First Simulation

Getting Started

Make sure you have the newest release of Darwinbots before you begin. As of June 2008 this was 2.43.1L. If you're not sure if you have the latest version, check out the Main FTP which is updated with the most recent version regularly. If you have problems installing take a look at the Installation Instructions or ask a question at the forum.

The changes from release to release are not trivial. Don't cheat yourself with older versions.

Your First Sim

Open the program. You'll see a flash screen with details about the program. Read them and close the window by clicking anywhere.

Go to file > new simulation. What do all these options do? Don't worry about it. Just go down and hit start simulation.

You should see a bunch of groups of green bots and a few yellow ones running around in circles and firing little dots at the green ones. The yellow circles are from a species called T_Preservans, and are about as exciting as watching mold grow.

As Emeril would say, let's kick it up a notch.

Running Something Worth Running

Find a bot called Ymir. You probably don't have him on your computer, so you have to download him from either the forum beastiary or the database.

Download that to your */darwinbotsII/robots/ folder. Or just open notepad, copy and paste, and save to */darwinbotsII/robots/ Darwinbots is by default installed to your C:/program files/darwinbotsII folder, but you may have specified a different directory when you installed the program. I know I did!

Do you have Ymir now? Let's load him into the program. Go back to Darwinbots and hit file -> new simulation.

Now click on the button called 'new species'. You now enter a file-selection-window. Go to the directory where you saved Ymir. Select Ymir.txt and double-click it. You now re-enter the simulation window with 3 species: the plant (green), the T_preservian (yellow), and Ymir (some random color). By default, Ymir gets assigned 3000 energy and 5 bots to begin with.

What colour's Ymir? Probably nothing nice, as he got a random colour after you added him. click on the list underneath Ymir's picture, and select a nice colour. I like to pick custom, and choose 100% red. Like the blood of the fallen that Ymir squashes under his feet.

Now, let's hit 'start new'. You see? Ymir's cool! Much more exciting.

You should now have the knowledge necessary to play around with bots you find in the beastiary. Explore the rest of the wiki at your leisure.