Alright, let’s get into this thing I’ve been working on, these ‘praetorian golems’ as I ended up calling them.
It started pretty simply. I was messing around with some old project files, trying to build a sort of automated guard system for a simulation I run. Not like a physical robot, mind you, just code. Something tough, something that could handle routine tasks without needing me to constantly check on it.
Getting Started
First thing I did was map out the basic logic. Needed something that could monitor certain data streams, yeah? Like digital watchmen. I roughed out the core functions:
- Monitor: Keep an eye on specific inputs.
- Evaluate: Decide if the input needs action based on rules I set.
- Act: Perform a pre-defined task if needed.
- Report: Log what it did.
Sounds straightforward, but getting the evaluation part right took some doing. Didn’t want them freaking out over nothing, but also didn’t want them missing actual issues.
Building the Core
I started coding the basic structure. Just simple scripts, really. Got the monitoring part working first. Hooked it up to some dummy data feeds I made, just to see if it would pick up the signals. It did, mostly. Had a few false positives early on.
Then came the action part. This was tricky. The actions needed to be reliable. If it decided to act, it had to go through with it. I spent a lot of time testing this, making sure the ‘golem’ wouldn’t just freeze up halfway through a task. Had to build in some error handling, retries, that sort of thing. Made the code chunkier than I first planned.
Hitting Snags
Performance was a bit of a dog at first. Running multiple instances of these things started slowing down my main simulation. Had to go back and optimize quite a bit. Stripped out unnecessary checks, made the loops tighter. It’s still not perfect, but it’s way better than it was.
Another headache was making them distinct but coordinated. I wanted several ‘golems’ running, each watching different things, but sometimes they needed to know what the others were doing. Didn’t want them tripping over each other. Setting up that communication layer was fiddly. Lots of trial and error. Broke it more times than I fixed it for a while there.
Where It Stands Now
So now, I’ve got a small squad of these digital ‘praetorian golems’ running. They sit in the background of my simulation, watching their assigned sectors. They handle a lot of the grunt work, flagging anomalies, performing basic system cleanups. They’re not fancy, they don’t have slick interfaces. They just work.
They’re kind of clunky, honestly. The code isn’t the prettiest I’ve ever written. But they’re robust. They do the job I built them for. Took a fair bit of tinkering and head-scratching to get here, but it’s satisfying seeing them chug along, doing their thing. Solid, dependable, just like you’d want a golem to be.
