form. Mating outside the species is a no-go in our version of real life and cannot be allowed in the simulation.

   This is one of the most powerful features within NeoDarwinian Evolution and that's where I want to be.

     Any of y'all have a workaround?

Cosmetic items:

.backshot  --  Doesn't want to work for me in the way I have it applied.  Bots discharge waste.  I load up .shootval then -4 .backshot. Nothing happens.  Waste continues to accumulate. I substitute -4 .shoot in the gene with no other changes and the Bot pukes up the waste just fine. Don't ask why, but I want to make them poop not puke.

If there is a .valbackshot or .backshotval or whatever I cannot find it in the docs.  Maybe I cannot .backshot through a shell?

Any help?

Graphs  --  I run my simulations for about 3-5 hours each. (The "best Bot" save feature (I set for 30 min) is much appreciated.)  I like to have the population graph up on my desktop so I can keep track that nothing drastic is happening, like everyone is dying.  Problem is that while I'm in my other applications doing some "real work" this graph is alway "on top" and in my way.  I will look at it when I want to on the desktop and don't need this thing in the way of my spreadsheets, web pages and documents.  Are there any options to "alway on top?"

Finally, (I promise) I diddle around some, changing this, that, the other option, resetting graphs, starting, stopping, setting up simulations and etc like that. I've managed to generate "run time errors" frequently.  Considering what I paid for this program (another much appreciated feature) this is just an FYI.

OK, I lied.  One more comment.  I appreciate the efforts you folks put into this program. I know a lot of you people are building MonsterBots for competition, but as a learning tool in NeoDarwinian Evolution and simulating atleast some aspects of natural selection this program is already one of the better feature-rich simulators without undue complexity. And I thank you.

Verbosely yours,

-P
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Botsareus on March 18, 2005, 07:05:22 PM
Ok first of all were did you get the name AZPaul does it mean "alpha zone paul"?
Do you know a player that goes by the name TerminatorDelta ?


Quote
I use the .in/.out as species ID. According to the docs the genome of the "closest body" is taken as the sex partner. I assumed (silly me) that I could ID this "closest body" using .in/.out. It don't work. Appears the .in is populated from the last bot I "saw" which, in too many cases, is not the closest body when .nrg reaches the threshold set for my .sexrepro gene. Right so far?
In works from the eye subrotine , it is not Necessarily the closest body. You can have a bot looking on a bot far away while: there is bot behind your bot witch
is very close, so it will reproduce based on that bot.

 But I dont know for sure , PY and NUM studed the source code, they should be able to tell if thats a bug or not.

P.S.

Quote
Cosmetic
Good referance to Cosmic Rift

Quote
For my simulations I cannot have my Alpha mating with some wayward Delta. Especially a mean nasty Delta that feeds on Alphas. Poisons the gene pool doncha know and that's just bad form.
Talk about alpha zone , and me delta....

Give it up....
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: shvarz on March 18, 2005, 07:07:04 PM
Welcome AZ!

I'll answer what I can (which is not much):

1. Agree on sexrepro.  It should be changed for cospecifics only.  I don't think it allows crossing to veggies though.  

2. No clue about backshot, did not know such thing existed.

3. Graphs - just get used to it :)  I did.  Ask Nums or PY to change that.

4. Run time errors are frequent, and Nums and PY are good at fixing them if you can tell them what exactly you do that is causing it.

5. If you want to run evolution sims, then you came to the right place.  DBs is great for it!  That's what I mostly do, so you are not going to be alone!
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Botsareus on March 18, 2005, 07:19:48 PM
Quote
Mating outside the species is a no-go in our version of real life and cannot be allowed in the simulation.

Ok we dont need to change the program to do this, Simply check some .refeye and somre .in .in2 and stuff check all the $%$ .ref stuff ,  Using them , build a robot that chooses witch "species" to sexrepro to. If you need help on building robots thats another story.
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: PurpleYouko on March 18, 2005, 07:20:14 PM
Welcome to DarwinBots.

Here are a couple of tips

To use .sexrepro with the correct partner why not first find the right partner then tie to it to make sure it stays nice and close.
next use *.multi to make sure the tie is good and hard then rotate the tie using  .tienum and .setang. this makes sure you have an open space in front.
Now you can use .sexrepro to mix genes between your two tied bots with the reasonable certainty that they are thee physically closest couple.
Next use .deltie to delete the tie and be off on your way.

Truthfully though .sexrepro is not the most successful inovation that has ever been added. We don't use it too much at all really.

As for .backshot, all you have to do is put a 1 in it to enable back-shooting for that cycle. It resets to zero for the next cycle. Then just fire the waste shot as normal using -4 .shoot store. The waste will come out the back. Use a gene like this..

Code: [Select]
cond
*.waste 100 >
start
1 .backshot store
-4 .shoot store
*.waste .shootval store
stop


I never use the graph functions. In my opinion they don't work properly, never did work properly and are next to useless. I didn't program them and have little interest in re-programming them either. They are a superfluous and useless feature that I would be more than happy to ditch completely.

Tell us your problems and bugs and they will be addressed. Maybe not in V3.0 but sooner or later.

 :D  PY  :D
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Botsareus on March 18, 2005, 07:24:24 PM
well , if you really need to "always on top" stuff , get a good nvidea video card , it has a feature in the driver so you can "always on top" what ever you want, even WebPages.
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: shvarz on March 18, 2005, 07:30:33 PM
No silly, he does not want it always on top.  It's always on top by default and sometimes it is annoying.  I don't know why PY is pissed at graphs, I use them all the time and they seem to work fine for me.  One hint: don't close the graph immediately after you opened it - it will crash the program.  Graph needs to have something in it before you close it.
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Botsareus on March 18, 2005, 07:40:57 PM
[you]Same difference Shvartz[/you], Use nvidea to make somthing like "The windows shutdown buttons" not always untop , (The fun you can do messing up screen savers like that)
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: shvarz on March 18, 2005, 08:35:09 PM
[you]No, it's a different difference Bots[/you]
The program should be able to do it on its own, nvidia card or not.
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: AZPaul on March 19, 2005, 10:54:48 AM
Howdy, again.

Thank y'all for all the good info. Much appreciated for sure.

Don't it always go like this though?  After  :banghead: on a problem for  a while you give up and ask for  :help: .  Then while at a cozy little dinner with a pretty lady as you gaze into her beautiful hazel eyes  :) all of a sudden the answer hits you right in the nose like a bullet  :huh: .  Kinda disturbing considering the circumstances :angry: .

All I need do to resolve this .sexrepro conundrum is go out look for a babe and ram her.  Appropriate, right? Then when .hitup (appropriate, again) !=0 and the .in's are correct, presto!, instant baby. I've coded it up but haven't run it yet.

PY, thanks for the .backshot answer. I'll code that up this morning, too.  We'll have to disagree on the graphs. I find them useful though intrusive.  Like shvarz said I'll just live with it.

As for the "run time" errors, I have no earthly idea what I'm doing (period?) when that happens. I'll need to pay closer attention.

Quote
Ok first of all were did you get the name AZPaul does it mean "alpha zone paul"?
Do you know a player that goes by the name TerminatorDelta ?

Sorry, Botsareus, don't know any TerminatorDelta. I'm not a gamer.
The AZ is for Arizona. I'm in Phoenix.

Thanks, again for all the answers, info and welcomes. I'll try to keep in touch, or atleast lurk the forum now and then.

Much appreciated.

-P
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: PurpleYouko on March 19, 2005, 11:02:31 AM
Yes I realize that others actually like the graphs. That's why I've never suggested that they are removed. To me they are a collosal waste of space. The few times I have tried using them they just sit there and do pretty much nothing of any use at all.

I just turn them off and forget they are there.

Are you saying that the graphs can't be minimized?

All the popup windows that I built in can be. The Contest form for instance.

I can maybe take a look at that if that is your problem.

 :D  PY  :D
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: AZPaul on March 20, 2005, 02:50:19 AM
Quote
Are you saying that the graphs can't be minimized?

That is also correct. They cannot be minimized.  That would be helpful and would solve my little issue.  Then it wouldn't matter if they wanted to always be on top of all other displays. I could just zap'em down to the app bar.
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Old Henk on March 20, 2005, 06:21:35 AM
I noticed that too. Being able to minimize those graphs would be nice.
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: PurpleYouko on March 20, 2005, 03:27:44 PM
OK I will add it to my sorting out list. Shouldn't take too long. It is just a property setting on the form

 :D  PY  :D
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Light on March 20, 2005, 04:52:38 PM
If you dont want to look at the graphs just close the window and then when you want to see it open it up in DB again, never found that much of a problem and I think the graphs are pretty useful to monitor simulations
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Botsareus on March 21, 2005, 12:32:44 PM
(I think closing the window Temporarly instead of minimising it will also save on speed)
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Numsgil on March 24, 2005, 06:35:07 PM
Speaking of graphs...

If anyone who knows a little VB wants to try tacking the graphs, making them more useful, give me an email.

I'd really like something like what Darwinpond (http://www.ventrella.com/Darwin/darwin.html) uses.
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Botsareus on March 25, 2005, 11:50:27 AM
Num, If you are actualy using the charts the current once are fine (no I did not download darwinpond yet , I am gessing thats they have better chart graphix)

All the chart needs is a few a few more papulation mesure row lines, and a few spacing fixes because the line seams to go beiond the boarders of the chart. And a Max Cycles on chart setting maybe, In any other way the current charts are perfict.

(When I did my charts for ProjectCells I did the max cycles = lengh of simulation, after half an hour chart was updating too slow)

(If I have time some day , (today I really  dont) , Ill fix the issues I discussed here myself in the source Num gave me.)
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Numsgil on March 25, 2005, 12:00:07 PM
Check out darwinpond.  The grpahs it uses are very proffessional, and are exactly like what Darwinbots needs.
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Botsareus on March 25, 2005, 12:02:48 PM
Maybe they "barrowed" a control from Microsoft Excel ?

Ok Ok , wait up ill check it out...
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Numsgil on March 25, 2005, 12:07:13 PM
I don't have access to their source, so I have no idea how they did it.

But the finished product is still very nice.
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Botsareus on March 25, 2005, 12:16:46 PM
Rofl Num, so proffesinal...

All they did was use the same graphing method we used , fixed the spacing (the way I already explained) and aaa proffesional part , they used a picture for the background of the backbuffer to make it look like a grid....

I dont think its nessisary to have calumes for cycles like that .. all we need is to know how mutch cycles are in the chart total (The way I already explained)
If the chart resolution is lower then the cycle resoultion we can even add a zoom feature....
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Numsgil on March 25, 2005, 12:19:34 PM
All I'm saying is that I was impressed.  If you can make it even better than that, then more the better.

But everything their graphs have, I want.
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Botsareus on March 25, 2005, 12:24:52 PM
I cant say I can make It better , just different... somewhat the way it is now , no background pictures and stuff like that...

I mean I feel like I am playing RedAlert When I run that thing... (The whole program looks proffesional not only the charts)

P.S.

I will post the modified .frm (and all the .bases if any) files when I am done with it. If I ever actualy get to it...
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Numsgil on March 25, 2005, 12:29:37 PM
Everything it has, I want.

'nough said.
Title: AZPaul Intro
Post by: Botsareus on March 25, 2005, 12:31:23 PM
Num, I did not try clicking on the chart, does that do anything?

(I uninstalled aready)