Show Posts
1
Suggestions / Solar Fun
« on: September 29, 2005, 04:33:40 AM »
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.
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.