Solar Fun

[Yossarian]

I once had a sim called Evolv-o-Matic that used the sun in a way I've never seen in another alife program. I think it might be cool in DB, particularly since this program already models the sun to some degree (which is rare for some reason).

The sun in EoM was actually visible on the screen as a small yellow circle that you could set to travel in various ways (or stay still), and vary the intensity. What made it so cool was that you could tie the sun to either a "garden", where the food grows faster within the range of the sun, or a "desert", which was not just food not growing, but it would actually erase the food within its range.

In EoM, the bots had no eyes whatsoever, and their movement was semi-random, based on genes that represented the various directions they could turn. The only sense they had was to be either repelled or attracted by the sun to varying degrees, and they developed a liking to have the sun coming from a certain direction.

What resulted were things like nocturnal bugs, bugs that swarmed around the sun, etc. They sometimes got so good at the swarming thing, you could tie the sun to move with the mouse pointer, shake it around as fast as you could, and some bugs would still never leave the yellow circle of the sun itself! I was amazed.

Now, I'm the first to admit that EoM's approach had no subtlety, and the way the genes were set up basically forced the the swarming, and other sun-related behavior. However, I think some variation on this idea would work nicely in a flexible sim like DB.

[Numsgil]

Sounds pretty cool.  I think this reminds me of Zelos's idea that we discussed a while ago.

Linky

Basically, the playing field is either thought to be an orthogonal projection of a sphere, so different points get varying light depending on the axil tilt and light intensity, or the entire field is a small part of a larger planet, and the field gets seasons and day/night.

[Zelos]

yepp, sounds very much like it

[Yossarian]

I read that thread, and there are similarities, though it seems that Zelos's idea is much more fleshed out. Seasons and whatnot. I think something like that really should be implemented, as the sun and seasons and that sort of thing have a massive impact on all life!

The reason I liked Evolv-o-Matic so much was mainly because it was a hella impressive way to introduce other people to artificial life. It was always fun to watch these blind bugs go from random movements to orchestrated swarming, or nocturnal behavior, or that sort of thing. The bugs in DB do the same thing to some extent, but the moving sun (even if it's not visible) gives a very "real" feeling to a sim, and helps you feel like it's not just some cells in a petri dish. The more that is done with the sun, the better, imho.

EoM had an extremely simplistic way of dealing with the sun, but it did it in a unique way that overwhelmed its simplicity with sheer neatness. Good modeling of the sun (such as described by Zelos, or maybe not quite that complex), combined with the enormous flexibility that DB already possesses, is a really exciting prospect! Lots of potential for interesting emergent behavior.

[Numsgil]

Definately agree.  The more we can do to make their environment more than a featureless plane, the more interesting behaviors will develop.

Damn, I wish we had more people involved in the project!  Some physics/dynamics people to check my work, some computer people to program some things.  Programming things takes way more time than I ever like.  And I'm never sure some of the more esoteric physics things I'm doing are correct.  Thank goodness for shvarz to check over my bio stuff.

Anyway, this is definately on the list for some future date.

[Ulciscor]

I am currently in Oxford, being bombarded by maths and algorithms! When I understand what any of it means I will try and assist.