Bots and Simulations > Evolution and Internet Sharing Sims
200 Hour Zerobot Sim
JossiRossi:
I decided to start up a zerobot sim on my computer for the many hours a day I'm not using it. After a few false starts I think I have everything all set and going well.
I decided to do everything as default as I could and try to stick to what I could gather EricL had done. I created a zerobot dna file, which I think I did right, and started it up. First time I did something dumb I can;t recall now, but I restarted it. The second time I disabled eyes to speed the sim up, I then attempted to turn eyes back on and either due to me missing something, or the option not being available I was unable to and started fresh.
Other info I have is that I do hourly saves, this will hopefully not be as necessary later on, but I'm not really short on drive space so I'm keeping them. All my bots are autotrophs with all characteristics active (dna execution, reproduction, virus vulnerable ect).
After 40 hours the bots have been building up some nice mutations each one having on average 148 mutations.
So after 40 hours I have noticed a little hurdle. No big deal really but something I have to keep an eye out for. Bots are learning to shoot far before reproducing. With them being autotrophs they basically can shoot nearly unlimitedly, and as a result the second a single "spiral shooty death" bot evolves it manages to kill all the bots and then itself dies as it shoots more than it takes in as a plant.
So right now every so often I check to see if my bots have been decimated, reload my saves and then if I see the bot before it has done anything bad I save it, then kill it off and resume. Or if I find a save before the bot mutates into Spinny Death, I just let it go on from there.
One thing I could do is to make shooting prohibitively expensive but I feel I'll lose out on a lot if I do this. Any other suggestions as to how I can help keep a single bot from destroying everything, or should I just keep playing momma?
Testlund:
It's always nice with more zerobot sims out there!
If just one or few shooting bots manage to kill off all your bots I'm guessing you're running a sim that is too small. I would recommend starting with at least 500 bots (I started with 1000 bots and ran it for more than half a year) in a big field. It takes longer to run but it's rewarding if one is patient. You get more genetic material for interesting mutations to appear.
Also in the beginning it's good with morphological costs only, so to encourage reproduction first and other behavior later.
I suppose it doesn't matter much if you chose autotrophs or heterotrophs with energy shooters.
In my heterotroph sim though I found my bots have become more conservative with energy and do less. If I could just get a tie feeder or shooter.....
Also overfeeding is a little problem which can cause waste build-up and alzeimers; the bots ignore their dna instructions and do all sorts of crazy stuff.
You may want to set your waste treshold high if running such sim.
One could also make the energy shooters shoot a little less often, but I don't know how to write such bot yet. I guess using a timer or something.
JossiRossi:
--- Quote from: Testlund ---If just one or few shooting bots manage to kill off all your bots I'm guessing you're running a sim that is too small. I would recommend starting with at least 500 bots (I started with 1000 bots and ran it for more than half a year) in a big field. It takes longer to run but it's rewarding if one is patient. You get more genetic material for interesting mutations to appear.
--- End quote ---
I currently only have 250 bots going. This is partly because my computer really slows to a crawl when I get higher than that. But importantly, I'm using the largest field size available. If one of these shooter bots went on and was able to kill everything as it was, wouldn't having 250 more bots on the field just give it more to kill?
--- Quote ---Also in the beginning it's good with morphological costs only, so to encourage reproduction first and other behavior later.
--- End quote ---
Good point. I adjusted that. I almost wonder if I should try to exact my vengeance on Rotation. A while back I did a run where I tried to remove rotating bots. I disliked that basically all bots just spun in circles and there was no real pressure to stop doing that. In essence it just gives each bot a 360 degree view and that bugs me for some unknown reason. It might just be I hate the eye indicator spinning around when you select bots =p I don't know how much I'd want to try to pressure that though even if I wanted.
--- Quote ---I suppose it doesn't matter much if you chose autotrophs or heterotrophs with energy shooters.
In my heterotroph sim though I found my bots have become more conservative with energy and do less. If I could just get a tie feeder or shooter.....
Also overfeeding is a little problem which can cause waste build-up and alzeimers; the bots ignore their dna instructions and do all sorts of crazy stuff.
You may want to set your waste treshold high if running such sim.
One could also make the energy shooters shoot a little less often, but I don't know how to write such bot yet. I guess using a timer or something.
--- End quote ---
Duly noted. There's still lots I don't fully understand about how the program works, so I try to avoid messing with the settings, but this is one I know I can do.
Numsgil:
Spinning bots bugged me at first too, but after a while I just got used to them and now I find it weird when a bot doesn't spin. Assuming that the bots are in vacuum-like setting, which the physics would suggest, spinning is a great way to look around without spending much energy.
Of course, now that you can change the width of eye5, you don't need to spin at all. Just get eye5 to do a full circle.
EricL:
--- Quote from: JossiRossi ---The second time I disabled eyes to speed the sim up, I then attempted to turn eyes back on and either due to me missing something, or the option not being available I was unable to and started fresh.
--- End quote ---
The settings on the options dialog are not retroactive to extant individuals. They only apply to new bots created by hand or by starting a new sim from that point. Each bot has it's own set of everything - mutations probabilities, eye enablement, etc. Once you set it for a species and hit go, each bot is it's own species essentially.
I've been thinking about ways to retroactivly make changes to extant bots by species, but that capability does not currently exist in the program.
--- Quote from: JossiRossi ---Other info I have is that I do hourly saves, this will hopefully not be as necessary later on, but I'm not really short on drive space so I'm keeping them.
--- End quote ---
Of course, you can only save the last 10 if you like. This saves on space.
--- Quote from: JossiRossi ---So after 40 hours I have noticed a little hurdle. No big deal really but something I have to keep an eye out for. Bots are learning to shoot far before reproducing. With them being autotrophs they basically can shoot nearly unlimitedly, and as a result the second a single "spiral shooty death" bot evolves it manages to kill all the bots and then itself dies as it shoots more than it takes in as a plant.
--- End quote ---
You can use shapes for isolation to prevent total wipe out by one guy like this. Or use everlasting nrg shots and corpse mode so that most of the lost nrg is recaptured in the sim. Or use nrg shooting shepard bots to make up what your shooter takes. I don't breed veggies. My zerobots are hetertrophs and I give them nrg other wasy then free mana from heaven. Using veggy repopulation of a single shepard or two with a long cooldown period will inject a flurry of nrg shots into the sim every X hundred cycles.
--- Quote from: JossiRossi ---So right now every so often I check to see if my bots have been decimated, reload my saves and then if I see the bot before it has done anything bad I save it, then kill it off and resume. Or if I find a save before the bot mutates into Spinny Death, I just let it go on from there.
--- End quote ---
I've never done hand weeding. It's essentially intelligent design. I prefer to change the environment to avoid total extinction and just let it run. You want shooting to evolve. It encourages replication. All you want to do IMHO is tweak the conditions so that total extinction isn't the end result which is only a concern in our tiny sims (not nature). Eventually the shooter will become extinct or a replicator will emerge and you'll be off and running.
--- Quote from: JossiRossi ---One thing I could do is to make shooting prohibitively expensive but I feel I'll lose out on a lot if I do this. Any other suggestions as to how I can help keep a single bot from destroying everything, or should I just keep playing momma?
--- End quote ---
Throw a few shapes into the mix. Not many, like 4 largish ones is all. Use a repopulating nrg shooting shepard with no sunshine and everlastign nrg shots. It will shoot all it's nrg, then disappear. Good luck and welcome aboard!
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