so. I'm bored, I might as well think about something.
the 3d/2d thing... what about 3d calculations in 2d? also, what about fields? maybe some generic thingy for algorithms, like Life but more complex?

I think it'd be neat to see what comes of a more general field thingy... I like fields. it'd have to use pixels, though, the text thing never worked well. hey, I did make a Life game, but that was with sprites... hmm. also, SDL might not be the best way, maybe QT's drawing stuff would be easier... maybe...

but I doubt much intelligence would ever come of that, not on such small scales. you need to go up a few levels... and on today's computers I think that means more shortcuts...

so. back to the 2d/3d world, with objects. yes, objects divide things too
much, but they make it easier... things have to be separate for a mind to make
sense of them, it has to group them and generalise n'stuff to predict the
future. heh. we try our best to make an unpredictable worlds, and then to make
creatures that can predict them...

hmm, yes, reality gives us an unpredictable world... but it's horribly
complex and makes it harder to play god. I think I'd rather work on a computer
where I can save the entire world, pause it, etc...

also, there are so many goals here it's easy to lose track of them. part of me
wants a pretty world where I can do gardening, part wants cool physics and
gadgets, part wants to look inside creatues' brains, part just wants to see
the creatures themselves become more intelligent, part wants to see a complex
world with objects changing shape and colour... it's so easy to forget about
the creatures.

so. let's organise it into a few groups.

first, the eye-candy n'stuff, things the actual creatures won't even know
about. that's nearly all client-side anyways; I just have to make sure there
is the opportunity for people to make pretty textures n'stuff. actually it'd
be neat if I could get that closer to what the creatures actually see; they'd
get a lot more info, things would get more dynamic... anyways. that also
includes sound, and all the pretty plant stuff that they dn't get to interact
with... the physics is also partially superficial, until they actually have to
think about movement themselves.

then there's the science side, having kits to inspect the creatures with and
control the world... I just have to make sure that I don't lose track of how
the creatures actually work, or make it impossible to get sensible info.
prolly will end up with lots of 'debug' info coming from the creatures.

then we get down to the tough stuff- the actual world. what senses will be
available? how will they work? how will objects interact? what about collision
detection? will objects have shape? what will they be made of? will they be
all the same inside, or have separate parts? what forces will there be, how
will energy work? what about thermodynamics and entropy?

let's try to get away from a visual picture of the world. think about it from
an object's perspective- its senses will be quite different from ours.

it needs energy to move, it needs energy to stay alive; chemical reactions
keep going all the time, and if it's organic then those reactions will tend to
break it down unless it keeps feeding...

senses are limited, but it will need some way of detecting other objects;
keeping those senses running will also take energy. running a brain will take
energy too; hey! what if energy needs were related to processing requirements?
it might cure the problem of a plague lagging the game to death :) for
anything to reproduce, it would have  to take energy from other things, then
those would die, processing power stays vaguely in proportion to the total
world energy. cool.

so, yeah, objects would be able to drain the energy and mass of other
creatures... heh, reminds me of my idea of a robot-world where the robots go
around trying to drain each other's batteries. hmm... I'm not sure about this
energy/mass distinction. seems a little odd. need to look more closely at how
cobs eat each other. also, chemicals... those are complicated. I like vadim's
ideas, but they need more thought...

anyways. objects could eat other objects; that gets them chemicals they can
convert to energy. conversions might produce waste heat, not sure... if an
object is reduced to 0 mass, it gets killed off. if it's reduced, its size
could be reduced too...

but how would something protect itself? one way is running away; objects would
have to be touching for them to eat, perhaps it would take time. another would
be hardness, perhaps, or making the creatures sick and hoping they learn to
stop eating that species. hmm, hardness; that would prevent you from eating
something bigger than your mouth, but not something small... it might stop you
from digesting it, but... is it feasible for seeds to survive like that? you'd
have one object inside another... these things don't really have a digestive
system, they're more like single cells...

which remids me- how would they move? if they're just blobs they could crawl,
perhaps... but if they're a comoplex shape, they'd need muscles to change
their shape- actually, even with the blobs changing shape would seem like the
best way of moving. so. muscles... iinteresting. how would they exist? they'd
need energy, and to be attached to parts of the mesh, I guess. not quite sure
how that would work, do some research. but... triggering them... that could
only be chemically done if different parts of the object had different
chemicals. I see three solutions: make partitions possible, each partition
having its own muscle and chems and a way of exchanging chems; do a similar
thing but with separate cobs working together as multi-cell comlex objects; or
some clever combination of chems and scripting. heh, chems almost are a
scripting language in some ways...

I think I prefer using chems, assuming I can get a chem system that works
well. you could have certain chems that senses consume in order to function;
and then have them produce chems as signals maybe? or produce electrical
signals that have to be hooked up to a chemical factory thingy? then that
factory would convert chems when activated... er... a catalyst could do that
maybe. although you might also want senses connected to a brain if you have
one. and in a brainless creature you's probably want to be able to hook up the
senses to the muscles in a sensible way.

have I mentioned the idea of having the hand 'pop' out into the next highest
dimension? in c3 it generally looks like it's in front of the world, except
when it picks things up... would it be interesting to let it go 'into' the
world, be affected by walls and objects n'stuff, as well as pulling things out
of the world? might make more sense in a 3d world where it could become a
'ghost', since we can't see the whole world at once when it's 3d...

but all this is about simple creatures. what about ones with brains? they
could directly hook up sensors & muscles to neurons... chemicals of course
would also have to affect the brain and prolly vice versa... they would want
more info about the world, too.

well, we already know we need touch sensors, to know when you bump into
another object. we also need ways of telling objects apart, various things you
can feel when you touch them; they could be called roughness, hardness, etc.
although I bet some would have no relation to anything else... hardness would
be useful on its own, though, to know whether something was edible. I wonder
how hardness could be changed... energy? or a chemical? is there any real
difference? either way... hmm... taste would be another interesting one,
something thta would give an indication of what chemicals the cob contained.

of course, they'll also need long-range sensors. that probably means some air
or whatever for signals to travel in. fields might come in here... but...
recalculating them every tick could get icky. not sure.

since humans rely so much on sight, I'll probably have to put something
similar in just so people can relate to the creatures somewhat... not sure how
it should be done. I could tell them exactly where objects are nearby... or I
could give them a bunch of pixels and then have them do far too much
image-recognition... or I could do some sort of compromise, I dunno.

if they had a focus... I dunno... perhaps a cone of vision they could move,
like an eye, and focus on a particular spot, to get details about the
object there (colour, brightness, etc)... that would be one way... but they'd
also need a more general vision, to see what they might want to focus on...
they might also want to build up a mental map of the place, to avoid
obstacles- and predators.

so.. a general vision... you'd want the ability to pick out warning signs, so
you'd need enough info to tell if something might be a predator, and where it
is so you can focus on it... but you wouldn't want too much data... maybe a
larger cone that gives patches, averaged out? that's pretty simliar to the
blurry vision we have outside what we focus on...

of course that's not all, cratures should also have some basic access to
sounds... some, like the sound of rain, would just be a distraction and
probably best limited to humans, but others could be useful... maybe just a
volume and pitch at most, though.

and then.. smell? and will we have some sort of CA thing like c3?
well... I dunno. humans don't think much about smell but for other animals
it's extremely useful.

new topic time. what about plants? they don't movve or eat, generally, they
just sit there and grow. they need sun, water, and nutrients... well, the
nutrients probably come from the animals (oh, waste products, tricky concept)
or rotten plants. that means they probably need some form of soil. and the sun
gives off energy... not only do we prolly need a concept of light and shade,
we need to balance out the sun's energy input with some form of output...
waste heat probably...