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Author Topic:   Percy's Alife Project
Dr Jack
Member (Idle past 129 days)
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003


Message 5 of 63 (59876)
10-07-2003 7:32 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Percy
10-06-2003 6:59 PM


I strongly recommend giving the food particles some kind of 'inertia', purely random walking tends to just produce little squiggly 'knots'.
Looks very cool. How long do you think it'll take?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Percy, posted 10-06-2003 6:59 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by Percy, posted 10-07-2003 12:23 PM Dr Jack has replied

  
Dr Jack
Member (Idle past 129 days)
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003


Message 14 of 63 (59929)
10-07-2003 12:41 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Percy
10-07-2003 12:23 PM


If you need any help with the programming, I egotistically offer my assistance. (What with being a working C++ programmer and all that).
The same applies to the Cellscape universe - poor choices for initial underlying parameters could cause little or nothing to happen
I wrote a much simpler A-life thing once, I found it very useful to be able to customise the parameters without changing the code. I'd suggest you do something similar.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by Percy, posted 10-07-2003 12:23 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 18 by Percy, posted 10-07-2003 1:49 PM Dr Jack has not replied

  
Dr Jack
Member (Idle past 129 days)
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003


Message 31 of 63 (60258)
10-09-2003 10:57 AM
Reply to: Message 30 by Percy
10-09-2003 10:46 AM


My advice; don't attempt this in a language you're not familiar with. The task you've set yourself is challenging, adding additional obstacles is not wise.
Java is not interpretted, it is compiled to byte code. Well written Java running on a good JIT compiler will be about 80% of the speed of C++ for a typical application. However yours is not a typical application, it is probably more processor heavy and the penalty may be higher. C# is similar in performance to Java.
I strongly suggest you don't use any form of compilation to native code for any of your A-life 'organisms'.

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 Message 30 by Percy, posted 10-09-2003 10:46 AM Percy has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 32 by NosyNed, posted 10-09-2003 11:38 AM Dr Jack has replied
 Message 33 by awinkisas, posted 10-09-2003 11:51 AM Dr Jack has not replied

  
Dr Jack
Member (Idle past 129 days)
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003


Message 34 of 63 (60267)
10-09-2003 12:10 PM
Reply to: Message 32 by NosyNed
10-09-2003 11:38 AM


Statistics show that working (8 hr a day) programmers take six months to get up to speed with a new language, and that code produced in that time takes longer, is buggier and is less efficent.
In any case I doubt whether he'd see a big productivity push from changing to Java anyway; C++ is a good language.

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 Message 32 by NosyNed, posted 10-09-2003 11:38 AM NosyNed has replied

Replies to this message:
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Dr Jack
Member (Idle past 129 days)
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003


Message 41 of 63 (60405)
10-10-2003 7:21 AM
Reply to: Message 40 by Peter
10-10-2003 7:11 AM


With densely populated 'cellular' universes, treating it as a continous array is much more efficent. I don't know which case Percy's vision corresponds to.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 40 by Peter, posted 10-10-2003 7:11 AM Peter has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 42 by Peter, posted 10-10-2003 7:52 AM Dr Jack has replied

  
Dr Jack
Member (Idle past 129 days)
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003


Message 43 of 63 (60409)
10-10-2003 9:18 AM
Reply to: Message 42 by Peter
10-10-2003 7:52 AM


Yeah, locating adjacent is much more efficent in an array structure. Now since A-life is generally heavily based on seeing what is around, this can be an important consideration. It's slightly more memory efficent too, since co-ordinates do not need to be stored.
But, of course, only on a high density array.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 42 by Peter, posted 10-10-2003 7:52 AM Peter has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 47 by Peter, posted 10-13-2003 7:23 AM Dr Jack has replied

  
Dr Jack
Member (Idle past 129 days)
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003


Message 48 of 63 (60709)
10-13-2003 8:54 AM
Reply to: Message 47 by Peter
10-13-2003 7:23 AM


I see the problem .... would it help if you re-ordered
your object lists based somehow on coordinates though?
There is no natural ordering on 3-space (or even 2-space). So you'd need to construct a search tree - probably some kind of octree, or binary space partition, to keep things fast. This can be done easily enough; but it'd still be slower than an array based system.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 47 by Peter, posted 10-13-2003 7:23 AM Peter has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 49 by Peter, posted 10-13-2003 10:30 AM Dr Jack has not replied

  
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