DECO3551 General Elective A

Here:  morphemebf.zip

Chris, I think with all the merging and stuff, I lost your movement speed control. Could you reset it up? Currently in the movement method of Animals I’ve got:

      //      structure.movementSpeed = velocity/float(maxSpeed);

could you untab that and make that work? All that matters is that it’s equal to velocity/float(maxSpeed); which will give us a range between 0 (slow), and 1 (fast).

Anyway, I’ll be in in an hour or so.. but it’d be best of someone kept working on the code till then.. cause a lot needs to be done.

Igor, you can now create batches of creatures. Atm it chucks 10 at a time in for you. Change this value with int speciesSpawn = 10; All 10 creatures will have the exact same structure.

Also, when kids are created, they check to see if they have the same structure as their parents (or at least the same letter order). If they do, they adopt the structure of their parents. Though I haven’t had time to test this. Chris, I’ll have to ask you about it when I get in.

Also, I reallly think we should try make the physics system within the creature class. I reckon we might be able to pull it off with just 1 computer if we do. Atm, whenever a new baby is being trained, the physics system has to unecessarily go through and update every single other particle of every other animal. Quite expensive for sure.

Anyway, I’ll be calling one of you soon to find out where I’m meant to go. Cya soon 😀

So what’s the plan for tomorrow?  I assume we all have to go in to set up the exhibit… Times etc?

Here – morphemeax.zip

You can press Enter to add your own creatures now. You need to wait a little while for them to spawn. This waiting time is when the creature will learn its moves. It’s fun.. create a heap of your name and see if they can survive.. then type AAAAAAAAAA in a few times and watch them all die.

Also, the light & the coffee mugs give off soft, ambient shadows. Looks super sexy. Takes a while to generate the shadow map though.. so you might wanna look at it once, then go into the light class and tone it down a bit (set shadowCrappness to something crap, like 100. That’ll make the map generate 100x faster). Btw, the light intensity affects the sleep efficiency of the animals. Sleeping in the bright light is very poor.. sleeping in shadows is good. The impact of the light’s intensity can be tweaked.

Chris & Sean, I’ll probably be asleep when you get this, but if you want to start merging, I’ve tried to set it up nicely for you in the Animal class. Go to the Animal class, and scroll halfway down. Almost exactly halfway down are 3 methods that are relevant to you:

  void generateStructure(char[] _letters) {
    //something in here
  }

This is a good spot to generate the structure. Whether the creature has been conceived or generated, by this point is has been given it’s attributes and genes. And of course, the letters. It imports an array of characters (capitals). If you prefer a string, just pass String word instead.

The next method is void trainBaby(); I’ve already filled this out, but have a look anyway.

Directly underneath that is:

   void runMovementGA() {

  }

Which is called by trainBaby every frame. I figure here would be a good place to step through the GA. Not necessarily here in the Animal class.. but linked through this method, perhaps. Anyway, if you look at trainBaby, you’ll notice that after the counter reaches 0, the animal is set to ALIVE and is born. We’ll probably want to make sure this only happens after the GA has finished its final generation. Something to keep in mind.

As for movement, that’s a bit further down in the Animal class. We’ll probably have to do that together (along with the other bits).. but feel free to take a look. Remember, we need to be able to adjust the speed of the physics system on a frame by frame basis to account for water/land & tiredness factors, which all affect the speed of the creature. The variable I’ve got doing that stuff atm is velocity.

Anyway, enough rambling.. gotta go to bed. I won’t be able to do anything more on this till around 10pmish tomorrow. Got a ninjutsu grading 😀 But after that, we’ll get it all sorted.

Good luck to those going in tomoz.

~Ben

Jack has already paid the fee for the whole group for the exhibition. He also talked to Tim and we got the projector stand. We tried to get to the exhibition space but it was closed so I am going to try to get the computers, projectors, etc there tomorrow (Monday). Anyone interested in coming?

Sean, can you post or send me what you have so I can put the walking code and the generator code together?

Hey all, here’s the lastest code.

 morphemeau.zip

Pretty damn big update here..  I’ve merged Chloe’s water code with the rest of the code. Works pretty well.. needs work, but still looks a lot better.

Tried to fix some of the lag issues with the paper.. think it’s a bit better, although the new water images kinda bring the speed back down anyway. I still get 35+fps with over 100 animals on screen at any one time though.

Also, animals collide with the coffee mugs (& Igor, I’ve updated the AI a bit – they won’t go after paper/coffee if it’s underneath a coffee cup).

Anyway, just gotta merge the walking stuff now 😀

~Ben.

P.S I added something else, too.. it’s pretty cool. Try find it, you’ll know it when you see it. ep ep ep

In case you still don’t know (after continuous bombardment of emails from Tim), it is on this coming Tuesday 27th November and it starts 6pm (til?). That is only the opening night however. After that the works will be moved to the Hearth and will be there for the duration of 9am-5pm Wednesday 28th Nov to Wednesday 5th Dec. The venue is Carriageworks, 245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh NSW (Cnr. Codrington St). It is right next to Royal Pub (which is next to international student center).

I’ve just emailed Rob about borrowing 3 mainframes and 1 projector.

I’ve just emailed the coordinators of the exhibition about visiting the place before the exhibition to determine the space/location of our thing. Hopefully they are available tomorrow or this Sunday. However if the only time is Monday or Tuesday, I won’t be able to turn up unfortunately sorry. I won’t be able to turn up for the exhibition also sorry. Will anyone be free on this coming Monday or Tuesday?

Chloe will be filming the exhibition, which we could use as part of our documentation. Do you need tripod Chloe? Will probably have to meet you before Monday to give you the tripod and extra tapes.