Snidely wrote:
>On May 19, 5:45 pm, John Hatpin
><RemoveThisjfhop...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> Your options for storing data compactly are
>> limited too; for example, the smallest numeric data type is a 32-bit
>> signed integer, and there are no built-in methods of converting bases.
>
>What does converting bases have to do with storing data compactly?
I'm not sure, now I think about it - I thought some techniques
required it. Compression isn't a subject I've looked closely at.
>Getting back to the topic, for something simple like filling in a
>rectangle, you could use the "binary array" technique. Multiplying or
>****fting would be needed, and masking, too, but otherwise the
>arithmetic is simple even without base conversion.
Sure, so each native bit stores the status of a cell, and you get 32
per integer. That's what - about 2KB for a 255x255 array? Certainly
doable.
>BTW, how would an AI be done? If you wanted a butler, say, in your
>castle, would you have to hire someone, or is there an alternate way
>of programming smart objects?
The limitations of the scripting language mean you don't get much of
an AI - at best, a cat or dog that follows you round without bumping
into stuff too much.
However, the massive scale and general environment make SL a good
platform for models for simulating collective behaviour of thousands
of simple automata, and some work has been done on this front. Myself,
I'd love to take that approach to simulating evolution.
There are noises being made about making a Python framework available
which would allow serious progress, but last I heard that was still at
the ideas stage.
>> Even more frustratingly, there's no alternative method of storing data
>> - no databases, no writing to files, nothing. You can read (text)
>> data all right, just not perform any kind of write operation. Amazing,
>> huh?
>
>Well, how much does a rock or a tent want to write?
Hey, there's more then just rocks and tents in there. You get walls
too, and various other things.
No, seriously, sometimes the lack of any kind of data storage means
that things you want to do just can't be done. Only today I had a
house-building script present me with a whole bunch of base-64 encoded
data in chat, asking me to copy/paste it from the chat history window
into a notepad for storage in case it got reset and lost its memory.
That's pretty common. It can read the notepad all right when it
loads, and build its memory back up from that, but it can't write the
data itself.
--
John Hatpin
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