Why Auto-Evo is Dead

Okay I'm going to be devoting my every thjough to this for a while. We're going to need to find something really out-of-the-box to do here, and I'm glad everone is understanding this.

Well if direct editing is all we can do for now, then that will do, i guess. But we should always aim for the Auto-Evo. Like Rex said (albeit with less ...Rex) It is our game. It's kind of the game's main selling point. But, if we can't do it we can't do it.

I guess what i'm trying to say is, is it possible to save a space for it? Make it easier if we ever are able to do it?

Please, people, stop being hysterical and think of some answer to your own questions first.
My answer to this is: we need auto-evo, and we don't know how it works (code and math-wise), nor how to implement it. If we lack the image of a 1000-piece puzzle, and have over ten million pieces (like now), we should get some fresh mathmen to solve the equations. We need some new blood to keep us moving, not just random spamming idea people.
For fuck's sake, people, this is a serious project, and we are at a standstill, at a bloody river without a bridge. Please, stop being hysterical children and thing throughly on this. Auto-evo is the vital pivot of Thrive. FFS, if you're desperate, I might even learn coding just to help Bashi.
I feel Thrive will die like this, when we fight amongst eachother.
For me, this is starting to be a very personal project, a project to which I have attached myself. We need to decide now; shall we go on with the current concept, and flesh out the auto-evo? If you want, I will bloody do the whole auto-evo fleshing, just tell me the basic idea.

Hysteria apart, I think the most rational solution for this problem would be a placeholder mechanics with a modular aspect, so after we figure out the creature editor itself we can work on Auto-evo or whatever it'll be.

I personally think that a darwinian auto-evo system will be inherently borked for reasons bashi already mentiond. Stuff will eventually converge to the loopholes of adaptability and not be that diverse or interesting.

Grrr..... Grrrrrrr.......... Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr............. Woof.

Organisms change randomly, they don't think 'Hey, I need to reach high fruit, my offspring need to be able to have longer necks, longer legs, climbing skills, or something else to reach that fruit. Wow, cool! All my offspring now have one of these abilities, and no other changes at all!'

These mutations in the genetic code are random! Random! Not suited! That's why there is so much diversity! Things change in many ways, some mutations are not beneficial, these ones die. Some are neither unbeneficial or beneficial, they just make the organism unique, these cause diversity. Some survive better, these cause their prey to undergo natural selection, not all mutations are beneficial, but those that are survive better.


So what is realistic?

Changing in ways that are beneficial, therefore offspring only survive better.
Changing randomly, then the better survive, the worse die.


So unnecessarily programming the game to be an evolutionarily helpful Big Brother is pointless if we want to simulate proper evolution!

Grrr.... Huff.... Huff.... Bag.... Sigh...

And doing the equivalent of going into the editor and randomly editing sounds good... But people probably wont want to see this visually... Just a loading screen/cutscene. But what if they continue to play as the parent when they have offspring? That will break the 'seamless gameplay' a bit... Let's just get auto-evo going, for now. We need a working code, then worry about this. Wait, what was I angry about earlier? Oh yeah.... Grr... Hang on, where did I leave that bag...

The Uteen wrote:

Grrr..... Grrrrrrr.......... Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr............. Woof.

Organisms change randomly, they don't think 'Hey, I need to reach high fruit, my offspring need to be able to have longer necks, longer legs, climbing skills, or something else to reach that fruit. Wow, cool! All my offspring now have one of these abilities, and no other changes at all!'

These mutations in the genetic code are random! Random! Not suited! That's why there is so much diversity! Things change in many ways, some mutations are not beneficial, these ones die. Some are neither unbeneficial or beneficial, they just make the organism unique, these cause diversity. Some survive better, these cause their prey to undergo natural selection, not all mutations are beneficial, but those that are survive better.


So what is realistic?

Changing in ways that are beneficial, therefore offspring only survive better.
Changing randomly, then the better survive, the worse die.


So unnecessarily programming the game to be an evolutionarily helpful Big Brother is pointless if we want to simulate proper evolution!

Grrr.... Huff.... Huff.... Bag.... Sigh...

And doing the equivalent of going into the editor and randomly editing sounds good... But people probably wont want to see this visually... Just a loading screen/cutscene. But what if they continue to play as the parent when they have offspring? That will break the 'seamless gameplay' a bit... Let's just get auto-evo going, for now. We need a working code, then worry about this. Wait, what was I angry about earlier? Oh yeah.... Grr... Hang on, where did I leave that bag...

This discussion would flow better if you didn't roleplay while posting.

Also you fail to realize that coding natural selection is a task of immense complexity?

Djohaal wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

Grrr..... Grrrrrrr.......... Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr............. Woof.

Organisms change randomly, they don't think 'Hey, I need to reach high fruit, my offspring need to be able to have longer necks, longer legs, climbing skills, or something else to reach that fruit. Wow, cool! All my offspring now have one of these abilities, and no other changes at all!'

These mutations in the genetic code are random! Random! Not suited! That's why there is so much diversity! Things change in many ways, some mutations are not beneficial, these ones die. Some are neither unbeneficial or beneficial, they just make the organism unique, these cause diversity. Some survive better, these cause their prey to undergo natural selection, not all mutations are beneficial, but those that are survive better.


So what is realistic?

Changing in ways that are beneficial, therefore offspring only survive better.
Changing randomly, then the better survive, the worse die.


So unnecessarily programming the game to be an evolutionarily helpful Big Brother is pointless if we want to simulate proper evolution!

Grrr.... Huff.... Huff.... Bag.... Sigh...

And doing the equivalent of going into the editor and randomly editing sounds good... But people probably wont want to see this visually... Just a loading screen/cutscene. But what if they continue to play as the parent when they have offspring? That will break the 'seamless gameplay' a bit... Let's just get auto-evo going, for now. We need a working code, then worry about this. Wait, what was I angry about earlier? Oh yeah.... Grr... Hang on, where did I leave that bag...

This discussion would flow better if you didn't roleplay while posting.

Also you fail to realize that coding natural selection is a task of immense complexity?

Er... Bad mutations die, stronger mutations live. That will happen anyway, you are more likely to survive if you have a beneficial mutation.

Hmm... I honestly don't see how the game going into the editor and making some random changes would fix our problem. That's exactly what Auto-Evo would do, only in simpler terms.

The Uteen wrote:

Djohaal wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

Grrr..... Grrrrrrr.......... Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr............. Woof.

Organisms change randomly, they don't think 'Hey, I need to reach high fruit, my offspring need to be able to have longer necks, longer legs, climbing skills, or something else to reach that fruit. Wow, cool! All my offspring now have one of these abilities, and no other changes at all!'

These mutations in the genetic code are random! Random! Not suited! That's why there is so much diversity! Things change in many ways, some mutations are not beneficial, these ones die. Some are neither unbeneficial or beneficial, they just make the organism unique, these cause diversity. Some survive better, these cause their prey to undergo natural selection, not all mutations are beneficial, but those that are survive better.


So what is realistic?

Changing in ways that are beneficial, therefore offspring only survive better.
Changing randomly, then the better survive, the worse die.


So unnecessarily programming the game to be an evolutionarily helpful Big Brother is pointless if we want to simulate proper evolution!

Grrr.... Huff.... Huff.... Bag.... Sigh...

And doing the equivalent of going into the editor and randomly editing sounds good... But people probably wont want to see this visually... Just a loading screen/cutscene. But what if they continue to play as the parent when they have offspring? That will break the 'seamless gameplay' a bit... Let's just get auto-evo going, for now. We need a working code, then worry about this. Wait, what was I angry about earlier? Oh yeah.... Grr... Hang on, where did I leave that bag...

This discussion would flow better if you didn't roleplay while posting.

Also you fail to realize that coding natural selection is a task of immense complexity?

Er... Bad mutations die, stronger mutations live. That will happen anyway, you are more likely to survive if you have a beneficial mutation.

Simple, but requires Belgiumloads of memory (hah, funny curse word). There will be [insertamountofindividualorganismshere] species, that times two-three for offspring : P
RESPONCE: I think your previous idea (uhh, the above quote) is good enough.

Alright, I'm confused. Bashi, you said that we have to come up with auto-evo first. Now you say we can leave it and come back.

Also, editor-centric gameplay is a no-no. As fun as they are, it means that all tangiable sense of "living, breathing world" is tossed out the window as giant crab monsters walk alongside furry octopi. Nor do we have the resources to provide a Spore-likke autosharing, meaning that player worlds would contain next to nothing.

Now, let's talk about Auto-Evo. I'm no coder, but I think I have an idea. A stupid, stupid simplistic idea that's probably already been done.

So, most games use a very simple "skeleton" to create ragdolls. Essentially a three dimensional stick figure. Let's look at that. We have agreed that the OE starts with a bezier curve. (Understand, I'm working on the assumption that Auto-Evo is going to edit organisms, not create them from scratch.) Onto that we'll add any limbs we want, joint by joint. Let's stop there for now.

So, now we have a curve, and let's say four appendages. Bilateral symetry means that we only need to be concerned with two for now.

Now, the code tells our computer the length and direction of each section of limb, right? Let's leave it at that for now. Now, let's quarentine off these sections of code. Can we do that? Simplify the code into induvidual peices until it's brought together? If not, this falls apart, but that's my idea as of now, seperate it for simplicity.

Auto-Evo, in this case, will only be working with those two values: length and direction. Making tiny numerical changes to the values. Can we do that without effecting other peices of the code?

In short I think we just need more coders. Fresh minds to help figure this out.

Also, Alaska? Really? :/

The Uteen wrote:

Djohaal wrote:

Longquote is long

Er... Bad mutations die, stronger mutations live. That will happen anyway, you are more likely to survive if you have a beneficial mutation.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to makie a computer understand what is a "good" or what is a "bad" mutation? Please go read a bit on how code works before thinking you can just say something like that and think it is simple.

Djohaal wrote:

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to makie a computer understand what is a "good" or what is a "bad" mutation? Please go read a bit on how code works before thinking you can just say something like that and think it is simple.

QFT. We're gonna have to have Lamarkian Evolution here. That means we need to define every single action that an organism can do, and the effects it would have on the body, but it's worth it.

Tenebrarum wrote:

Djohaal wrote:

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to makie a computer understand what is a "good" or what is a "bad" mutation? Please go read a bit on how code works before thinking you can just say something like that and think it is simple.

QFT. We're gonna have to have Lamarkian Evolution here. That means we need to define every single action that an organism can do, and the effects it would have on the body, but it's worth it.

Lamarckian would do great, but we need to weight it carefully. If you ever played oblivion you know how annoyning it is to have to keep doing the same stuff to train a skill...

Djohaal wrote:

Lamarckian would do great, but we need to weight it carefully. If you ever played oblivion you know how annoyning it is to have to keep doing the same stuff to train a skill...

My guess is that the changes will be significant enough with each jump forward in time that you will not have to grind very much.

Hang on, didn't we have some maths genius on here with an Auto-Evo idea? There was a huge longpost, and the guy also tried to do cultural evolution, and if it hadn't clashed with our current society stage concept it would have been great. Give me a second while i try to find it.

EDIT: The guy we are looking for is El_Noumo. Here are his posts. He wasn't here long, but if we can get him to come back he might be able to tell Bashi how to do this in a way that makes sense to a programmer. I'll pm him, and, Scio, if you could get ADMIN to send him an email that would be good.

So people, I'd vote alive for auto-evo. It's a problem that has to be solved.

The Uteen wrote:

Djohaal wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

Grrr..... Grrrrrrr.......... Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr............. Woof.

Organisms change randomly, they don't think 'Hey, I need to reach high fruit, my offspring need to be able to have longer necks, longer legs, climbing skills, or something else to reach that fruit. Wow, cool! All my offspring now have one of these abilities, and no other changes at all!'

These mutations in the genetic code are random! Random! Not suited! That's why there is so much diversity! Things change in many ways, some mutations are not beneficial, these ones die. Some are neither unbeneficial or beneficial, they just make the organism unique, these cause diversity. Some survive better, these cause their prey to undergo natural selection, not all mutations are beneficial, but those that are survive better.


So what is realistic?

Changing in ways that are beneficial, therefore offspring only survive better.
Changing randomly, then the better survive, the worse die.


So unnecessarily programming the game to be an evolutionarily helpful Big Brother is pointless if we want to simulate proper evolution!

Grrr.... Huff.... Huff.... Bag.... Sigh...

And doing the equivalent of going into the editor and randomly editing sounds good... But people probably wont want to see this visually... Just a loading screen/cutscene. But what if they continue to play as the parent when they have offspring? That will break the 'seamless gameplay' a bit... Let's just get auto-evo going, for now. We need a working code, then worry about this. Wait, what was I angry about earlier? Oh yeah.... Grr... Hang on, where did I leave that bag...

This discussion would flow better if you didn't roleplay while posting.

Also you fail to realize that coding natural selection is a task of immense complexity?

Er... Bad mutations die, stronger mutations live. That will happen anyway, you are more likely to survive if you have a beneficial mutation.

And how do you propose ew determine that?

Random permutations on a data structure is trivial.

Determining what those permutations have done is not.

"Evolution simulators" as they are called, are bundled with a physics engine, a nueral net and a small world that physically tests the agent's ability to survive. We cannot do that at the same time as running an entire game world. Not to mention that adaptability is only as complex as the environment. Most of these simulators will, as Djohaal said, bail out to the nearest "loophole" as a three joint agent is orders of magnitude more efficient than what would be known as a vertebrate.

If you don't provide a full physics-based simulation for the whole game world (which we can't do for performance reasons.)

Then you have to have some other way to account for efficiency,
The proceeding has already been stated as an idea, and funnily enough, been both said to be "lamarkian" and hailed as a good idea, depending on the wording:

You account for everything in the code.
If longer necks means more food from trees, you account for that. you hardcode that event into the engine. Along with everything else.

Which, funnily enough, is mathematically EQUIVALENT to directly "advancing" an organism in a known direction.

in fact, since we can at best perform a heuristic on the surrounding environment, all creatures within close proximity will evolve exactly the same.

And, since we are performing a heuistic, creatures won't be fully suited to their environments visually anyway.

There are many, many factors which need to be taken into account, and I have only scratched the surface.


And for the last time, "Evolving according to an environment" DOESNT. MAKE. SENSE.

Computers aren't fuzzy logic.

You cannot just say "make this better"

make what better?
what, in fact, IS BETTER?

You have to define better. The computer hasn't got a fucking clue what better is. "Better" has no meaning to a computer.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Hang on, didn't we have some maths genius on here with an Auto-Evo idea? There was a huge longpost, and the guy also tried to do cultural evolution, and if it hadn't clashed with our current society stage concept it would have been great. Give me a second while i try to find it.

EDIT: The guy we are looking for is El_Noumo. Here are his posts. He wasn't here long, but if we can get him to come back he might be able to tell Bashi how to do this in a way that makes sense to a programmer. I'll pm him, and, Scio, if you could get ADMIN to send him an email that would be good.

No. Just no.

A probability distribution is a form of statistics.

It is used for estimation


That post basically states how to estimate the distribution of given sets of already well-defined populations.

We don't have well-defined populations.

Unrelated statistics isn't going to help us here.

Thank you Bashi. You make a very good point. And thank you most of all for solving the "Logic will fix it, duh!" issue.

Now, on to the main issue with Lamarkian. As you said, all organisms should evolve the same. I'm not certain of this, but you have a better understanding than I do. I'd say the best way to deal with this is intermediacy. If long necks means more food from trees, but medium length necks don't, than only organisms with medium length necks in the first place will reach that point, as an small-necked creature will have to go through small-medium-long.

Now, I assume that auto-evo will only edit organisms, not create them. As such I feel it would be advantageous to begin with not one but a set of 20 to 40 organisms, excluding plants, fungi and the like, to evolve. Given that each is starting off with a few basic traits, it would be a matter of efficiency. Is it more advantageous to grow that long neck, or a more effecient digestive system? Also, remember that no two organisms can share a niche, so I'd say that since competition isn't going to really have to function on-screen we can just have any two creatures that are occupying the same niche (in the same habitat) be chosen randomly for extinction the next time the play jumps forward. That, combined with a large number of possable Lamarkoid solutions to problems, should deminish the number of markedly similer organisms.

Tenebrarum wrote:

Thank you Bashi. You make a very good point. And thank you most of all for solving the "Logic will fix it, duh!" issue.

Now, on to the main issue with Lamarkian. As you said, all organisms should evolve the same. I'm not certain of this, but you have a better understanding than I do. I'd say the best way to deal with this is intermediacy. If long necks means more food from trees, but medium length necks don't, than only organisms with medium length necks in the first place will reach that point, as an small-necked creature will have to go through small-medium-long.

Now, I assume that auto-evo will only edit organisms, not create them. As such I feel it would be advantageous to begin with not one but a set of 20 to 40 organisms, excluding plants, fungi and the like, to evolve. Given that each is starting off with a few basic traits, it would be a matter of efficiency. Is it more advantageous to grow that long neck, or a more effecient digestive system? Also, remember that no two organisms can share a niche, so I'd say that since competition isn't going to really have to function on-screen we can just have any two creatures that are occupying the same niche (in the same habitat) be chosen randomly for extinction the next time the play jumps forward. That, combined with a large number of possable Lamarkoid solutions to problems, should deminish the number of markedly similer organisms.

Given any bottom-up data structure, modulating the underlying data to closer match a set of heuristics on the surrounding environment is plausable.

However, there needs to be a limit on the severity of the change to prevent everything exploding.

And you can't use such a model to advance the creatures

Bashinerox wrote:

However, there needs to be a limit on the severity of the change to prevent everything exploding.

Obviously. Only a few changes per jump. Although we may want to make a brief exception when eyes pop up on any significant number of organisms, just as a nod toward the Cambrian Explosion.

Bashinerox wrote:

And you can't use such a model to advance the creatures

I'm not sure I quite grasp what you mean here.

Tenebrarum wrote:

Bashinerox wrote:

However, there needs to be a limit on the severity of the change to prevent everything exploding.

Obviously. Only a few changes per jump. Although we may want to make a brief exception when eyes pop up on any significant number of organisms, just as a nod toward the Cambrian Explosion.

Bashinerox wrote:

And you can't use such a model to advance the creatures

I'm not sure I quite grasp what you mean here.

Jump on IRC

Bashinerox wrote:

Jump on IRC

Whoops! Sorry! Are you still on? Can you still explain it to me?

Tenebrarum wrote:

Bashinerox wrote:

However, there needs to be a limit on the severity of the change to prevent everything exploding.

Obviously. Only a few changes per jump. Although we may want to make a brief exception when eyes pop up on any significant number of organisms, just as a nod toward the Cambrian Explosion.

Bashinerox wrote:

And you can't use such a model to advance the creatures

I'm not sure I quite grasp what you mean here.

Only a few changes total.


And you cannot use such a model to "evolve" or make a creature better. simply adapt current creatures to be more suited to their biome, within a limit

Bashinerox wrote:

And you cannot use such a model to "evolve" or make a creature better. simply adapt current creatures to be more suited to their biome, within a limit

Yes. Evolution to a more refined degree will be background, will it not? No relation to actual evolution. Just a set of background variables, most with little to no relation to the evironment.