Faster activationpatterns in the artificial neural network

Watch it in fullscreen.

 

We have worked on structuring the cooperation so that we can work on the same unity project the same time. I've redone the network and made some small changes. Next up is making longer and dynamic axons.

google drive, svn and git

Svitri has worked on visual novel and connecting it to the main menu.

It looked vey funny, I wish I had a video of it now when I'm writing. Well maybe next time.

Now this post will become a bit techincal.

First of all. I got help from unity forums superfast, already next day a dude had solved my problem about instantiation and stuff.

Google drive, is where we currently keep our files. We haven't had a system before about where we should put stuff so today we worked our a system so that we easily can upload our stuff to google drive so that evereything works fine.

But there is a lot of small problems with google drive. If I would work on a file that is part of the game and Svitri would work on the same file, then if I would upload it and he would upload his, there is no easy way to mash them together so that they both can be in the same game and it's hard to keep track on what files work with which files to do what. So instead of doing stuff like that, my friends helped me to understand svn and git.

Apparently with git we can upload files and easily attach a date and other files so that you easily can change  your files to older versions THAT WORKS LIKE THE OLD VERSION. It's a bit 'complicated' but if you have tried working on a software project with people on google drive you may understand what I'm talking about.

Anyway I've learned some git commands and how it works, so I'm going to download their client and try it out, then show it to Svitri.



Peace!

//Tistou B.

Struggling with unity, GameObjects, instantiate and hierarchies.

Today I've just struggled with understanding unitys hierarchy and tried to make neurons to be created in the right game object.

It wont work...

this is the part of the code that wont work:

GameObject temp = (GameObject)Instantiate(microObjects[chosenMicroObject], hit.transform.gameObject.transform.position, Quaternion.identity);

temp.transform.position = new Vector3(0,0,0);

temp.transform.parent = neuralNet.transform;

the game object wont change position or get neuralNet as parent.

there is an error: 

InvalidCastException: Cannot cast from source type to destination type.

Anyway, time to give up for today.

I've also 'wasted' a lot of time on irc talking about psychological phenomena and suffering. Which I find interesting but I don't know if I should let it take time from this game. I don't know.

//Tistou

Explanation of the prototype and planning more code.

So approximately 100% of people didn't understand the prototype video done last week, so I'm going to explain it a bit.

So the prototype just contains 4 things.

white big balls - Nervecells.
small purple balls - neurotransmitters.
big grey balls - (very small, like 1/100 of a millimetre) cannonballs
white cubes with circle - canons

The brain works by sending neurotransmitters to different places in the brain. This causes 'activation'. The activation of neurons causes more neurotransmitters. And the whole 'activation' goes forward like the red arrow in the lower part of the picture.

If you move your arm a part of your brain have a massive activation and neurotransmitters. If you talk, another part of the brain creates neurotransmitters.

In the picture, this networks activation activates the canons in the middle, thats like moving the only arm he has. If he sends activation to another part of the network the neurotransmitters will reach other canons and other canons will shoot.

disclaimer: we don't have small canons that shoot canonballs in our brain.



Besides all this confusion now hopefully partly cleared up, today I've worked with Svitri and I've made a little plan with 6 todo-items to aim for. Like the first plan but much more humble and concrete.

He'll work on how to grow the axons how long you want and where you want. I have gathered the possibilites of how the player will be able to save. I wish that we could save the data on a server and launch the game on the web using unity web player . Since this will make it a more hassle to buy the game if we make it so, I am now thinking about a kickstarter or a donation-campain to get some funds up to make a server so that people can save their game. It wouldn't need much I persume.

Thanks for tuning in!

//Tistou Blomberg

1:st PROTOTYPE DONE!

It feels amazing to have a prototype done, down on the video you can get a feel of what the player will be doing.

The neurons react to the little purple neurotransmitter and propagate the signal forward, it's what's happening right now in your brain! In this brain there is small turrets that shoot micro bullets. In the future there will be multiple axons and dendrites that recieves signals, multiple directions and more turrets, and bactera and stuff to handle.

You can easily see that if you just increase the activation a little the signal gets exponentially bigger.

Programming talk:

It's just 140 rows of code. 4 scripts in c# and java script mixed.
GUI-script for buttons
raycastingscript for mousclicks
Neuron-script for neurons
MicroTurret script for turrets
(and two really simple scripts for turret-bullets and neurotransmittersignals)

I've got a lot of help from my dear friends via IRC. thanks Tobias Widlund, Lucas Lindström and Daniel Hambraeus! They managed to help me with stuff even though they have never touched unity. Great programming skills they have, yes.

Anyhow, we searched on the unity site on the forums and found our answers, I understood some of the simple code and just copy pasta it to see what errors i needed to fix.

the raycasting shoots a ray onto what the pointer clicks on, that square that is hit gets a neuron or micro turret. Right now you can see that the things can be suprapositioned, a neuron gets missplaced and some other bugs.

I'm really proud of what I've accomplished today, this is very concrete results!


Thanks for tuning in and have a great day!

//Tistou Blomberg

Boring buttons

Today I've looked at the problem of having touchbuttons in Unity, It is easily fixed so I made a script following Devin Curry. He is awesome.

Anyway I have semidecided that we will develop the game for PC first.

Then adapt it for mobile platforms when it's done.

This way we can get good focus and wont have to focus on so many things at once.

Don't worry, if the game gets good and not to dependent on computing power it will be released for android and IOS :)


Boring buttons where done with mouseclicking today:

You can see how the clickers gets clicked and stuff. It's like paradise hotell.


Until next time!

//Tistou

Back from weekend! Kewl chain reaction action!

Sry I didn't mention that I took a break during the holidays!

Anyways I'm back!

Yesterday I worked in unity and followed a guide to make a tower defense game.

I played around with it and made some simple prototype thingy about a neuron who sends a neurotransmitter and sets off a turret. Check it out!

It's a bit warped but you get the idea. It's a neuron to the left with an axon; it sends acetylcholine when triggered, this in turn sets of the turret which blasts a ball.

Aw yeah! I can feel it coming!

//Tistou the human