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Messages - Wake

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Evolution and Internet Sharing Sims / Internet Mode Ex Nihilo Sim
« on: July 31, 2010, 12:41:32 AM »
I'm not sure how much everyone still plays with ex nihilo simulations.  I'm new (being playing around for a couple weeks now) and still trying to get a replicator going (I think I may have had a couple clients crash from them, but I haven't seen any in the live), an it seems the prevailing issue is scale.  I'm currently running four chain-linked sims (gotta love quad-core processors) that started with 500 500bp bots, but that's pretty much the limit of what I can do personally.  Then it kind of it me that what if we all set up a separate zero-bot only IM sim.  I hadn't seen this idea pop up on the forums.  Here are my basic thoughts on the matter.

  • All bots must be zero-bots (or their purely random counterparts) or have evolved from such bots with no gene manipulation from outside factors (i.e.  no cleanup/modification of "winners" between runs, no viral replicator feeders, no feeder veggies).
  • There would be no limits or restrictions on simulation settings such as size, waste, corpses, physics, costs, mutation rates, etc.  If we want to encourage biodiversity, we are likely going to need some variations in environments.
  • Autotrophes could be allowed with the understanding that some simulations may have stronger restrictions on their reproduction than others.

Starting a new sim with a seed population may seem to break the determinism a bit, but what's to say that it wasn't a separate pool that just recently became joined to the rest.  The world is huge, there are always new challengers and new challenges.  Also, a more evolved specimen that may be well adapted to one environment is likely to not be so great at one with different physics.

Autotrophes seem to be a bit of a crutch in an ex nihilo sim, seeing as they get energy without having to know how to feed, but adding energy to an potentially ever growing environment would likely be necessary.  Simply repopulating "dead sims" would be one way, and I guess using autotrophic bots would not really be much different.

Most of all, this would allow us to clock more cycles per base-pair on a whole, which means "better" (in terms of dataset size) evolution on a whole.

What are the rest of your thoughts on such a project?

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Announcements / Re: New forum
« on: July 30, 2010, 11:56:43 PM »
One bug that's been pestering me:  If you are not logged in and try to search the forums, you get stuck in a loop of it asking for you to enter the CAPTCHA endlessly.  Once I finally created an account just now, however, the search seems to work fine.

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