Author Topic: Effects of friction on evosim  (Read 3407 times)

Offline Peksa

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Effects of friction on evosim
« on: March 25, 2007, 07:34:18 AM »
I'm running an evosim currently at 1,4 million cycles and I'm wondering how the increase of friction would affect it.

Originally it had a really simple bot capable of hunting and reproducing only and Cirgumgirans with the shoot gene removed as a veg (Circumveggie). Now it has walls and areas made with shapes and both have somewhat evolved to live with them.

The problem is that cirgumveggie moves allways at maxvel and the bots have hard time catching them. So now I'm wondering will slowly increasing friction slow veggies and bots, or just bots. It's clearly an advantage to run at maximum speed so that no one can outrun you, but would the bots' decreasing "will" to move also slow down the veggies, making them slightly more potential prey for bots?

When worded like that, it seems unprobable, at least without really radical increase in movement costs or friction. Plus it would probably affect bots more than veggies. However, as it is, bots' evolution is more dependant on change of who gets close enough to shoot than invidual bot's ability to chase veggies.

I allready have extremely small friction applied.

As a sidenote, what are the the friction coefficients in preset friction levels? (Metal, teflon, sandpaper)

Offline Testlund

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Effects of friction on evosim
« Reply #1 on: March 25, 2007, 01:31:35 PM »
I'm thinking that if you increase the friction it would slow down ALL bots and it wouldn't get any easier for the hunters to feed. Also I think maybe it would be more costly for all bots to move, which means that in the end it will be the heterotrophs that suffer the most. Your veggies would probably evolve to be more stationary to preserve energy and your heterotrophs wouldn't have the strength to search for them. Just my theory as I haven't used friction, thinking my bots allways live in water where there shouldn't be any friction.  
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Offline Peksa

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Effects of friction on evosim
« Reply #2 on: March 25, 2007, 03:56:40 PM »
How do you keep veggie population in bay? In my sims veggies evolve conditionless reproducing every 1000k cycles or so. I thought it was the friction combined with movement costs that kills them.

And just to clarify, my concern isn't that my heterothrops can't survive, they have evolved another ways to hunt. Some just float about and hope that they run into veggie and slow them down enough to catch them and some run in short lines behind veggies until they all hit a wall where they all can be stupid together. I think most of the veggies die of old age, not becouse the bots are so incredible hunters. This is what I'd like to see, some real hunting.

I've reduced body upkeep costs a hundred thousand cycles ago and it seems to be working. Some bots have gained a little body to have more effective shots. As bot's mass is allways 1 or higher, change of body from 10 to 900 doesn't affect movement costs.

My hopes for slowly (over the course of hundreds of thousands of cycles) increasing friction would be that everyone moved less, but more meaningfully. As you said, at first probably heterotrops would have a hard time, but I'm pretty sure they'd adapt somehow and survive. I'm just not sure if I'd like the way they adapt

Offline Jez

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Effects of friction on evosim
« Reply #3 on: March 25, 2007, 09:52:23 PM »
Quote from: Peksa
How do you keep veggie population in bay? I

You could switch veggie repro off...
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Offline Peksa

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Effects of friction on evosim
« Reply #4 on: March 26, 2007, 07:48:15 AM »
Quote from: Jez
You could switch veggie repro off...

But that ends in static enviroment. I'd imagine more interesting behaviours would come up if veggies tried to out-evolve bots. I've got pretty stable ecosystem with veggie population ranging from 200 to 300 (exluding the occasional spikes) and bots range from 150 to 400. At the moment I think there are two or three different kinds of bots around. Not very different, but still a difference.

One thing I do is that I set maximum and minimum energy when sun goes up or down.

Offline Endy

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Effects of friction on evosim
« Reply #5 on: March 27, 2007, 12:38:08 AM »
Could you start feeding the veggies more body/cycle? That'll should slow them down enough for the bots to catch.

Might also want to turn corpses on. That way even if the veggies do escape; when they die their corpses could be fed on by the bots.

The bots should eventually evolve/discover how to use ties, that way they can easily match speed with the veggies and/or slow them down enough.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2007, 12:38:36 AM by Endy »

Offline Peksa

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Effects of friction on evosim
« Reply #6 on: March 29, 2007, 10:34:45 AM »
Quote from: Endy
Could you start feeding the veggies more body/cycle? That'll should slow them down enough for the bots to catch.

Might also want to turn corpses on. That way even if the veggies do escape; when they die their corpses could be fed on by the bots.

The bots should eventually evolve/discover how to use ties, that way they can easily match speed with the veggies and/or slow them down enough.

I never thought of that. I have doubts if that will slow them down, but it should be interesting how the veggies react to that. Increasing movement costs put pressure towards slowing down, but on the other hand slowing down could be quite fatal. Also, energy intake slightly decreases which favors energy conservation.

Developement of ties could take time though.