Author Topic: Evolution Sim Settings  (Read 7214 times)

Offline SlyStalker

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Evolution Sim Settings
« on: November 04, 2016, 08:19:35 AM »
Hi all,
Haven't been active on DB for a while but it's good to be back. I have become intensely interested in evolution sims again, and I was wondering about what the optimal evolution sim settings were for a long (and I do mean long), long sim. Last time I did something like this I put a veggie and Animal Minimalis in the sim and the genes of the survivors was just corrupted and useless (or should they be considered useless if the bots were still active? hmmm).
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

Offline Shadowgod2

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Re: Evolution Sim Settings
« Reply #1 on: November 04, 2016, 09:02:13 AM »
well do you want co evo or do you just want 1 bot to evo

Offline Botsareus

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Re: Evolution Sim Settings
« Reply #2 on: November 04, 2016, 09:15:26 AM »
You can always try survival mode if restart mode works on your PC. It is settings independent. All you have to mess with are initial mutation rates (modify the mrate file to disable point mutations before setting a robot in global settings, figure out ideal initial mutation values in global settings 'DNA Length *')(enable all special mutation rules from global settings) You will also need to figure out "Initial reintroduction on/off length" and "Initial population oscillation reduction." Finally I strongly recommend sine wave oscillation in mutations. I almost never run without it these days. Generally if it is a suckish robot you need set the 1/20x to be longer.

Hope any of that makes sense, good luck.

Offline Botsareus

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Re: Evolution Sim Settings
« Reply #3 on: November 04, 2016, 09:19:03 AM »
Btw (very unintuitive for now) You must restart the program after applying 'DNA Length *' and after that configure the robots mrates. Do not forget to click default "Default Rates" button first.

Offline Botsareus

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Re: Evolution Sim Settings
« Reply #4 on: November 04, 2016, 10:25:57 AM »
The problem you are having is the robot adapts to its current settings not to its initial configuration. For example it will use total species sysvar expecting it not to be the initial 5. Or it is dependent on the body value not to be the initial 1000. Do not get me started on epigenetic memory.

My mode solves the problem because robots are periodically offloaded and than loaded back in using restart mode.

Offline SlyStalker

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Re: Evolution Sim Settings
« Reply #5 on: November 04, 2016, 06:40:09 PM »
I was confused by what evolution mode does, and became even more confused when I read the tooltip.
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Offline Botsareus

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Re: Evolution Sim Settings
« Reply #6 on: November 04, 2016, 06:46:22 PM »
:redface: Yeah sorry, it is currently not documented well.

Offline SlyStalker

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Re: Evolution Sim Settings
« Reply #7 on: November 04, 2016, 09:54:10 PM »
What do I do about the number of veggies? At the moment it seems as though it is too easy for bots to stay alive even with aging and upkeep energy costs. How do I change the minimum number of veggies? I'm using the current version and I can't find the control for that anymore.
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Offline Botsareus

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Re: Evolution Sim Settings
« Reply #8 on: November 05, 2016, 07:24:34 AM »
It is based of number of chloroplasts now. Make sure you set the vegys to "repopulate"

Offline Botsareus

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Re: Evolution Sim Settings
« Reply #9 on: November 05, 2016, 12:12:32 PM »
Sly, if you keep getting nonfunctional bots, you should start a topic for DB3 to load organisms at start of simulation (all epigenetic stuff preserved such as body) me and Shvarz will totally dig it and you may get robots that actually evolve using native methods.

Offline SlyStalker

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Re: Evolution Sim Settings
« Reply #10 on: November 06, 2016, 01:25:53 AM »
What is epigenetic memory? I've seen it around a lot on the forums, usually associated with some kind of rage and frustration, actually. I've looked it up, but I need a simpler explanation for a non-biologist peasant like this (I like physics instead). Elements of DNA which can be added to a descendant's DNA as a result of experiences or something like that? Also not sure how this links into getting functional robots. The one I just started yesterday is up to 260k cycles, and it still has a long time to go, but everything seems fine so far.
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Offline Botsareus

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Re: Evolution Sim Settings
« Reply #11 on: November 06, 2016, 08:52:41 AM »
As long as you can extract the DNA of the robot and it is still usable it is fine.
Epigenetic memory is simply memory that gets preserved into a robots kid. If the DNA evolves around specific memory being a certain value it can cause problems.
« Last Edit: November 06, 2016, 02:39:59 PM by Botsareus »