Darwinbots Forum
General => Off Topic => Topic started by: PurpleYouko on March 29, 2005, 04:32:36 PM
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Right then!
Who wants to build us a new Official DarwinBots website?
Interested Shvarz?
here is the reply to my recent email to Carlo on the subject.
Hi PY,
yes, I noticed you created another forum for Darwinbots. Probably I should close
the old one and update the link on the darwinbots site, and I'll do it as soon
as I have some time.
Unfortunately, I can't give you the access to the site, because it is hosted by
a crappy italian provider which requires you, in order to modify the pages, to
access the internet through their dialup connection (obviously, an italian phone
number). This is also why it is so annoying for me to make any changes to it.
The best thing you could do is to create your own darwinbots site - this time
with a section for code uploads, and so on; it may become the main db site (I
can put a redirect from the old address).
I haven't kept track of all the features you added to the original program (by
the way, it seems that the new forum lacks a section about the development
status of the program, discussion over new features, etc). So, what are you
working on right now? I read on the forum that you're working on 3.0. Which new
features will it bring? I'm really curious.
That's all. Keep up the good work, and let me know what do you want to do for
the site (if you want to create your own, and make it the main darwinbots site).
Bye,
Carlo
So we have the official go-ahead to bring DB into the 21st (and a half) century
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Ah damn. Making a new website means a certain amount of trouble. The more links a person has to click through to find something, the more likely they are to give up.
Should we get a real address? Like darwinbots.com? I'd be willing to put in a few dollars. (Like $5 - $10. Same I'd spend on a movie, and that only lasts about 2 hours).
If we're going to set up a new website anyway, we might as well do it right. And having an actual address means we have a large degree of freedom.
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Never thought I'd say this, but I am willing to pitch in 5-10 bucks myself. And maybe next year too :) I am not too familiar with web-hosting options, but I may ask around...
Having www.darwinbots.com would be nice!
As far as making the new site: I can handle basic and intermediate level html, although I have not practiced for quite some time. Here is a link to my personal page for you to check out: http://postw.kulichki.net (http://postw.kulichki.net) It is in Russian, but you'll get the idea. For those familiar with web-building - that was my first experiment with CSS. The navigation script (pop-out on the left) I just took from some free-script-distributing sites and adapted to my needs.
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My sister could probably help too. She's only in Highschool, but she's probably as close to a grandmaster HTML designer as I know.
Her site is imodd.net.
As far as I'm concerned, netscape composer is the end all web designer :lol:
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I dont know how to mail money too well ,sry.
But:
If we can set up a server someware we are not only hosting the website , we will be able to host the robot ftp sharing as well.
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I dont know how to mail money too well ,sry.
But:
If we can set up a server someware we are not only hosting the website , we will be able to host the robot ftp sharing as well.
I was thinking about that too. Let me do some research, see if I can figure it all out.
If you would like to contribute, I think we could set up some kind of paypal type transfer. It really isn't that hard to move money around online if you know how to do it.
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You mean online: like bank account numbers and everything?.
:pokey: forget about it , thats worse then mailing it... If some day you guys actualy get me to send you money, its going to be my own money (for once , not my parants). AND:
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I was thinking turning DarwinBots or FelineSoft into a reguler softwear company one day, with a real networked offise , (with sourcesafe for once). Maybe make some kind of FS corporation, with FelineSoft company , and the (FireSoft) company I will use to sell my space games , (if I ever will).... Anyways thats are all dreams.
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Yep , the next step for us will be to get a server and a domain....
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You don't have a bank account? I honestly don't know what everyone's problem is with banking and stuff. It's almost as good as cash.
"Hello Mr. Bank, will you hold my money for me? In exchange, you can spend most of it right now because I probably won't be withdrawing it all at once anyway. Maybe you acn make some money with it."
"Sure kid. Heh heh."
It's a win-win situation.
I was thinking turning DarwinBots or FelineSoft into a reguler softwear company one day, with a real networked offise , (with sourcesafe for once). Maybe make some kind of FS corporation, with FelineSoft company , and the (FireSoft) company I will use to sell my space games , (if I ever will).... Anyways thats are all dreams.
FelineSoft is... what? You like to introduce new variables without declaring them, don't you :P
Darwinbots will probably never be a company or professional venture because:
1. It's opensource. That means by definition it's free. You can't make money from something that's free
2. No one would pay for an artificial life simulator. It's such a tiny tiny field that most real researchers can't get real grants for AL research. It's probably always going to be that way.
3. It's in Visual Basic. Most real AL stuff has to be able to run in Unix (Visual Basic is windows only). That's just what everyone uses.
And don't you have to actually have a space game to sell a space game? Don't count your chickens before they're hatched.
I'm having trouble looking this stuff up because I don't know what to call it.
Here's what I have so far:
A domain name is probably about $10 a year (roughly). I don't think it's much more than a name. No server space, etc. Still not a bad deal.
What would you call a server that allows uploads and downloads with registration? I can't search for it without a name.
That's all we'd need. A simple ftp server that allows people to upload and download periodically. Then we could set it up through the program and allow a distributed simulation.
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Okay, here's what I know:
GoDaddy offers webnames for $9 USD.
All we need for the internet sharing is a teeny tiny section of publically available FTP server. In fact (as I've said before) we could probably just use someone's old home computer.
And I know I'm saying it in vain again. Why do I even bother? Here's what the .txt that comes with Darwinbots says. I know my computer can't do it because I'm under so many layers of routers and firewalls at school it's a miracle I can even download.
So, if you want to try this, here's how.
1) get an FTP server program. I'm using Cerberus FTP (http://www.cerberusftp.com/), a little, simple and free program. Many people likes also GuildFTPd (http://www.guildftpd.com/), that's also free.
2) create a folder on your HD called darwinftp.
3) configure the server so that darwinftp will be the only folder visible from the root directory. You can configure it for anonymous users or passworded, it's the same.
That's all. Now, if you run DarwinBots and specify the name or the ip address of your server in the internet options tab, DarwinBots will connect to that server to load/save organisms.
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I can't run my home computer continiously - it is a powerful gaming machine, which eats 400kW every hour. Besides, I am not a big beleiver in publicly known FTP sites hosted on an important machine. Usually I am not scared of hackers, but this particular combination gives me the creeps. And not to mention the fact that I am most likely behind firewall of a sort (I thought all internet providers do that? am I wrong?)
Maybe when I buy a comp for my son in a couple of years :)
What about alternatives? Something like a distributed file-sharing network. It would not be real-time, but given enough people it would be almost as good. And some of those file-sharing networks allow very secure connections. Look at the one called Waste.
I guess the important question is why we want to have bot-sharing. What would be the advantage?
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The advantages? Well, it sounds cool, I guess. The work's already been done. All we need is a FTP server. Bots seems excited by the idea at least, so I thought I'd give it a try.
I'm still looking for some kind of free FTP hosting place. Most don't want sites that act primarily as storage.
Maybe we could set up a sub domain on an official DB site. My sister gave me a sub domain on her site last november, with my own FTP password and stuff. It isn't a stretch to see that working here.
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"Feline Touch" not "Feline Soft" , memory.....
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"Feline Touch" not "Feline Soft" , memory.....
Again, what are you referring to?
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Here are the plans I've found for a website. I vote godaddy.com.
This one is $35 a year counting the name registration (http://www.hostcolor.com/prices.php) It's tiny. Not worth the money in my opinion.
Go daddy (https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/hosting/shared.asp?se=%2B&ci=260) is 3.16 a month if you sign up for the year, 3.95 otherwise. That's 37.92 for the year. Then another $9 for the name registration. That's $46.87 total.see here (https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/registrar/search.asp?se=%2B&ci=235).
Then there's this one (http://www.ehostpros.com/hosting/hosting.html). Not a whole lot cheaper than Go daddy, and offers a little less. $35.88. I can't tell if it offers the name registration as part of the cost or not (it seems like it though).
I'm willing to throw in $10. Maybe a little more, depending.
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Well, it sounds cool, I guess
I certainly appreciate the "coolness factor" of things. Still, what kind of functionality would you like? An extended F1 league with bots simultaneously coming from different computers?
Here is what I think: Say I want to run an evolution sim. I pick conditions, pick a starting bot and run it. I am looking at ~100 bots on the screen at a given time (if things go well). Pretty small number for evolution. Now, say I have a feature, where the program saves a random bot to a folder every 1000 cycles or so and then loads a random bot from that folder. Say I have a pool of 1000 bots there. This means essentially that even though I have 100 bots on the screen at any given time, my total population is actually 10 times bigger. It is as if these bots walked out of the screen for a while and then came back. Makes sense? This will make evolution go much smoother , but it will take longer. One way to speed it up is to have many people run the same exact simulation on their computers.
Now let's say we have 10 people each running the same simulation in parallel in a way I described above. And from time to time we swap half of bots from our caches with each other. This makes our total population... 10,000 bots! They are not all simulated at the same time, but all of them get a chance to run. This would allow amazing evolution sims.
So here is a good legitimate need for bot-sharing. But it does not require a centralized server. It can all be done on person-to-person basis.
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So here is a good legitimate need for bot-sharing. But it does not require a centralized server. It can all be done on person-to-person basis.
I agree exactly, but P2P still requires a centralized place to coordinate the actions, if not the transfers. All those Napsters, etc. still require a few servers to help people find each other.
I think it wouldn't be hard to set up some kind of subdomain public dump FTP server (say that three times fast) that the program uploads and downloads to. Like botsharing.darwinbots.com or something like that.
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Yes, it would be nice to have a centralized server. But not a single folder for all needs. The folders have to be project-specific, otherwise it is going to be a mess.
As for centralized servers in file-sharing apps... I may be mistaken, but I think Waste (http://waste.sourceforge.net/) does not use those.
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Okay, I just bought darwinbots.com and 500 megs of server space. Cost me ~$42. Donations are acceptable, PM me and I'll tell you how :P
Seriously though, this is going to be sweet! I'm still setting everything up. Tell Carlo to forward to the new page!
I'll see about setting up an FTP for the program.
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Just did.
How do you see this? I mean how is it going to relate to the wiki? Seems like a lot of stuff is going to be duplicated. Or are we doing wiki just as a way to allow multiple people to work on the same text?
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I can set up the forum, wiki, database, etc. as sub domains of darwinbots.com.
I'm working on it now. By tomorrow, you should be able to type:
forum.darwinbots.com -> access this forum.
manual.darwinbots.com -> access the wiki.
botabase.darwinbots.com (clever, huh? :P) -> access the database
oldhome.darwinbots.com -> access Carlo's old home page for Darwinbots.
These are just simple redirects. The actual thigns themselves aren't moved. WIth masking, we can hide where they really are on the internet, so if we want to move the wiki from darwinbots.xwiki.com to somewhere else, we just change what manual.darwinbots.com redirects to.
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I was thinking about a general approach to the web-site...
Most of action happens in forum, most of help and descriptions will be in the wiki. So what should the website do? I think we need to organize it in a way to draw new people in. The very first page should address newcomers and in a fun and easy-going way introduce DBs to them.
Does that make sense?
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Yes, my thoughts too. It should be interesting enough to keep their attention and provide basic darwinbots information.
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If the webspace you bought has PHP-support, why not make the webpage a wiki?
The main areas could only be edited by the runners of the website.
Then there could be a help section (or maybe it should be called wiki section) to which "guests" are free to type their stuff.
Wiki of this type ought to have a website look/feel, rather than that of a wiki.
Hope you understood what I was trying to explain :). The decentralized website you're creating wouldn't be really practical, it'd be great to find a wiki with forums, but I suppose separate forums and website could be manageable with such a small community.
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Wait a second. If we have webspace, what the hell are we doing on an invision board? Let's blow this joint and throw some phpBB up.
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We could but it's such a pain to up and relocate. This board and the wiki are just fine. If you want an easy to remember URL, try typing forum.darwinbots.com and see what happens ;).
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If the webspace you bought has PHP-support, why not make the webpage a wiki?
The main areas could only be edited by the runners of the website.
Then there could be a help section (or maybe it should be called wiki section) to which "guests" are free to type their stuff.
Wiki of this type ought to have a website look/feel, rather than that of a wiki.
Hope you understood what I was trying to explain :). The decentralized website you're creating wouldn't be really practical, it'd be great to find a wiki with forums, but I suppose separate forums and website could be manageable with such a small community.
Great idea, but I have no idea how PHP etc. works. :(
I mean, I understand in theory, but I've never tried programming with it.
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Its a pain , the only thing simular is that you can use vbscript for the actual php...
Tryed to do a hitcounter in it once , gave up: was saving the
hit count file on user side instead of server side , but took me a day to figure out.
I forgot everything now, besides I was a better programer then.....
Try interdev and the internet for help , (I dont even have frontpage on my mashine right now , forget about interdev)
(what I mean by InterDev is the MSDN help for the InterDev studio)
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Great idea, but I have no idea how PHP etc. works. :(
I mean, I understand in theory, but I've never tried programming with it.
Well, that's hardly an issue. There are dozens and dozens of free PHP scripts out there. The search for the perfect script might be a long one, though :).
Few wikis have forums implemented, but almost any wiki's layout can be edited to look like a "normal" website. Skinning wikis is usually much like skinning forums: you don't need to know the first thing about PHP.
The main reason to combine all of the current websites (forums, database, the actual website) is to ease the managing of the whole thing. Now, all of the sites have to be separately filled in with the latest news, and users have to register to each site. The current system, without a main website, is quite confusing (I suppose it's only a temporary solution). Took me a couple of days to figure out what the latest version was and if it was in heavy beta state (ie. not recommended for "normal" use) :).
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I'd be against relocating some of the resources. Moving forums is a pain.
A better way would be to create some kind of script system that lets you register in all the different places at once.
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What about just using frames to display the seperate pages. I was thinking of the normal title bar, links on left and in the right corner would be the page currently viewed. This way a user could just click a link to change the current page. A general sign-up/log-in page could also be done, possibly with a form filling out all the other pages' sign-up/log-in forms simultaneously.
Endy B)
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If anyone with PHP and HTML mad skills wants to give it a wack go ahead. Web design isn't my forte. I have some graphic artist skills, but I don't practice them enough :(.