autobrood

Scripts to mass crossbreed, select and render fractal flames (many of which are also called "Electric Sheep").

DEPENDENCIES

A cygwin environment on windows; or the scripts may work in a 'nix environment (and some do work in a Mac envrionment) with the necessary programs and dependencies installed.

Fractorium and flam3 Windows binaries are included. The dependencies for xml_split you must install manually; install them via Cygwin (Windows) with /_setup/_installDependencies.sh

At this writing, many of the scripts are defunct for various reasons and need reworking, but many of them work, also.

Get the binaries in the /bin subfolders appropriate for your platform in your $PATH, or for Mac, install fractorium from the distribution package and add to your path the console apps in that package: /Applications/Fractorium.app/Contents/MacOS

USAGE

Correct. (Sorry.)

In tandem with this you may find use of getFilePairs4Up.sh and getFilePairs4down.sh from my _ebDev repository (those scripts originated here and were generalized and moved there).

LICENSE

All of my original contributions here (e.g. the batch scripts) I dedicate to the Public Domain. The Electric Sheep genomes in the _resources directory are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5.

TO DO

Make the looping over file names consistent in all scripts, modeled after renderFlamesFractorium.sh
Clean up this README.md?
Manage --opencl flag in render parameters as appropriate
Process substitution where otherwise I've been using so many temp files? Re: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_substitution
Expand documentation
Correct / update this TO DO list
Rework any defunct scripts
What to do with hard-coded local dependencies vs. using what's in my _devtools repository?
Port everything to 'nix /.sh scripts?
See if I can get flam3-render to compile and render on 'nix first--render the newest fractal flame types at this writing, 06/05/2016.
And in that port, use render flag temp files that are not the original file, as they can more easily and harmlessly be deleted than renaming so many incorrectly named files.
Resurrect example scripts in _archives_old.7z/examples/example-brood-1 or create something like them. Make the example scripts not hard-coded to their particular directory (use POPD / PUSHD or a 'nix equiv. instead) ; relative paths not absolute.
Update or archive to ./archivesOld.7z all scripts which rely on outdated info (e.g. bad URLs.)
Modify batches to pull from the _resources subdir

DEV NOTES

Generation 242 entire genome set

To obtain all .flam3 files which are in the _resources directory, I ran the following command, re http://www.labnol.org/software/wget-command-examples/28750/ : wget --limit-rate 250k --execute robots=off --recursive --level=0 -k --no-parent --accept flam3,html --no-clobber http://electricsheep.com/archives/generation-242/

Possible combinations

There are 2,013,183 possible children among all the sheep in generation 242, if you mutate each pair three different ways.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=combinations+of+1159+select+2

(To do: double-check that math. Does that factor that any two pairs can mutate three different ways?)

It is feasible to thus cross-breed them all and render thumbnails for all of them. But it may be an enormous undertaking.

Deprecated generation 242 collection method

Previously I had used the following command to extract "genomes" from the flock.xml file at the generation 42 archive, but later I discovered that flock.xml does not in fact have every genome (maybe it omits ones that had been downvoted, but I want those--there are some downvoted ones which I would upvote) :

xml_split all_242.xml

. . . and somehow I installed something on cygwin to get that command. xml twig?

HISTORY (reverse-chronological)

2018-12-16 Corrections and minor abridgment of README.md (still needs work--as maybe this repo also does).
2018-05-01 Expand README.md and refresh/reorganize genome set in _resources.7z with (I discovered) missing genomes.
2018-04-19 Some scripts updates for portability, binaries reorganize, freshen Mac emberrender etc.
2018-03-27 Some repo reorganizing, consolidate disparate notes in README.md
2016-07-05 Added dependency source and instructions to install xml_split on cygwin.
pre 2012-03-09
Updated sheep breed and render batches multi-breed-sheep.bat and multi-render-thumbs.bat which offer rudimentary, brute-force facility to use CPU affinity command line feature of windows 7. Further work on that remains in TODO list. Laid out further work for that with get-cpu-cores.bat.
Made fix-breed-sheep.bat and fix-render-sheep-thumbs.bat to correct renamed temp files of batch left straggling in incorrect-name state via batch termination.
2012-03-09
Updated render-sheep.bat to use free MATH.EXE tool from http://www.hyperionics.com/calculator/index.asp, which is compatible with windows XP and 7, where the (evidently ancient--in computer terms) free CC.EXE command-line calculator, whose source I can no longer find, was not compatible with Windows 7.
Had first revised it to use SET /a native windows command and switch, but discovered again this only does integer arithmetic, where MATH.EXE will do decimel arithmetic.
Batch provides more useful ECHO feedback when run.
Made select-renders.bat which eases selection from large pool of interbred genomes for full-scale renders (see notes in batch).
Found that running multiple VERY large-scale renders (on multiple cores) will choke a typical machine and flam3-render will repeatedly skip renders in all but one process for inability to allocate needed memory resources to render...depending, I suppose, on what size renders you're trying to make :) But a 4-core 2.9 GHZ machine can run four renders of about 1080x1024 at the same time!
2016-06-05 revived and figured out how I had this working. Will probably want to port all scripts to 'nix on account maybe newest flam3 renderer / cross-breeder may only be on 'nix (flam3 windows development apparently forsaken). Posting to public repository . . .

earthbound19 / autobrood