If you create a brain lobe with an ID of 'elvn' with the same number of neurons as the 'visn' lobe, then it seems to have information fed into it by the engine about the objects it can see (set lobe to update and set the update rule to 'store in neuron State' or similar, to see).

Also, the Vat Kit seems to know about a 'prox' lobe (which it calls 'proximity'), but it doesn't seem to do anything if I do similar to the above so perhaps it's something they planned on but never made work

Anyone have any further clues about these two? I'm guessing 'elvn' is 'elevation' and it feeds information about the y distance of the object, but I haven't the time to look into it and confirm that.. I guess they're probably not going to be very useful and so there's not much point wondering, but I am curious.

I'm guessing that the proximity lobe had to do with drives clashing (e.g. eat toy = hunger + boredom). But that's just a guess.

The elevation lobe is really interesting. I hate DS camera's, because they're classed as gadgets, and are fixed. Alot of ettins would stand below a camera that was out of reach, and starve to death, trying to "get gadget". The same - less catastrophic - thing happens to all creatures alike when it comes to high bramboo berries.

Anyways, I used the elevation lobe to create a 180 degree FOV, and it seems that they lose interest much quicker, and instead of hanging around cameras, they're looking for other solutions. Although I've only noticed the odd behaviour in the long term, I'm doing the same now with the adjusted version, to see if it doesn't pop up.

Good find!

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Creatures Heaven

Hi Vampess - can you elaborate on your "180 degree FOV" edit?

As I have mentioned, stationary objects too high for a creature to reach, have always seemed to obsess them. DS cameras (C3 ones are classified as machinery), bramboo berries, awkwood creeper, and the machinery in the DS workshop. The reason for this is that vision provides part of their stimuli, but when they are standing below an object, they think they are standing next to it. And when they are hungry/bored and convinced that they should be able to reach said object, they seem to be obsessed about it.

That is why I always changed the DS cameras to machinery, because otherwise, any WR would fail, as large groups of ettins would be "stuck" in the hub, getting, eating, and whatnot with cameras.

On comes this Y coordinate, and this is where it gets interesting: Now they proceed to receive stimuli (a.k.a. it's out of reach), but, as their movement is only tied to the X coordinate, they have no way of getting there, so they divert their attention to something which is within reach, or go looking for something else entirely.

Another example is the bramboo canes, I've always seen creatures "obsess" about an out of reach berry, while there where reachable ones right where it stood. With this genome, the bramboo berries are eaten where they are reachable, and no creature is looking at any berries waiting to fall. Ofcourse, it still interests them, but they don't "obsess" over it.

The edit itself is fairly simple; just copy the vision lobe and tract, but in the tract on the last line, change the 'store in' to 'add and store in'.

I'm testing this with some ettins, which are doing very well, I even had to double check to see if I hadn't changed the cameras out of habit.

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Creatures Heaven

It's been a while since I worked on any of this so please bear with me.

Seems like you want this to provide negative feedback to the Stim lobe. The output of the elvn->stim tract would seem to be:

0.5 * ( 1 - abs(Y) )

Isn't this always a positive number (too lazy to fire up BrainVat but I'm remembering these inputs like Y range from -1 to +1.) Would you want to subtract this from the stim node? Also, maybe not invert it; the further away it is, the less interesting it should be.

I'm probably missing something obvious here. Anyway, it's a really smart idea on how to use this unused lobe - nice work!

Ah, yes, you're right. I just checked the genome and you should change 'substract from 1' to 'add -1'. The genome was made 3 months ago, and I got distracted by the Wii before thoroughly testing it. Guess I put a bit more effort in it than I thought :P

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Creatures Heaven

The elevation lobe works great, it seems to induce travel, and dispenser pushing. The edibles are being pulled, pushed and hit, but only due to boredom. Some ettins still stare at DS cameras for a few minutes, but then wander off to somewhere else.

Now the proximity lobe interests me. I've seen a 'get food' since I was testing the elevation lobe, I checked; all foods and boredom were maxed out/nearly maxed out. So on to this theoretical proximity lobe, and I've been philosophizing about something like this since I've first discovered the problem, which is also the reason why I think the proximity lobe would be used like I mentioned.

I'm working on a theory which is starting to come together, but I'm a bit slowed down due to the fact that I just got Zack & Wiki on the Wii :P

I'll report back here when I have more information

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Creatures Heaven

The 'get food' example of above, was an ettin who was clutching a wegde of cheese, while starving. I've seen this many times ('eat gadget', 'eat toy' etc.), and usually these creatures wouldn't change their mind, even if there was food right next to them. I thought the proximity lobe was there for that reason, but as I was figuring it all out, I realised that the lobe might've been there for that purpose, but the actual error lay in the support genes of the drives.

I found out that the nagivational drives only, are able to raise up to 1, and subsequently, suppress the other drives. This is all done in the brain, so when another drive is at 1, it doesn't interfere with the other drives. But for some reason it does seem to dominate the rest.

Again, this would work fine, if it wasn't for the fact that there's a small error in the genes: Hungry for carb (starch) is the only non navigational drive that can go up to 1. Also, this has nothing to do with starving; the drives just tell a creature how urgently they should satisfy the need.

So I lowered the drive gene, so it couldn't go up to 1, but it could still go higher than the bored drive (otherwise, you'll have creatures saying that they're bored, while they're hungry), and that pretty much did the trick.

So I didn't do anything with the proximity lobe, but now I'm thinking that it might've been a solution to something that the support genes solved.

On a unrelated side note: The orchestra guy in Zack & Wiki plays the tune of the Beatbox from C3 :P

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Creatures Heaven

Not sure if this helps, but are you familiar with the "Category Representative Algorithms" array in "Docking Station.catalogue"? "Food" is set to "4", which it describes as "random nearest" - which makes no sense to me; is it random or is it the nearest? Also, the comments list values for 0 to 3, but then assigns the value 4. Maybe it's related, probably not.

Looking at that file some more - check out the "Action Script To Neuron Mappings" array. I guess this could change what script is called, so you can have a different script # executed for a critter's action. Need to think about if that could be useful. Sometimes I'm amazed at how much of this game they let us modify. Maybe Danikat (from another thread) is right - this has all been seen and done before - but I can't find any mention of it anywhere. Of course it doesn't help that the archives were all lost last year.

Oops; wandered off topic. The only other thing I thought of re: norns not eating cheese they are holding - maybe "held" agents cannot be eaten? Maybe it needs to be dropped first, then eaten? Could that be helped with an instinct to drop food when hungry?

It just means a random seed (the genus) which is nearest to the ground.

The 'get cheese' was just an example, and yes, food can be eaten when held (they pick it up before eating). There's also 'push seed' and several examples mentioned above, but that's just from the top of my head

About the all seen and done - that's relative, if you don't know what's there, it'll take a time before it's seen, as for me, I haven't done and seen it all by far. The game can still be improved in some areas, even after all this time, and if I ever do get bored with the way it is now, I can always add a few categories for more fun. But enough off-topic

Edit: I have seen something very neat with the drive support edit; The only creatures that I've seen with odd behaviour were old creatures, and they'd just forgotten it. One male even had no connection with hungry for starch anymore. I've only seen it twice, and only in old creatures, seems they can get senile afterall

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Creatures Heaven