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Messages - Sand

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Newbie / Simulating animal fighting and ESS
« on: August 14, 2009, 06:23:34 PM »
Hi,

the newbie section is perhaps not the best place for this topic, feel free to move it.

Anyway, I am a newbie but thoroughly enjoy DarwinBots. I got an idea I would really like to try out in DB, but I don't feel capable of it. At least not without help. The following is what I want to do.

First some background
Biology, ethology and evolution is fun even for laypeople like me. A good example of that are the different ingenious simulations/experiments that has been done over the years. Maynard Smith was (among many other things) interested in fighting behavior in animals. Say that animals (of the same species) need  to compete with each other for a certain resource. If another individual beat you to it, it may be a good idea to fight her over it. Of Course, fighting involves certain risks and therefore it may not always be good idea or more importantly you need to pick your fights. Maynard Smith came up with five different strategies a animal could employ and wanted to see which was a 'evolutionary stable strategy' (ESS). A ESS is basically a strategy that is successful when the animal employing the strategy is facing individuals using the same strategy. The reason that ESS is defined in that manner is because if a certain strategy is successful in a population, that strategy will soon be the most common and hence animals using that strategy have to face a lot of animals employing the same strategy.

His five strategies were:
1. Fight conventionally, retreat if opponent proves to be stronger or if opponent escalates.
2. Fight at escalated level. Retreat only if injured.
3. Start conventionally. Escalate only if opponent escalates.
4. Start conventionally. Escalate only if opponent continues to fight conventionally.
5. Fight at escalated level. Retreat before getting hurt if opponent does likewise.

So we have a situation that may seem like a rock paper scissor situation, but actually one tactic is better than the others (or is a ESS). What I would love to do is somehow simulate this situation in DarwinBots and see which strategy is most successful (in the DB universe).


There are however alot of problems (at least for me) to implement these strategies in DB.
a) How can one differentiate "conventional" and "escalated" fighting in DB. Probably by using different shooting manners, e.g. -1 or -6 .shoot or that the escalating fighter uses some other "attack".
b ) The bots should not be fighting to eat of each other, but rather fighting for veggies.
c) The bots have to be able to run away from a fight if getting injured or fighting a escalating opponent (given which strategy it has).
d) The bots should fight both with bots using other strategies than itself (different species in DB) but also fight with individuals having the same strategy (same species in DB). But they shouldn't fight with their own children. At least not for a while.

As I said, I am a newbie. I really have no idea how to carry this out. I am still trying and learning stuff but I think it's time for me to throw this out for the community. Anyone that can help me out, I am very thankful.

Thanks in advance


Edit: some spelling

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Bug reports / COMDLG32.OCX - trouble RESOLVED (Vista)
« on: November 18, 2007, 03:35:32 PM »
Hey, thanks to both of you guys with being so quick to answer.

I tried your tip EricL but then I ran into error code 0x8002801c, and once again it probably would work if I just had the skills.
Anyway, so I tried just to run as administrator and now it works like a charm.

So, thanks again and sorry for taking up posts with such useless questions.

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Bug reports / COMDLG32.OCX - trouble RESOLVED (Vista)
« on: November 18, 2007, 02:52:21 PM »
Hi,

I just downloaded DarwinBots and are eager to start playing however, probably because of my lousy computer skills, I can't. Once I start the program I get the following message:

"Component 'COMDLG32.OCX' or one of its dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid"

And, as I allready mentioned my computer skills, I've no idea about what I should do now.

I'm sitting on Windows Vista and the same trouble arise both when I try the old 2.1 and the newer update 2.43s.

Grateful and for any and all help.

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