Uhm, I tried the ND version from Carlo - I can't really start a succesful simulation.
I've already run a 1 million cycles simulation starting with e_diplomaticus. It seems to work pretty well.
My Alga Ternia seemed to be fine though, it ran and reproduced fine - but much slower than usual, which is also expected, because it has 7 genes. Time was flowing 7 times slower for it...
No. I dont' know alga ternia, but reproduction is usually triggered by energy level. Energy is still coming at the usual rate. The only difference is that the robot _notices_ it has reached the right energy level with some delay. If, on average, three of the seven genes are active at each cycle, then the delay should be of about 1.5 cycles after the energy is enough to reproduce.
I think Dom ternia had no chance for survival even if all genes were fixed not to rely on each other. It has 32 genes, so time was flowing 4 times slower for it than for its prey!
This makes no sense. The slowing down depends on the average number of simultaneously active genes, not on the number of genes. A 100 genes robot which has only one gene active per cycle, has the same reaction times of a deterministic robot. Probably no more than two or three genes are active on average at the same time in a 32 genes robot. So its _reaction times_ (not its speed) should be at most two times slower.
The next time acceleration gene activates may be "next cycle" or "100 cycles later". In 100 cycles the food is so far, that there is no chance to even find it.
Apart from the exaggerated numbers, this is true. The slower reaction times (nothing to do with 100 or even 10 cycles, anyway, but usually to or three at most) are a problem in a world in rapid change. For example e_diplomaticus has clearly some problems in following its preys, which often go really too fast. I'll try to run some high friction sim to see if, slowing down movements and making them less random (less bounces, etc), the nondeterministic bots work a bit better.
Anyway, I ran a 1 M cycles evo sim with diplomaticus. Nothing complex, but it evolved (it does distinctly better than the unevolved version). I've set very high mutation values for gene duplication and deletion, so that it ended up with 30 genes on average (it started with 10). Most of the genes are working, not junk, because they contribute to the overall behaviour, so there's a selective pressure on them. There's a risk of number of genes increasing in a sort of intra dna arms race (each duplicated gene subtracts a little probability to other simultaneously active genes of being executed) but probably it can be counterbalanced tweaking the cost of copying dna during reproduction.
This evening I'll tweak my sim parameters better.
