Re: Fixed. Next Q :)

On Friday 23 July 2004 07:18, [email protected] wrote:
> I seem to have "fixed" the problem of the plane not showing up by
> moving the objects farther in the distance. It is visible then.

that would happen automatically if the whole thing was being animated like in 
the main application.

> That said I am still having trouble turning on the physics manually. I
> have set all the flags but I must have to fire an event somewhere. The
> code seems to be very event driven and seems to be very coupled to a
> GUI driven interface to control state and behaviour.

i disagree.  the fabric code is completely unaware of any GUI whatsoever.  in 
fact, when i do the evolution, i do so with no GUI, and the fabric runs 
lightning fast "in the dark".

the JOGL code is tied together with GUI because, well, it is GUI.  controlling 
it is all done with Swing stuff.

> As well, it seems to "contort" stangely when it first starts before it
> sets into its resting position. am pretty sure I positioned everything
> correctly. I am wondering if there is some default values I forgot to
> set on the intervals created in the MyFabricFactory.

i'm still having trouble figuring out what it is you want to create.  if you 
want a cube, just write the XML in a ".fabric" file and load it up!  much 
easier than re-coding the GUI.

> Again I am submitting my "HelloWorld" example if anyone wants to look
> over this and offer suggestions. I am trying to get some bare bones
> code to understand the essential components, how to drive how to drive
> behaviour, and understand the realtionships between the. Hopefully
> this will touch on all the essentials without having to navigate
> through the GUI portion.

the essentials are in the "fabric", "factory", "sphere" and "visitor" 
packages.  the rest is GUI.

> As well, I am still interested in displaying spheres on each vertex.

that's very easy, because as you have seen, spheres are already done.   you'd 
only have to adjust the method:

private void decorate(Joint theJoint) 

in JoglFabric.java

it could be made switchable in the GUI.  i personally find the vertexes far 
less interesting than the intervals.  why do you want to display spheres?

> My plan is to extend the engine Gerald has built and integrate it with
> my own code which develops the morphology and neural networks of
> virtual creatures.

now you're talkin`!

> Each sphere then will represent an individual cell. 

why not take intervals to be cells?  think different.

> The idea is that the evolved neural networks will then take control of
> certian elastics which will act like muscles. The others which are not
> controled by actuator neurons will simply be there to stabalize the
> shape and give it a defined, low energy morphology.

sounds not unlike what i've been doing, although i've avoided NN.  how do you 
expect to _train_ the networks.

> Again, two files below. I am avoiding anything fancy so you should be
> able to just add them to a directory in the fluidiom package and
> execute

maybe you should take a closer look at the existing code that gets everything 
rolling.  just copy it and strip out whatever's irrelevant to what you want 
to do.

better yet, think of a way to integrate your work using visitors and something 
like the MuscleActivator that makes the creatures run.  there's an advantage 
to trying to fit it in rather than rebuild the frontend.   i'm sure there 
will be a way to do build more plugin-style, because the visitors can travel 
anywhere they please.

PS.  i presume that you will also share your code, GPL?

-- 
Gerald de Jong
Beautiful Code BV
Rotterdam, NL


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