Messages

1

Newbie / Yaheydere

« on: January 14, 2010, 02:23:46 PM »

Thanks, I'll download those right away.

A question: Why the heck do my bots keep shrinking?  I'm just running Alga and Animal Minimalis, but the animals keep getting smaller and smaller, until they reach a point where they stop to feed while their shots are still out of range.  To keep them alive I'm shoving algae on top of them, but even when I can get food into them, they don't seem to grow.  What's up with that?

2

Newbie / Yaheydere

« on: January 14, 2010, 11:15:40 AM »

As far as interesting behaviour goes, Spiral from the interesting behaviour part of the bestiary and Seasnake/Tribolis from the starting gate (somewhere   ) are probably one of the better ones. The first shows some swarm behaviour, the other two are worms.

Flocking behavior?  There's something else I'd love to be able to figure out - I know that the mathematical "rules" are supposedly very simple, but that whole not-a-programmer thing gets me every time.

A sheperd is a bot that encourges the evolution of other bots in the sim. Of course that won't mean anything if you've never experimented with the simulator yet. Its really confusing at first but I did it and I have the attention span of a...

A T-shirt I MUST own someday reads, "All my friends tell me I have ADD, but I don't know what they're oh look a chicken!"



Heather

3

Newbie / Yaheydere

« on: January 13, 2010, 10:40:59 PM »

No terrain types.  Something we've been thinking about adding for newer versions but nothing's come of it yet.  Darwinpond is nice but it inevitably turns in to a monoculture (all one species).

 
True, though that's actually the intent: develop something successful.  The critters are set to only be herbivores, and as this is hardwired into the game you have no chance of creating perdators or omnivores.  In later sim runs I have tried importing two or more different "species" that are already demonstrated to be successful and letting them compete; it's interesting to see what works and what doesn't.

Oh, and the other system I was thinkng of is called BugFest, and is available at necrobones.com.  It's simple but cute; and it DOES have terrain types to a limited degree, carnivores, omnivores and herbivores, as well as "abnormals" that arise from random mutations - things like bugs that never reproduce but never die, for instance.  You can set lifespans for each creature type, but you can't modify their "stats" - and yes, they are borrowed straight out of gaming, using Strength, Dex, Con, Int, Speed and Vision.  This amuses me all by itself.

Hey look, I found the emoticons!
Cheers,
Heather

4

Newbie / Yaheydere

« on: January 13, 2010, 05:00:38 PM »

If your ambitious and know db code, you could try to create a shepard bot which forces bots to evolve for specific niches.

A whoziwatsis?

And, isn't DB already something of an ecosystem sim, since you have plant and animal types?  Or maybe I'm misunderstanding the term.

There are at least two extremely simple ecosystem sims I've seen that work okay - Darwin Pond, and another one called Bugs or something like that, which uses ground color to indicate plant density and water bodies as physical obstacles, kind of like shapes here in DB.  As for DB itself, I really only started running a couple of sims today, so it will be awhile before I do any programming.  And it doesn't look as though DB will allow the terrain types to be anything other than universally "passable" or "obstacle".

Oh well, wish me luck!  If I could find any other alife forums or communities that didn't look like they've been dormant for the past 8 years, I'd be able to ask around further, but... *shrug*

Thanks!

5

Newbie / Yaheydere

« on: January 13, 2010, 02:17:13 PM »

Hello all,
I'm an intermittent geek, which is to say that when the mood strikes me, I'll dive into sims like this, and then I'll come up for air for several months before coming back around and diving in again.  I haven't even downloaded DarwinBots yet, but it looks extremely cool - mostly I've been playing with something called Darwin's Pond, and enjoying it immensely.

Apart from Alife type things, I'm a mom, henna artist, SCAdian, and general geek-of-all-trades - especially if they have pretty colors.  From the look of things, Darwinbots have pretty colors, so I should be good to go.

But here's the real reason I'm coming to the forum.

I came up with an idea for a sim/game last night, and based on other sims I've seen, it should be workable, but I'm not a programmer (okay, I guess I'm a geek-of-MOST-trades).  I do not have the FOGGIEST idea where or how to get something like this going.  I was wondering if DB has anything in it to simulate terrain, or if the bots could be programmed for different food types, sizes, speeds, all that good stuff.  Failing that, I was wondering if there are any programmer nerds around here with free time to play around with the concepts I'm working on.

It's one of those things that starts with simple parameters - although there are probably more of them than in a typical sim of this type - which you can combine to get a lot of complexity.  Users could build plant and animal lifeforms using those parameters, then throw them into the system and see what happens.  Since I was thinking of having different terrain types as well, users might even be able to build their own environment for the lifeforms to run around in.

It's mostly meant to be a food-chain simulation, but I'd also like to apply natural selection to the environment - except I don't really know how.  My idea varies from the other sims I've encountered mainly in sheer number of parameters, allowing for a more complex environment and, if I can figure it out, more realistic creature behavior -
if I could get some idea of how to give the animals the ability to vary their speeds, for instance, based on terrain or threat or whatever, that would rock.

Rather than spam you all with the details, I should probably stop here and see if there is any interest at all, and any advice or assistance here for the asking.  This looks like it's one of the ONLY active forums I can find on Alife, so I'm hopeful that I'll at least get one or two replies back.

Cheers, and it's off to download DarwinBots!
Heather