Topics

61

Off Topic / Simpsons

« on: June 15, 2006, 06:41:51 PM »

http://sciencenews.org/articles/20060610/bob8.asp

62

Simulation Emporium / Multicellular groups

« on: June 13, 2006, 12:13:43 AM »

What I just saw in my sim was not really an evolution, but a sponaneous formation of multicellular group with clear selective advantage.  Interested?  Read on.

You have to know the setup for the sim to understand this:  I had non-evolving veggies that accumulate a lot of energy before they produce offspring.  The offspring runs off some distance from parent, settles down and the cycle repeats.  If a veegie cannot divide for some reason (bot limit reached or no space left) it gets rid of energy by converting energy to body or just by sending out a shot with the excess.

The predator started off from Carnatus Orbis and evolved to get smaller and adjusted its hunting pattern.  But it remained a tie-feeder.

Anyway, what you can see in the attached sim (change extension to .rar and unrar it) is that a group of veggies got stuck at the edge of the field.  The veggies that are inside the group cannot divide and pump their energy to  the veggies that face the sim.  Those veggies grow very fat and large.  For some reason the Carnatus Orbis cannot tie-feed from huge veggies...  Maybe it thinks that it is too far off from the food to fire a tie.  

So I got this self-defending blob, that is protected from the predator and that grows pretty well.  It is especially curious because the evolved Carnatis was so good at hunting these veggies down that most of the time the sim was in "re-populating with veggies" mode.

Cool, huh?

63

Off Topic / New AI is appearing

« on: June 08, 2006, 05:59:26 PM »

When I see "google.com" browsing our forums, I just assume that it's google's bots collecting the information for searches.  But today I saw something new:  I saw google.com actually trying to post something!  Seems like this new AI is gaining self-awareness and trying to communicate with us!  Of course, we are the obvious people to talk to, since we are interested in the AL simulation...

Check out the picture for proof.

64

Evolution and Internet Sharing Sims / Shooting evolved

« on: June 08, 2006, 05:02:36 PM »

I think I saw someone say that shooting has never evolved in a sim?  Is it true, no one has seen a tie-feeder ever to start firing shots?  Ever?  Why is that?  Shooting command itself does not seem too difficult to appear in a genome.  Or do people mean that it never "appeared" as in "appeared, but never became a predominant way of feeding"?

Cause I have some Carnatus Orbis (a tie-feeder) running around and constantly shooting (admittedly, out of his ass, but nevertheless shooting).  Anyone interested in looking at genomes of those or at pictures of them?

65

Off Topic / Sim size

« on: June 08, 2006, 03:15:30 PM »

This may be completely stupid of me, but I just now realized that if you turn off the "wrapping" of the field, then you in a way double the size of your field.  Because if you have wrapping, then the largest distance between any two bots is half your screen, while with wrapping off you can have the whole screen.

Seems obvious now, but I never thought about it before

66

Off Topic / Mutated bot

« on: June 06, 2006, 10:45:20 PM »

In reply to this post: http://www.darwinbots.com/Forum/index.php?...0&#entry1367149

I tried the bot and it does not sit the way you described - it runs in circles, sometimes hooks up with other bots and it eventually dies if I don't give it food.  Do you have a simulation saved?

67

Suggestions / HGT

« on: April 26, 2006, 06:04:00 PM »

Just wanted to get the feeling of what people think about HGT as far as needed features.

I think the mode of DNA transfer should be shots.  A new shot type containing certain amount of DNA.

I think these shots should be able to take up quite a lot of DNA, even as much as the whole genome.  We can always make it more difficult/expensive to include a lot of DNA, but it should at least be possible.

A bot should be able to specify exactly which piece of DNA it wants to put into the shot.  On the other hand, shots with random pieces of DNA should be possible to.  So I think the formation of DNA shot should be a complex command with multiple modifiers.  For example, we can allow bots to specify where the copied DNA begins and where it ends.  But if bots don't specify it, then a random piece is picked up.  If only "start" is specified then the end becomes random and vice versa.  I'm thinking about having multiple ways to specify DNA - gene numbers, codule numbers, a specific command and others.  There should be a healthy variety.

A bot may voluntarily decide to take up a DNA particle.  If it does not, then it might still take it up, based on some rule incorporating comparison of its DNA and DNA of the particle.

Does that make sense as a general guideline?

68

Biology / Bulean logic

« on: April 25, 2006, 05:10:27 PM »

Short, but fun read: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlere...I?artid=1413573

It is a lay language summary of a scientific article, so it should be an easy read to everyone.

Oh, and this is pretty cool too: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlere...I?artid=1420644

69

Biology / Playing the numbers game

« on: March 31, 2006, 02:03:27 PM »

Sometimes it's fun to put things in perspective by converting stuff to "dogs years".

For example, I just found out the approximate size of surface area of our bodies.  And it's not several square meters, as you might think at first.  It is a lot more, because we should include all the area that is exposed to the "outside" and that includes our digestive system, lungs and urinal tract.  Add all this together and you get 400 square meters.  That's about the size of two basketball courts!!!  

Pretty impressive on it's own, but let's look at it from the point of view of a cell of an immune system, which has to protect all this area from incoming bacteria and viruses.
First, let's conert this flat area to a sphere.  That will make a sphere with radius of 5.6 meters.  The size of an immune cell is 10 micrometers.  Make a proportion to bring the cell to our size and the sphere's radius grows to 5.6x10^7 meters = 56000 km.  That's a little more than twice the radius of Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system.

Now a virus to the cell is about as big as a dime to us.  So there is your goal: guard the planet twice as big as jupiter from a constant rain of dimes coming from space.  Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

70

Off Topic / Don't shoot the puppy

« on: March 30, 2006, 12:28:44 PM »

Here's an unusual game: http://www.rrrrthats5rs.com/games/dont-shoot-the-puppy

Seems easy at first, but levels get more difficult.  Took me 4 tries to complete the whole thing.  And I finished in under 9.5 minutes.  Post your best scores!

p.S: Don't read the comments before you play - they contain spoilers.

71

Bug reports / Mutation rates in 2.37.6

« on: March 27, 2006, 05:09:14 PM »

Loaded one of my saves, run the sim for quite some time but don't see any mutants appearing.  Color does not change, nothing listed in "mutation details".  Mutations seem to be "enabled" in the options.

72

Simulation Emporium / 3-bot sim

« on: March 22, 2006, 06:52:30 PM »

I've been trying to get an "ecosystem" sim working for quite some time.  It was not very succesful.  So, now after a pretty long break I decided to come back to that.  Here's my latest experiment:

there are three species:
1. veggies (my own alga shellular)
2. herbivores (modification of Carnatus Orbis) - tie-feed on veggies
3. carnvores (modification of Hunter 2.3) - shot-feeds on herbivores

Now, the energy balance is not there yet, becasue I could not get it to work with bots I had.  I decided to evolve them a bit first.  So here we have tons of veggies with a lot of energy.  But the system has been running solid for the last 200 000 cycles, with none of the bots dying out.  

I disabled mutations on veggies and on carnivores, but herbivores have been evolving and acquired about 25-30 mutations.  They have not evolved any cannibalistic features and are still avoiding carnivores.

Feel free to try it.  Here is the link to the saved sim.

73

Off Topic / Happy b-day Zelos!

« on: March 20, 2006, 11:50:36 AM »

Yay! :cheers:

74

Biology / Very intersting

« on: January 13, 2006, 04:52:58 PM »

Here is a link to a "friend" of mine from LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/shkrobius/

He writes about very cool stuff like weird radiation-resistant bacteria, carnivorous plants, evolution of vision and like-such nonsense...  Very popular and accesible to even a non-biologist.  And VERY interesting.  The journal is almost completely in very good clean English, so you all will be able to read this.

Highly recommended!

75

Off Topic / This is awesome

« on: January 09, 2006, 04:14:46 PM »

Ok, everyone on this board must read this: http://news.com.com/Create+an+e-annoyance%..._3-6022491.html

So, at this point only PY has the ability to annoy me, since I know his real name.  Everyone else - STFU or tell me your name, address and SS number!

Oh, and by the way, I can abuse or annoy any one on this board, because my real identity has been revealed many times here :)