Bots and Simulations > Evolution and Internet Sharing Sims
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asterixx:
--- Quote from: shvarz ---Today I have a spike in bot numbers, sim slows down to 0.1-0.3 cycles/sec and all I get are the Time Outs.
--- End quote ---
≤0.1 cycles/sec occurs mostly when there are 2.5k bots, otherwise the cycles remain around 4/sec. That's for me at least
Testlund:
How about we try to run evosims instead in internet mode, starting out with only zerobots or randombots? Wouldn't that be more fun? Different set ups for more selective pressures. Designed bots are boring!
EricL:
--- Quote from: Testlund ---How about we try to run evosims instead in internet mode, starting out with only zerobots or randombots? Wouldn't that be more fun? Different set ups for more selective pressures. Designed bots are boring!
--- End quote ---
Hmmm..... I don't know about that. We may have the best of both worlds already without realizing it.
If you look internet mode, the most successful bots are ones which mutate. A_Supremus has ruled IM for a couple of weeks now. An inspection of a few individuals shows nearly 300 mutations each. Bots like Preditor 7 and Flypaper 3.2 had over 1000 mutations at their height. Mutations provide diversity. Diversity provides flexibility in the face of challengers and environments. Many times I've watched the population of the leading bot in IM decline precipitiously following the introduction of a non-mutating hand authorred bot only to recover and wipe the newcomer out after a day or so.
The recent performance improvements and ability to run very large fields have also added a new dimension of environmental diversity I think we have yet to really explore. My IM sim runs at several cycles per second with a popualtion over 3000 before any costs are applied. This reduces the ability for bots to effect each other unpredictably through costX spikes. It's so large that bots teleported in can avoid other species for many hours. Thus a single sim can support many separate species over time with interactions occurring only at popuatlion boundaries. Add a bunch of shapes and you have the recipie for a large enough, diverse enough environment that isolated populations can go many many tens of thousands of cycles without coming into direct compitition. This makes it very difficult for any one species, hand authorred or not, to completly dominate every niche and corner, particularly as we add more sims with more environmental diversity.
The day is coming when a hand authorred bot will have real problems doing well in IM...
Testlund:
Are you saying larger field sizes will do the job instead of internet mode when it comes to evosims? Several sims connected with different settings could otherwise prevent stagnation. ...maybe.
In any case I agree that we've just begun exploring this, with some new features we didn't have before, so who knows what's the best way to do it?
EricL:
--- Quote from: Testlund ---Are you saying larger field sizes will do the job instead of internet mode when it comes to evosims? Several sims connected with different settings could otherwise prevent stagnation. ...maybe.
--- End quote ---
IMHO, most sim settings we have today do not really help create environmental diversity and niches. Changing the coefficient of friction or y axis gravity or whatever from sim to sim in internet mode or from place to place in a single sim doesn't really do much to encourage organism diversity IMHO. Not really. Bot's can't really see or anticipate these settings and the transitions between them are not smooth. Generally a bot is either adpated to it an environment or it isn't. Deep oceans and tall peaks are nice, but the interesting stuff happens where you have grandual gradients between environments or even better, lots of different niches int eh same environment Savannahs that meld into forests, coast lines and tide pools and swamps. Once in a while the founder effect is important but in general, fish don't compete with mountain goats and thus you don't see organisms from radically different sim conditions survive generally when teleported into other sims in internet mode with radically different sim settings.
I like using shapes for creating environmental diversity because they create the ability for multipel niches in the same environment. The simple fact of having a shape or two in your sim means that those bots which can distinguish visually between bots and shapes have an advantage if they hang out near a shape. They can hide in plain sight, using the existance of the shape to confuse a preditor. Suddenly you have two niches - the roam the open plains niche and the hide aroudn shapes niuche. They can prey on non-shape aware bots even if they are smaller and inferior while the non-shape aware bots are busy wasting nrg shooting at a wall. Put a few shapes together and you have physical spaces that can be defended, places to hide, ambush from, places where large bots can't follow or long range eye sight is a disadvantage and so on. A bot that knows what a shape corner is and how to navigate a quick turn around it can use it to it's advantage to excape an agressor or ambush prey. Bots can actually hide in shape walls, continually burrowing into the shape, effectively making them invisible. They can peak out every N cycles to see if there is prey in sight or the preditor is gone. Add few shapes and suddenly you have dozens of possible niches.
IMHO, environmental diversity is about providing the means for bots to adopt different strategies that work in proximity to other bots with other strategies in the same environment. You need the physcial artifacts like shapes for this but you also need the geographic space for popualtions to remain isloated for a while so that those strategies can evolve in the first place. And you if have radically different environments with different physical rules, you need gradual gradients between them. Both larger fields AND internet mode (combined with shapes) allow all this, but not because they support different sim settings and differenet, seperate environments. They allow this because they provide population isolation and niche richness of a single environment.
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