Difference between revisions of "Version History"

Revision as of 17:05, 2 November 2005

DB's History

Community's History

Darwinbots was created originally by Carlos Comis. As the program grew in size, thanks to both Carlos' support and user interest, a forum was sought out to replace the original message board. This forum was created in July of 2003, using a Proboards free forum, with prominant messages reposted.

In October of 03 a new type of bot was born, Tie Feeders. This method discovered by PY, who would later become the primary programer, helped to make DB more exiciting and intersting with red laser like ties firing across the screen.

Time passed and DB continued to grow. Numsgil was also kind enough to lend a hand with the massive programing load, helping to advance the program in bold new directions and fix the numerous bugs that crop up. In time it was apparent that the Proboard Forum was no longer meeting the community's needs and a poll was taken up to move to a new forum.

Proboards Total Posts: 4,869 July 03 - Feb 05

Invision Our members have made a total of 4,893 posts Feb 05 - May 05 (and beyond)

The Invision Forum was a definite success, within 4 months the board had more posts than ever in the old forum. The desire to expand also led to the creation of this very Wiki; created as a way for all members to share their knowledge. Recently the official DB wiki has become the homepage, due to more availability for user interaction.

A wiki was placed in wikipedia as DB assumed a larger role in the alife community.

Recent News ' Area below is currently being worked on :) --Endy^chat 15:05, 2 Nov 2005 (MST) The most recent changes and some of the largest ever taking place is the splitting of DB into different programs. Cell and ? are two brother programs created by some of our own. While sharing the same basic structure currently they're working to tackle alife from different angles.

Another major change is the Port over to C++ and the first ever complete stabilization of an older version (#?).

Most Interesting Bugs History

During testing of the new versions several major bugs were observed(all fixed now), while these were bizzare to say the least; they also provided an interesting chance to observe evolution in action, as bots were forced to cope with the new situations.

One a bug in the tie routine enabled bots to tie to absolutly nothing. They could even strangly feed while tied. Another allowed bots to leave the normal screen area and get outside of their little universe. This new area, however, didn't allow shot feeding as shots came left bots only to turn up inside the normal simulation area. Tie Feeders suffered from snapping ties, but were able to receive some food.

Another odd bug allowed bots in larger sims with gravity, to raise up into the "air" comming to rest on an invisible floor. Several were observed following alga up this chimmney, allowing them to feed from the plants once on the floor.