stephenbrooks.org : Some more questions...

excaliber[Free-DC.org]
2003-12-13 06:45:59

Hi, got some more questions. I was discussing things with my team about doing a team 'strain'.

How does the client choose from the results.dat for the next generation? Does it pick a line randomly, or does it only take from the top xx muon yield? Does pruning the results.dat hurt or help, or only make the filesize smaller?

Would this make sense (what we were discussing over at our forum):

quote:
How bout this setup (means more work). You have one box that is a 'gateway' to your other two/three boxen. The gateway box is nearly always up to date and using the team strain. The other boxen periodically (once a week? two weeks?) take the team strain and start working on it individually in isolation, merging their results with the team strain but not using it. This way they can stay up to date on muon yield, but have time to try a different path before being re-incorporated into the team strain.

Hope this makes sense.

Say, the team strain is at 2%. The individual boxen (lets call them developers, or dev boxen) grab the merged team strain and isolate themselves. For the next week or so, they work on that strain, updating the team. But they dont use the team strain, a that would contaminiate their progress and introduce inbreeding.

At the end of the period, they grab the latest team strain and start the process over.

This would allow for the most optimial breeding program, while reducing inbreeding. Since each box has a period of time to work on the current strain individually, a new and better strain can be found and incorporated. But the periodic update from the team strain allows it to stay up to date. The best of both worlds. Inbreeding will occur, but not nearly as bad as before.

Whatcha think?

If everyone did this (each box updating the team strain daily, but only grabbing once a week or so), it could do some interesting things.

http://intheory.ath.cx InTheory - Game Design and Idea discussion forum

Stephen Brooks
2003-12-13 11:19:00

quote:
Originally posted by excaliber[Free-DC.org]:
How does the client choose from the results.dat for the next generation? Does it pick a line randomly, or does it only take from the top xx muon yield? Does pruning the results.dat hurt or help, or only make the filesize smaller?

The results are ordered by rank and then the ones used for generating new designs from are selected according to a distribution that is heavily weighted towards the top end of the range. Removing, say, the bottom half won't have too much effect. In general I've tried to design it so that culling isn't really necessary as it ignores the lower results _most_ of the time naturally, but will sometimes try them for some variety.

quote:
Originally posted by excaliber[Free-DC.org]:
Would this make sense (what we were discussing over at our forum):

That would make sense. I'm trying essentially to do a similar thing with this project as a whole (clients merging the results every 3 days or whatever, plus some independent ones due to either user choice or lack-of-connectivity).

HB Pencils, also sold as "Moron's Choice" Graphite Cigars.

excaliber[Free-DC.org]
2003-12-13 12:28:25

Ok, thanks for the answers. We talked some more, and came up with this scheme, which I turned into a working PHP script.

When you upload, it places the uploaded results.dat in a temp file that is timestamped. Next, it loops through each line and checks to see if the hash of that line is in database or not. If it is not, it adds the hash, the data, the yield (which is pulled from the line for referece) and the date.

On download, selecting all gives you the entire database. The other option allows you to ask for a certain amount, and randomly selects them from the database.

http://intheory.ath.cx/dpad.php

This is to be our team 'Strain' repository. This way we can keep our strain seperate from the general DPAD gene pool. We are also going to have several machines that are working on their own individual isolated strain, contributing to the team strain, but not using the team's. This way we can maybe get some interesting isolated oddities and results.

http://intheory.ath.cx InTheory - Game Design and Idea discussion forum

magicfan241 2003-12-20 11:43:58	Well, I just firuge I'll give an update to our strain of the results. I personally have several results in the 2.8% range, and I am sharing them within the team now. Our idea of a database is getting back-end work being done, there were a pile of problems..... I personally think the strain will break 4.5% by the end of Janurary, and 5% sometime in Feburary! magicfan241 Did I upload my new kernal release? --The dying thoughts of a nerd
Diabolos.de 2003-12-23 05:18:47	@excaliber[Free-DC.org] why uploading results.DAT? Why not results.TXT. The *.TXT file is smaller and you have not duplicates in your database. Signature: No Thx iam not ill.
excaliber[Free-DC.org] 2003-12-23 05:43:45	Because the results.txt, after sent to the server, is cleared. Meaning any time you upload, you are only getting a portion of what the client has done. The results.dat on the other hand is the complete listing of what the user has done. The PHP script has built in handling for duplicates. When a listing is uploaded, it hashes each entry. It then queries the database for matching hashes. If one is found, it drops the entry (as they are duplicates). ------------------ http://intheory.ath.cx InTheory - Game Design and Idea discussion forum