long term stability is interesting in its own right, but as long as there's some mutations I imagine something will change sooner or later.
true i nevver thought of it that way, it is hard to get bots to evolve interesting adaptations since, the way it looks to me, if the bots are already doing well in their environment, they will just stagnate or add junk code because if they're doing well enough, i tried to come up with an explanation i call "beneficial mutation usefulness" to explain it
the possibility of a beneficial mutation = a
the positive effect of a potential beneficial mutation on a creatures ability to survive and reproduce = b
the creature's current ability to survive and reproduce = c
ideally, c+(a*b) should be quite higher than c in order for beneficial mutations to occur sufficiently often and sufficiently increase fitness so that natural selection favors them and they become more widespread in the population.
a is generally very low as neutral mutations that do nothing and harmful mutations like mutations that remove a creature's ability to reproduce or cause it to move uncontrollably are far more likely, to increase beneficial mutation usefulness, we can increase mutation rate which is a bit dodgy since it increases neutral and harmful mutations which may drown out the beneficial mutations (genetic drift)
b is random, a lot of the time it's extremely low like a small numerical change like going from needing 20000 energy to reproduce to 20348, but very rarely b becomes very high due to introducing completely new behavior like adding the ability to produce shell that wasn't there before, but i think on average b is very low. b is not manipulable because the nature of mutations make them completely random and out of control
c is determined by the environment, which includes environmental conditions like gravity and friction, amount of food (algae), potential prey, predators, even members of the creature's own species can fall in either category if they're cannibalistic (which happens sometimes). to increase beneficial mutation usefulness, we can decrease the survivability of the current environment, some ways to decrease c might be decrease amount of food, decrease light energy, increase energy cost for living and doing stuff, introduce predators, etc.
if c is relatively high, and they're prospering and thriving, the difference between c+(a*b) and c, which is a*b, is miniscule compared to c and the beneficial mutations are lost to randomness and genetic drift
but if c is too low everyone dies before beneficial mutations can even be introduced
so i feel there is this very small goldilocks zone where beneficial mutations are needed enough that they can take over, but the environment is not so dangerous that everyone dies, i think it's just really interesting how it works when YOU'RE the one trying to manipulate the environment so that they evolve cool stuff for our own amusement
do you have any tips how to reach this goldilocks zone? my sim almost died once because i gave them too little food D:
edit: it has recovered since though, here is the current best bot with 25 descendants:
cond
*.eye5 *.trefvelyourdn >
*.tin3 .eye4width store
start
*.refveldx .dx store
822 .up addstore
ceil 7805 mult *348
'''''''''''''''''''''''' Gene: 1 Ends at position 18 '''''''''''''''''''''''
'''''''''''''''''''''''' Gene: 2 Begins at position 19 '''''''''''''''''''''''
cond
inc
*.eye5 281 >=
*.refeye *.maxvel inc
start
-6 .shoot store
*317 *.trefnrg 822 .up substore
.memloc store
'''''''''''''''''''''''' Gene: 2 Ends at position 37 '''''''''''''''''''''''
'''''''''''''''''''''''' Gene: 3 Begins at position 38 '''''''''''''''''''''''
start
%=
<
rndstore
24835 17302 sqr .aimright floorstore
*.refaim .mkchlr store
*.trefshoot *.venom *131 *.memval sqr 542 300 *.nrg 24591 >
*.in5 addstore
addstore
'''''''''''''''''''''''' Gene: 3 Ends at position 62 '''''''''''''''''''''''
