NPC Auto-Evo Thread

Code:

in my model, three dice are rolled: p1, p2, p3 = [0 1]
if  p1 < 0.17 -> A evolves
if  p2 < 0.33 -> B evolves
if  p3 < 0.5  -> C evolves
all three can potentially evolve, but the probability of that is much lower (0.17 x 0.33 x 0.5 = 0.028)

I thought that's what we were already doing...

I have another programmatical summary:

-The game enters the preparation phase.
-The game goes through the list of animals, and randomly decides whether to evolve them or not (Based on population/Total population).
-If one is chosen, it is randomly mutated. (We should try to randomly choose them, so it's not order-biased)
-If the random mutation would otherwise fail the next scenario, it's dealt with properly. I.E. it and any other affected organisms are given a reaction mutation. (Would an organism react to it's own stomach malfunction? I think so.)
-The game starts the next scenario.

What about reactions to reaction mutations?

roadkillguy wrote:

What about reactions to reaction mutations?

Reactions to reactions are handled in the same way they always have been. With multiple mutations per generation though, in enough time, all organisms will be getting reaction mutations, so we need to define how different reactions change the odds.

Why not just go through the list of animals once per generation? I realize that's a little different than before, but with multiple mutations per generation now, if A mutates, it would affect B's chances if B is threatened by it, which could affect C etc. If the list is unordered, or stepped through randomly, this removes order bias. This should stop runaway mutation arms races, but it seems like I'm always missing something.

That's not really how evolution works- the essential randomness of game evolution is a great mimic of life- giving it more structure doesn't really do much, and arms races are not uncommon in nature.

Roadkill - the only real difference between our ideas is when the reaction takes place. In what I suggest, species would only be able to react in the next step, this ensures that each species makes at most one evolution per step. While you could react to each evolution immediately, there's a risk that this could cause more reactions, which in turn could cause even more, causing an evolution 'explosion' (but hey... I guess the cambrian explosion probably went a little like that). Think of it like double-buffered evolution, at each timestep each species has perfect information about what happened last step, but no information at all about this step.

Guitar - we could do that (assuming we're running multiple generations at the same time), but it's slightly better to avoid order advantage completely by only having species 'aware' of what happened the generation before this one (again like double buffering, this way all species always have complete, if slightly old, information).

The only real advantage to not double buffering is saving on computation time, and a little bit of memory, however the computational cost of randomizing the list is probably greater (though neither is significant). I'm not sure whether the memory saving would be significant or not, so long as you work with one species at a time I don't think that'd matter either.

edit:
~scio - I had a look through that thread, and it looks much better than what I'd read so far. I'll see if I can come up with anything to add to it later.

Seregon wrote:

Roadkill - the only real difference between our ideas is when the reaction takes place. In what I suggest, species would only be able to react in the next step, this ensures that each species makes at most one evolution per step. While you could react to each evolution immediately, there's a risk that this could cause more reactions, which in turn could cause even more, causing an evolution 'explosion' (but hey... I guess the cambrian explosion probably went a little like that). Think of it like double-buffered evolution, at each timestep each species has perfect information about what happened last step, but no information at all about this step.

Guitar - we could do that (assuming we're running multiple generations at the same time), but it's slightly better to avoid order advantage completely by only having species 'aware' of what happened the generation before this one (again like double buffering, this way all species always have complete, if slightly old, information).

The only real advantage to not double buffering is saving on computation time, and a little bit of memory, however the computational cost of randomizing the list is probably greater (though neither is significant). I'm not sure whether the memory saving would be significant or not, so long as you work with one species at a time I don't think that'd matter either.

edit:
~scio - I had a look through that thread, and it looks much better than what I'd read so far. I'll see if I can come up with anything to add to it later.

Sounds good. I'm brainstorming more autotroph attributes and predatory definitions.

Also, remember that in nature, reactions do happen over time- evolution is a gradual process, so running reactions in the same generation doesn't really make sense, and as Seregon pointed out, it can result in indefinite arms races within the computation of one generation.

Happy Halloween. I'm haunting you. BOOOOO.

Seriously, can I just say first that this is the best forum I have ever been to, and it's super refreshing to have exclusively awesome, intelligent people on a board.

I have not been able to get the grin off my face since I started reading this thread. Seriously OMG. I have been away from this project years but it still warms my heart to see this problem beaten down to details. I am sorry for gushing, but I am so ridiculously impressed by everyone's ideas that I can't help it.

Of course, I want to contribute to a point I haven't seen discussed (because everything that's been talked about has been addressed thoroughly and incredibly).

Scio said that there's a small chance a species may divide into two species upon evolving. Since we've already determined that what evolution is received is essentially random, we can call it a die roll upon a table - for the example, let's say a d20, though any number would do. In this case, a roll of 20 would result in speciation. But what does that mean? New species don't just arise and replace the old ones.

What if, on a roll of 20 - or whatever integer [die sides=] - the organism is copied, and each copy then rolls again on the table, resulting in two divergent organisms? Seems like this could mix a little added interest into gameplay when speciation occurs.

Also, it might be interesting to make it so that, if an organism 'rolls' a 1 on the table, the organism receives no evolution, but one of its 'affected' orgs still receives a 'reactionary' adaptation to its current state. Doable?

If this is crazy, forget it - I've been DMing D&D games recently, and and I've found that the best way to keep gameplay fresh is to introduce elements of planned-but-unpredictable randomness into it.

Again, I am so impressed by everything I see whenever I come here. It is an honor to attempt to help you at all.

Welcome back, Redstar!

I was under the impression a mutation could result in a split, so an organism has a mutation as normal but another species arises as it was before the mutation.

However, I do like your idea of a split before the mutation, and then the species reacts to itself. Interesting, but it could make it slightly one-sided to the one that got a mutation.
I think, when they split, if they both experienced a mutation to themselves, neither would have a major disadvantage over the other. Additionally, chances are they will be different types of changes and will diverge the species, so they don't seem so much like the same organism any more.

Wow, I have never thought I would ever see that avatar again. Welcome back, Redstar!

Thanks a ton for stopping in and all the encouragement.
Originally my idea for divergence was to simply split the species in two one round, and then treat them as separate species the next round. Your way works very well as well. I'll put some thought into it.

Hi all,
I had an idea for how to drive the NPC auto-evo, via threats. In AIs-null's simulator called ScriptBots, and through changes that I made to that program, I've witnessed that threats to a species are what drive evolution. If we boil down the real world to threats, and species reactions to threats are what we call evolution, then I say we do this:
Let's say we have an island biome of temperate forest, and three species living on the island. All three are competing for the same food source, so they cause a threat to each other that is related to their population. IE Species 1 has 20 members, species 2 has 50, and species 3 has 100, thus species 1 has a threat level of 150, species 2 a threat level of 120, and species 3 is dominating with only 70 threat points (assuming a constant of 1*SUM(other creatures)=threat level). Species 3 is clearly dominant, and is getting a good share of food, space, etc, and species 1 is barely hanging on. However, let's say that species 1 is omnivorous and eats species 2 and 3. That adds threat points back onto those species which species 1 eats, and (assuming a constant of 3*SUM(predator creatures)+=threat level) gets a final count of 150 threat points for species 1, 180 for species 2, and 130 for species 3. Under these rules, species 2 is given a chance to split and mutate, because it is the most threatened species, via Competing for Resources and being Hunted.

There would then be a set of conditions which, if met, put threat points on the species concerned. There could be many (and there could even be some from events) but here are some that I can think of:
-Hunted (if there is a population of carnivores which eat this species)
-Competition (if there is another species which requires the same resources (food, water, materials) as this species)
-Lack of Resources (if there are no available resources which this species requires)
-Inhospitable Biome (if the species has found itself in the incorrect biome)

Finally, if we consider the whole dimension of a planet's ecosystem as a chessboard, and the various species as pieces, then the game is played by pieces which move one at a time, threaten other pieces which have what they want, spread to other squares when threatened, and take other pieces by either direct or indirect action (eating them vs eating their food). This system could then be extended to plants as well, and copies of "pieces" represent the population of the species.

I'm thinking that the best way to drive evolution is through threats, and even if the agent-by-agent mutation method is too long and tedious to use for a game, emulating the causes and the effects with generalized reasons to evolve are probably best.

^I actually did roughly that for cellular auto evo (link here: https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t665-cellular-evolution-concept-questions) where basically the cells should evolve based on what is threatening it.
edit: did you say you program? *drools lightly* so excellent.

So wait would that mean that a species is a bigger threat to another competing for the same food source because there are more of them?

Wouldn't that mean locusts are a bigger threat to us than we are to them? I might have read that wrong but population size should not be the key to evolutionary success.

@GhengopelALPHA
That'a a cool idea, and really well thought out, but I'm not sure how it fits into the current concept. It's a bit more complex and accomplishes essentially the same thing as the CC of NPC evo, except we're going to run more than one mutation per generation now, because the game will move a lot faster that way.

Perhaps you could work threats into determining what makes organisms evolve in different ways?

Dr_Chillgood wrote:

^I actually did roughly that for cellular auto evo (link here: https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t665-cellular-evolution-concept-questions) where basically the cells should evolve based on what is threatening it.
edit: did you say you program? *drools lightly* so excellent.

I do see how your system takes threats into account, and my idea is to build a system which recognizes why organisms died, and that would plug into your different reactionary evolution sets. (And I agree that a species successfulness should be gauged by the rate of population change.) Perhaps it would be best if we rank organisms from most successful (positive numbers) to least successful (negative numbers) and take the top 3 or so least successful species and look at what's causing their population to go down (competition, being eaten, fast natural death rate, etc), and evolve something related to the greatest threat.

And not exactly; I can understand how a program works which has already been written. I can look at a program and see what features are missing/not right/too much and change them how I see fit.

Pezzalis wrote:

So wait would that mean that a species is a bigger threat to another competing for the same food source because there are more of them?

Wouldn't that mean locusts are a bigger threat to us than we are to them? I might have read that wrong but population size should not be the key to evolutionary success.

There probably should be modifiers like metabolism, lifespan, and intelligence (technology), which decrease the threats on each individual species (a species which can live longer naturally has an advantage over all threats, I think. Same for intelligence). And not to mention the "population" of the source of shared food also has an effect (large amount of resources mean food can be consumed by both populations without negative effects on each other). So to answer your question about locusts being a big threat to us, they aren't overall, but based on population, yes. It's the effects of our long lifespan and the large variety of food which we humans eat that mostly negate this threat.
Something like this: Total threat level = Competition + Consumption - Average lifespan - Available resources = Locusts population + Humans eaten - Average human lifespan - Plentiful food or resource population(s)
If I could find some numbers on current locusts populations I'd plug all the numbers in and see what we get, but I think the fact that we eat so many other sources of food more than negates the large population of locusts. Also, the equation is quite likely much more complicated, but that's what I came up with in about 30 minutes.

And I do believe that population is key to evolutionary success; it's only by being plentiful that a species can be capable of evolution, and I consider population to be the gauge of success.

Dang, Redstar AND an incredibly clever new kid.

Hi new kid!

I'm concerned as to how much this addition would tax a system running the program, but it sounds like you really know your stuff, so I'll just be quiet here.

While we're on the topic though, threat levels could actually help remove the extinction monkey from our backs by letting species go extinct if their threat level reaches an arbitrary point.

However, I'm still a bit perplexed as to how we will determine the effectiveness of mutation if this factor is tossed in. Previously it was more arbitrary, the game sections having little to do with the evolution itself. This seems to turn that on it's head.

~sciocont wrote:

@GhengopelALPHA
That'a a cool idea, and really well thought out, but I'm not sure how it fits into the current concept. It's a bit more complex and accomplishes essentially the same thing as the CC of NPC evo, except we're going to run more than one mutation per generation now, because the game will move a lot faster that way.

Perhaps you could work threats into determining what makes organisms evolve in different ways?

I'm thinking it would fit in as the reason for activating evolution for a species and the reasoning for how to evolve. It's not the best approximation for evolution (which would be the tedious tracking of mutations and genes of each creature we all would like to avoid), but I think for the chess-based idea, it's analogous to a player's piece being threatened, and in addition of threats from other pieces because they can move to it's spot (hunting/consuming), they can also be threatened by failure to take another piece (lack of food and competition) and other hazards (random events), and be motivated to change the way they play (how they move, how they take other pieces, how they respond to being taken). That's the underlying concept, and it's partially akin to getting your pawn past the enemy and to the other side, and exchanging it for a queen.

As for worries about how it would tax the system, I'd hope not greatly. Basically a quick census of all things that can probably be done in spaced rounds, and the data is used to figure out how the creatures are effecting each other.

And hello to you Tenebrarum! You got the right idea there suggesting that the threat level could also be used to gauge when a species goes extinct. Might have more to do with the threats themselves removing a portion of the population or something, such that at some point the population reaches zero, and thus the species goes extinct indirectly because of the threat level. On a global-simulation scale (and in the galactic stage), it might be best to do what you suggest and just on the threat level counts reaching a very negative number, and thus then directly cause extinctions.

GhengopelALPHA wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

@GhengopelALPHA
That'a a cool idea, and really well thought out, but I'm not sure how it fits into the current concept. It's a bit more complex and accomplishes essentially the same thing as the CC of NPC evo, except we're going to run more than one mutation per generation now, because the game will move a lot faster that way.

Perhaps you could work threats into determining what makes organisms evolve in different ways?

I'm thinking it would fit in as the reason for activating evolution for a species and the reasoning for how to evolve. It's not the best approximation for evolution (which would be the tedious tracking of mutations and genes of each creature we all would like to avoid), but I think for the chess-based idea, it's analogous to a player's piece being threatened, and in addition of threats from other pieces because they can move to it's spot (hunting/consuming), they can also be threatened by failure to take another piece (lack of food and competition) and other hazards (random events), and be motivated to change the way they play (how they move, how they take other pieces, how they respond to being taken). That's the underlying concept, and it's partially akin to getting your pawn past the enemy and to the other side, and exchanging it for a queen.

As for worries about how it would tax the system, I'd hope not greatly. Basically a quick census of all things that can probably be done in spaced rounds, and the data is used to figure out how the creatures are effecting each other.

And hello to you Tenebrarum! You got the right idea there suggesting that the threat level could also be used to gauge when a species goes extinct. Might have more to do with the threats themselves removing a portion of the population or something, such that at some point the population reaches zero, and thus the species goes extinct indirectly because of the threat level. On a global-simulation scale (and in the galactic stage), it might be best to do what you suggest and just on the threat level counts reaching a very negative number, and thus then directly cause extinctions.

I really do like this. I'll think of how it can be integrated.

I'm not sure how we can do it without just preventing extinction completely... Scio's idea or reacting to a mutation would mean about anything could change, and some could be much better at survival at other's, and things would therefore change. With this, they would all end up unable to either flourish or go extinct, just all be stuck with exactly the same threat level. Or even worse, they all become rocks, with no threat level at all.

Is this an overlooked flaw, or can you convince me otherwise? I give you 25.13274 hours to formulate a point I've overlooked or revision as necessary... Plus VAT.

The Uteen wrote:

I'm not sure how we can do it without just preventing extinction completely... Scio's idea or reacting to a mutation would mean about anything could change, and some could be much better at survival at other's, and things would therefore change. With this, they would all end up unable to either flourish or go extinct, just all be stuck with exactly the same threat level. Or even worse, they all become rocks, with no threat level at all.

Is this an overlooked flaw, or can you convince me otherwise? I give you 25.13274 hours to formulate a point I've overlooked or revision as necessary... Plus VAT.

I'm a bit confused, but it looks like you're wondering about when one species gets an evolutionary advantage over another, and when that second species is thus more threatened, that it then will try to evolve and get an advantage over the first. That's kind of the point. Each species will be able to flourish in turns, but let me clarify what I expect from each round of evolution for a species: each advancement shouldn't be so powerful so as to instantly give the evolving species the advantage instead (although that may certainly be possible if other factors contribute), yet not so weak an evolutionary development that the player hardly notices the difference over, say, and hour's worth of gameplay.

That being said, each species will be able to increase something that reduces their threat level and doesn't effect other species, such as lifespan, intelligence, endurance, etc. Thus, the goal is for each species to reduce their threat level as much as possible, and if that means they all threaten each other equally at some point, then I say so be it; that's an example of homeostasis, and the only thing capable of causing evolution then is the random selector.

I doubt they would become rocks (or a rock-like lifeform) because that would require them to become highly defensive (requiring a very threatening predator species), infinitely enduring (which is impossible, because it means they don't need any food; not even plants are like that.) and have zero intelligence (possible, but that would mean that the auto-evo picked a defensive improvement every time, and I like to think that intelligence has a chance of being improved each round, no matter what the top threat type is)

Do we not agree that once the species on Earth finally stop spreading and have filled every corner of every continent that each species will more or less be in balance with each other? Don't forget that populations of species can change independently of evolutionary forces, and thus throw even a perfect balance of threat levels into chaos.

GhengopelALPHA wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

I'm not sure how we can do it without just preventing extinction completely... Scio's idea or reacting to a mutation would mean about anything could change, and some could be much better at survival at other's, and things would therefore change. With this, they would all end up unable to either flourish or go extinct, just all be stuck with exactly the same threat level. Or even worse, they all become rocks, with no threat level at all.

Is this an overlooked flaw, or can you convince me otherwise? I give you 25.13274 hours to formulate a point I've overlooked or revision as necessary... Plus VAT.

Longishpost

@Uteen: I believe that our mutations will be small enough changes to the code that this shouldn't be an issue.

@Ghen: Careful of your wording. The mutations themselves have to be random. The species really has no "goal." Threat levels merely help streamline our method for determining success. This does, however, bring me to my next point. If we want to include this, we will have to be very, very careful with the equation. This system helps quantify many things, but as of yet I fail to see a method of determining the pure success of mutation. For example, the way you originally described this makes it seem that r-type orgs would be significantly favored over k-type ones.

@GhengopelALPHA
If I understand you correctly, the "threats" system would be a different way of modifying odds after a census.

Now, the idea behind having threats drive the entire population is good, since it does mimic reactionary evolution quite well. However, as a population decreases in the real world, it's chances of evolving also decrease, since the size of the gene pool is directly proportional to the probability of useful mutation. In this way, the model doesn't mimic evolution very well.

But what your model can do-extremely well-is predict useful mutations. By determining how a creature is threatened, we can determine what traits are selected.

So to modify the evolution process by implementing threats, we would run auto evo as is, but after step 4 (selection) we run the threat evaluation process on each of the selected species.

Tenebrarum wrote:

GhengopelALPHA wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

I'm not sure how we can do it without just preventing extinction completely... Scio's idea or reacting to a mutation would mean about anything could change, and some could be much better at survival at other's, and things would therefore change. With this, they would all end up unable to either flourish or go extinct, just all be stuck with exactly the same threat level. Or even worse, they all become rocks, with no threat level at all.

Is this an overlooked flaw, or can you convince me otherwise? I give you 25.13274 hours to formulate a point I've overlooked or revision as necessary... Plus VAT.

Longishpost X) sorry

@Uteen: I believe that our mutations will be small enough changes to the code that this shouldn't be an issue.

@Ghen: Careful of your wording. The mutations themselves have to be random. The species really has no "goal." Threat levels merely help streamline our method for determining success. This does, however, bring me to my next point. If we want to include this, we will have to be very, very careful with the equation. This system helps quantify many things, but as of yet I fail to see a method of determining the pure success of mutation. For example, the way you originally described this makes it seem that r-type orgs would be significantly favored over k-type ones.

I didn't really mean that the species has a goal; rather that evolution, when taking the whole population and a long period of time into account, gives a species a natural tendency to attempt to thrive. That is sort of a goal, I guess, so forgive me of my wording if you disagree.

And yeah, a lot of study and testing is probably going to accompany this method to get it balanced, but it helps the computer decide what kind of mutations have the greatest chance, as ~sciocont says it could.

Maybe we could do a for-gameplay exception to science here and make the more threatened species evolve faster? It would be very frustrating for the player to know his species are going to slowly die out because there aren't much of them left and they are probably not going to ever get an useful mutation because of it. And now that I think of it, what about crocodiles? They are very succesful predators, yet they have evolved little from the time they have appeared (same with sharks I think).

Commander Keen wrote:

Maybe we could do a for-gameplay exception to science here and make the more threatened species evolve faster? It would be very frustrating for the player to know his species are going to slowly die out because there aren't much of them left and they are probably not going to ever get an useful mutation because of it. And now that I think of it, what about crocodiles? They are very succesful predators, yet they have evolved little from the time they have appeared (same with sharks I think).

Perhaps there could be an exception for the player? And with the crocodiles and sharks, they haven't evolved much as a result of being so successful, so wouldn't creatures in game that are successful not evolve much? Even if they did evolve some, it would still mirror the real world, since sharks and crocodiles HAVE evolved somewhat.