http://www.davidandangela.ws/Terrarium is up & running.

Hi David,

At the moment i cant insert a new critter in the eco-system of your server.

The server throws an soap exception stating that the event log file is full.
Hope i can join you guys soon,

TIA,
Nico Schoemaker.

You can download the install here.  If you have any specific questions, feel free to post them in this forum.

Funny you should say that. I happened upon Terrium yesterday and am very interested in participating becasue 1) I NEED to learn how WindowsForms work so I can make applications look 'DotNettie" and I come from vb6, so ALL this is new to me, 2) I've recently developed a strong interest in AI and A-life, so I want to experiment.

Unfortunately, I'm having trouble getting things to work. I can't get past the whole NAT issue that allows peers to load locally? I'm not a networking whiz, as you can tell. I can't set up the client program at home (through cable modem and router) or at work (yes, my bosses will be highly impressed) via who knows what type of networking.

Is there someone out there who can explain the whole Port 5000000000 stuff, and get me up and running? Since I'm generally at work (I am a programmer), I can only try things at home when I can, so this process may take a while.

I'd appreciate some assistance. I'd be suprised if others aren't in the same boat.

Thanks!

Wow, I had messed with Terrarium briefly WAY back when it was first introduced. Just today I ran across it again and have been trying in vain to make it work for most of the afternoon. Does anyone actually have it running?

Steve

http://www.davidandangela.ws/Terrarium is up & running.

Thanks for the reply! I managed to get it up and running finally and have been connected to David's server since then. Here comes the next round of questions:

a)It took me forever to figure out I needed to be compiling in .net 1.1. I have been using 2.0 and VS 2005. Now.... After reinstalling VS2003 again, I can't get the VB code to compile. It always fails on the Assembly statement. I *can* compile in C# but my skills there are much less proficient.

b) I'm starting slow, with a plant. Is there *anything* code wise you can change with a plant?

Steve

a) I probably can't help withVB .Net, since I'm proficient in C# and have no inclination to even mess with VB .Net. However, I'm thinking that you might be running into a common VB problem. VB gives you a default namespace that you have to change / remove in order to get the sample to compile.

b) No, "coding" a plant consists ofextending Plant and setting some attributes. That's it.

That's the VB error I have been getting as well. As far as I can tell there's no way around it. I spent several hours *guessing* at what it could be. Finally I tried C# and it complied there.

Sadly I remember this as one of my beefs with Terrarium back when it was first released: almost no VB support.I would have thought these would be the people who would benefit the most from a tool like Terrarium.

Steve

There's only a couple things that could be causing your problem.  The one that bites most VB programmers is the stupid default namespace that Microsoft gives you.  I don't have VB installed so I can't tell you what configuration page it's on, but unless you cleared it, it's the source of your problem.  The second possibility is not getting the name correct.  It should be the full name (namespace and all) of the class that derives from Animal.  The only other thing I can think of that would cause this is if you were obfuscating the DLL and didn't tell Dotfuscator to not mess with the name of your class. 

One thing that you can do that should tell you exactly what the problem is, would be to use ILDASM to examine your DLL.  Hope this helps!

Oops, "default namespace" isn't exactly correct, it's a default ROOT namespace.  With the root namespace set, all the classes in the project are put in the root namespace.  For example, "VBCreatures.MyHerb" is actually "MyProject.VBCreatures.MyHerb" (where "MyProject" is the name of your project, which I believe is what VB uses as the default for the root namespace).

VERY WELL DONE! That was the problem.I had been using the typical:

<Assembly: OrganismClass("VBPlant.MyPlant")>

The correct syntax should be, for a project named "SimplePlant1":

<Assembly: OrganismClass("SimplePlant1.VBPlant.MyPlant")>

Now I'm in a bit of an internal conflict. I had just given up on VB and was going to concentrate on C# (which is where I really want to spend my time anyway) but now that VB works I can use it.

Hhmmmmmmmmm

Steve

" I had just given up on VB and was going to concentrate on C# (which is where I really want to spend my time anyway) "

LOL Sorry I helped!

lol, no need to be sorry. I'll probably prototype whatever I want to do in VB, then try and transcribe it into C# just to prove I can. Hopefully I'll be able to find something interesting to do with these little critters.

Are there any archives on the net about what people had done in the past, other than the animal farm? What about the "DNA" that's passed between generations? Did anything ever come of that or was it just pie in the sky that microsoft never developed?

Steve

Unfortunately the original Terrarium message board was on www.gotdotnet.com and was never copied to the new site (as promised). There was a LOT of good information in that forum. (Note to self: Send gotdotnet an email requesting archive.) There was also an Animal Farm on gotdotnetthat was never moved to the new Animal Farm. Some of that code isstill available, though, in a .chm file athttp://www.yllemo.com/terrarium/

As far as "DNA" is concerned, yes it's been used. Actually, most of the top bugs used it in one way or another. My HM (HerbMeister) line, for example, tried to play nice with other herbivores andwould only attack other herbivores if they were aggressive. Itused DNA to track which species were aggressive.