Messages

1

Darwinbots3 / Happy Birthday Numsgil

« on: August 24, 2009, 05:23:32 PM »

Unfortunately there is no amusing saying or picture in this post, I did look for one though and it’s the thought that counts      

2

Darwinbots3 / Thoughts on Multithreading...

« on: August 24, 2009, 02:01:46 PM »

In regards to the pitfalls of using this in a simulation I was more thinking along the lines of potential increases in memory usage depending on the implementation.

At its most fundamental each step would want its own copy of the simulation state to read from and write to for thread safety?
A particular copy of the DNA will want to process against a particular copy of the physical state of the simulation I.e. it would not be the same state the physics is currently solving, nor the same state that is being drawn.

What’s the current plan for doing stuff like finding out what a bot has the ability to sense?
I would start off looking at building a KD tree or something and then I can read from that while the original physical state is free to be written to safely in a different thread. But I gather you have some uber cool algorithm for this detection that doesn’t require spatial trees?

How is the physical state information going to be stored? Is it directly within a list of world entities (e.g. bots) that have properties such as location and rotation? or within some other separate data structure?

Obviously rather than storing actual duplicate copies of each state you could just have a single master and a set of deltas for each cycle I guess?

3

Darwinbots3 / Thoughts on Multithreading...

« on: August 19, 2009, 12:32:55 PM »

Numsgil, what are your current thoughts for implementing multithreading in Darwinbots?

The two approaches I can think of are:

Single step – sequential parts
So in one cycle; a DNA thread pool would run while the main thread waited for them to all finish and then kick of the physics and wait until that was done then render the result of one complete step.
The length of the cycle is the sum of all its parts, but the processing within each part is done in parallel.

Multistep – parallel parts
So in one cycle; one thread pool is processing the DNA of all the bots in the simulation
While at the same time another thread (pool) is processing the physics for the DNA results from the previous step, at the same time another thread is rendering the results from the physics for the step before. The length of a cycle is equal to its slowest part.

Does a multistep approach even work for this kind of simulation; I know it can for games.

4

Biology / Real DNA Programming

« on: August 18, 2009, 01:56:47 PM »

I just watched a cool video...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6950604815683841321
its along similar lines to the wet alife synthetic bacteria thing.

But I love the idea of being able to design and write organic nanobots.

5

Darwinbots3 / Hi Guys

« on: August 11, 2009, 01:47:21 PM »

Ok, great the regex validity checking slider input thingy seems simple enough to start with.
I have written large scale GDI driven components before to the extent of making a sort of interactive visio floor planner.  And I have tried making GUIs from scratch before so that all that sounds right up my street.

6

Darwinbots3 / Hi Guys

« on: August 11, 2009, 09:27:16 AM »

You might have to bear with me on this one, the last time I did collision detection it was using a quad tree of AABBs for broad phase and then a direct narrow phase iteration though the vertexes of the corresponding OOBB checking to see if the ray from the old position to the new one intersected the other OOBB. (Using an external math library to do the transformations). Then I just calculated the penetration depth, moved the object upto the impact point and added a calculated opposing force to each object's velocity and rotation, which yes can get objects horribly stuck and just jitter about until they get deactivated.

Globally solving all constraints in linear time certainly sounds an attractive proposition if not a bit outside my current understanding. But would be great consideing most of the objects would be in motion most of the time.

7

Darwinbots3 / Hi Guys

« on: August 11, 2009, 08:36:17 AM »

Reading though that seems like quite heavy stuff, and I haven't done much with matrix calculus in a while. I normally work with business software; it might take a bit to get my head back around it.

I wouldn't mind coming back to these types of problems at some point, but I think I would be best off starting on something else for now. Some general C# stitching work, GDI/XNA drawing, network sockets etc.

8

Darwinbots3 / Hi Guys

« on: August 10, 2009, 08:53:50 AM »

Whoa time flies,
I have been off gallivanting around with my new gf and sorting out my new house etc, I can’t believe I last stopped by like 10 months ago, only seems like a few weeks.

Anyway stuff around here has been returning to normal lately and I have been feeling an increasing urge to get back into some hobbyist programming projects and thought of you guys    

I wouldn’t mind getting back on the project if you guys will have me.  
I took a look at the source in the repository and it looks like you have been making some good progress.

I think I saw a todo list around somewhere, is it still just bite off a chunk and start chewing?

9

Evolution and Internet Sharing Sims / Over 40 Million Cycles and 250 Hours Evo Sim

« on: November 07, 2008, 12:28:03 PM »

I like the way they seem to wait until they have finished feeding before reproducing, it stops them pulling in different directions and letting other bots get the food instead.

10

Evolution and Internet Sharing Sims / Over 40 Million Cycles and 250 Hours Evo Sim

« on: November 07, 2008, 12:22:47 PM »

Here it is after another day of mutation.
[attachment=1070:MutationSim.rar]

I find I need to twice a week, save the sim, close down darwinbots and re-loaded to keep it running fast.

11

Evolution and Internet Sharing Sims / Over 40 Million Cycles and 250 Hours Evo Sim

« on: November 06, 2008, 01:43:28 PM »

My current mutation sim has been running for 252 hours now and has clocked 40,885,341 cycles
It currently has 720 lifeforms in, 690 of which started out as animal minimalis other 30 are alga minimalis

Here is one of the animal minimalis' DNA after 290 mutations.
And I still have't seen any canibots.

[div class=\'codetop\']CODE[div class=\'codemain\' style=\'height:200px;white-space:pre;overflow:auto\'] pyth
 cond
 dec
 *.eye5 floor =
 *.refeye *.venom !~=
 xor
 start
 201 rnd .aimright store
 cond
 and
 *.aimright >=
 start
 *.refveldx .dx store
 dec
 - div 36 or
 1 sqr - store
 ~ *.eye5
 start
 74 >
 start
 -6 .shoot store
 store
 *.nrg 5985 >=
 xor
 *.up !~=
 43 300 and
 store
 !=

12

Simulation Emporium / zerobot evolution

« on: October 29, 2008, 10:19:05 AM »

That sounds very similar to what happened in my zerobot sim, very low energy (150) bots that would wonder about and try to tie to everything, (though after increasing tie costs, while they still tie it would only be to one object at a time) I was still trying to figure out their conspec but they would only shoot veggies they have tied too, and when feeding they reproduced.
So when a bot came across a veggie it would latch on and feed while spewing out lots of offspring in the hope that one of them would then come across some more food.

I have put that aside now and have started a mutation sim with alga and animal minimalis, so far at 12M cycles (only about 350 bots) and they showing much more interesting behaviour.

13

Off Topic / Illumina Job

« on: October 25, 2008, 06:16:18 PM »

I have already googled them but I was wondering if anyone had any first-hand knowledge or opinions. The job is a C# Programmer position relating to the visualisation of data from genetic analysis. I thought if anywhere on the internet someone might have heard of them it would be here. Since they produce software tools for genetic research.

14

Off Topic / Illumina Job

« on: October 25, 2008, 04:29:24 PM »

Today I received an e-mail from a recruitment company asking whether I would be interested in a job with a company called ‘Illumina’. Which was only of note because for one, they deal with producing tools for genetic analysis, and two, the job is based 5 miles from where I was born and lived for the first 12 years of my life. I just wondered given the field; does anyone know of them?

15

Newbie / From what country is everybody

« on: October 25, 2008, 04:17:01 PM »

In that case I wish to withdraw my vote for 'Other country' and vote for the UK instead  

Although oddly for an Englishman I don’t mind being labelled as European, I think we should have a closer Europe to more effectively compete on the world stage. I don’t know whether I like the idea of a 'United States of Europe' anytime soon, but any objections I may have would not be based on English nationalism or xenophobia. The England I like is the romantic 19th century version not what we currently have; I say we should adopt the euro as a currency, and I would much prefer the prelude to the ‘Ode to Joy’ as a national anthem rather than ‘God save the Queen’, especially given that I am an anti-royal atheist.