How to properly set up an evolution sim?

[SlyStalker]

How should I set up a sim and how many cycles should I be patiently waiting before expecting something to happen? Basically started with white coloured Animalis Minimalis and some green veggies and set mutations to x1/32. Currently on 119,000 cycles and most/all bots only have 2 mutations total.

[Shadowgod2]

at that low of mutation rate it will be a very long time before you see anything interesting. i recommend 1x to 4x mutation rates for faster evolving unless your trying to form an ecosystem type sim then stability is key and down to 1/4x mutation rates is better without it being too boring and larger sized sims 12 13 size i find best.

[Numsgil]

One of the key metrics is also mutations/generation.  That should be no more than maybe 1.  So let it run for a while and after a few dozen generations see how many mutations they've accumulated.  If it's around 0.4/generation, you're probably in a good place.  If it's like .01, that's probably too low.

[Botsareus]

Just use my survival evolution stuff from global settings. You should be able to plug in any robot you want and it is completely environment independent. Ideally activating self adjusting mutation rates to speed things up under sun line will ball park your ideal mutation rates much faster.
By environment independent you can do any most basic survival settings. That means a physical food source of some kind unless you are evolving plants.

[SlyStalker]

I started a new sim: size 7, 100 veggies, 40 bots, x1/2 mutation
Have I done it right? Also, how many cycles will it take for something interesting to happen? The last time I did this, which was a while ago, the most interesting thing that happened was a bot that was on 1 energy and continually reproduced. In the next cycle, the parent would die and then the child would flip around to reproduce again. Advanced propulsion maybe?

[Numsgil]

You might try to get a few more bots in there.  If the population is too small they can become overly sensitive to mutations.

In terms of interesting things happening, the first thing that should happen is that Animal Minimalis loses it's conspec recognition code and starts eating each other.  That's usually the first thing to develop.

[Botsareus]

I had an optional fix for that weird reproduction bug put in about two years ago. Maybe I just have high expectations of interesting but I never seen anything interesting evolve in db using basic methods. If you use my algorithm you will have conspec fudging so conspec recognition will be preserved.

I have never actually attempted to evolve plants using my own algorithm as described. Sly can you try to evolve plants using survival evolution and DB2.48.25?

[Botsareus]

I just realized that the correct terminology for my approach is a "fitness function"
All this time I thought it was just an output only function to see how fit something is. I hope I can recover my code as the first thing I will try is to evolve some vegys.

[SlyStalker]

Bots - What do you mean evolve veggies? As in get a bot to grow its own chloroplasts? I was inactive during all the chloroplast updates so I don't really know how it all works.

The first thing that Animalis Minimalis usually turns into is a species that either a) shoots constantly regardless of what's in front of it, or b) moves forward while spinning when no target, or c) both. Also, is it even possible for "multi-cellular" bots to appear? Would be quite cool.

[Botsareus]

All this stuff is under global settings. I did it this way so it appends to any given settings file. I am 99% the correct chloroplast code is in 2.48.25. I played with it a bit but never seen major plant evolution happen. The current vegy Dna is in the install pack.
...
I actually had a bot a long while back that simply moved and feed in a straight line on a 50 degree angle. I ran an older version of my fitness function on it. It started attaching to its babes to catapult them horizontal across the screen like bowling balls!

[SlyStalker]

When do bots move past the "cannibal" stage? I've only just passed 70,000 cycles and Animal Minimalis has lost control of when it shoots (that is to say it shoots constantly) and reproduces pretty much every cycle.

[Shadowgod2]

that depends on your sim. if some sort of cooperation is best then it will form it, i recommend using a veggie that it can win but very difficult to unless you have more than one going for it. for the shooting make it hard for it to find veggies and can take a while before finding one, continuous shooting should disappear in some form or another.