NPC Auto-Evo Thread

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Just read it. You are a genius. I see no problem with this logic.

Unfortunately, what little genius I have cannot extend to strat mode. But that's why you're here.

I believe we're still skipping the most important (and bashinerox's favorite) question:

Fitness = ?

How will we determine that a creature fits it's niche?

I originally proposed with the niches that each niche has a script to do it, but that seems to have been overlooked with all the niches being thrown about.


Without this we cant determine threats to niches, or niches themselves.

Science: Niche = a set amount and type of resources used, a set amount and type of resources contributed. (i.e.: a rabbit's diet is 50% plant a, 30% plant b, 5% each plants c, d, e, & f. Rabbits are eaten primarily by predator I, but also by predators II, III, and IV.)
Mineral resources if necessary would also be tagged to the niche, as would specific sites for shelter, mating, nesting.

Given it a lot of thought, not sure I slapped it up anywhere near here. There's bits and pieces of this scattered all over planetary and org.

roadkillguy wrote:

I believe we're still skipping the most important (and bashinerox's favorite) question:

Fitness = ?

How will we determine that a creature fits it's niche?

I originally proposed with the niches that each niche has a script to do it, but that seems to have been overlooked with all the niches being thrown about.


Without this we cant determine threats to niches, or niches themselves.

A niche is determined by size and resource usage. Resources would be what it eats, or if it's a plant, nothing really, except size. We're probably not going to worry about soil minerals and stuff.

? Do you mean to say that this is by primary food source and size of creature? We'd end up with underwater monkeys at that rate.

My question is, how do we determine that creature A fits into niche A better than creatrue B?

roadkillguy wrote:

? Do you mean to say that this is by primary food source and size of creature? We'd end up with underwater monkeys at that rate.

My question is, how do we determine that creature A fits into niche A better than creatrue B?

Organs, mainly. Organs are the most quantitative part of the OE. If its organs do the job better. This can easily be determined by its average muscle strength, cardiovascular system level, etc. In the OE, internal organs level up, kind of like an RPG game.

~sciocont wrote:

roadkillguy wrote:

? Do you mean to say that this is by primary food source and size of creature? We'd end up with underwater monkeys at that rate.

My question is, how do we determine that creature A fits into niche A better than creatrue B?

Organs, mainly. Organs are the most quantitative part of the OE. If its organs do the job better. This can easily be determined by its average muscle strength, cardiovascular system level, etc. In the OE, internal organs level up, kind of like an RPG game.

And positioning of organs? So we don't get creatures inside-out creatures?
The Auto-evo can (presumably) make them, pathetic as they may be.

This was The Uteen, successfully poking holes in other people's clever cheeses.

The Uteen wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

roadkillguy wrote:

? Do you mean to say that this is by primary food source and size of creature? We'd end up with underwater monkeys at that rate.

My question is, how do we determine that creature A fits into niche A better than creatrue B?

Organs, mainly. Organs are the most quantitative part of the OE. If its organs do the job better. This can easily be determined by its average muscle strength, cardiovascular system level, etc. In the OE, internal organs level up, kind of like an RPG game.

And positioning of organs? So we don't get creatures inside-out creatures?
The Auto-evo can (presumably) make them, pathetic as they may be.

This was The Uteen, successfully poking holes in other people's clever cheeses.

Internal organs mean internal.

~sciocont wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

roadkillguy wrote:

? Do you mean to say that this is by primary food source and size of creature? We'd end up with underwater monkeys at that rate.

My question is, how do we determine that creature A fits into niche A better than creatrue B?

Organs, mainly. Organs are the most quantitative part of the OE. If its organs do the job better. This can easily be determined by its average muscle strength, cardiovascular system level, etc. In the OE, internal organs level up, kind of like an RPG game.

And positioning of organs? So we don't get creatures inside-out creatures?
The Auto-evo can (presumably) make them, pathetic as they may be.

This was The Uteen, successfully poking holes in other people's clever cheeses.

Internal organs mean internal.

You didn't say they were internal.

But the only reason they're internal is because of natural selection. That's why the Ood in Doctor Who aren't going to exist. They'd easily get damage to their external brain. We need to take into account position or we could be a web of linked organs. We'd have good organs, we'd be big, we could be carnivores, and so be selected even though it's obviously stupid.

The Uteen wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

roadkillguy wrote:

? Do you mean to say that this is by primary food source and size of creature? We'd end up with underwater monkeys at that rate.

My question is, how do we determine that creature A fits into niche A better than creatrue B?

Organs, mainly. Organs are the most quantitative part of the OE. If its organs do the job better. This can easily be determined by its average muscle strength, cardiovascular system level, etc. In the OE, internal organs level up, kind of like an RPG game.

And positioning of organs? So we don't get creatures inside-out creatures?
The Auto-evo can (presumably) make them, pathetic as they may be.

This was The Uteen, successfully poking holes in other people's clever cheeses.

Internal organs mean internal.

You didn't say they were internal.

But the only reason they're internal is because of natural selection. That's why the Ood in Doctor Who aren't going to exist. They'd easily get damage to their external brain. We need to take into account position or we could be a web of linked organs. We'd have good organs, we'd be big, we could be carnivores, and so be selected even though it's obviously stupid.

Ah, sorry. Yes, organs will be managed in the organs tab, and they will all be internal, except for whatever external structures are needed, like gills, etc.

So wait all this is for one thing in the game? Okay it is nice to plan all this but lets think about something else for just a second, is a computer this day and age going to handle a high process game such as this. I mean from what I'm hearing this is going to be a high quality graphic, complicated evolving game. Do you think that a computer can actually handle all the processes that could go on here? But any ways these are very nice Ideas.

Background maths are easier to run than you might think. If we were using any music or graphics for these, it would be a different story, but the plain old math file is pretty small and simple.
Compare the size of a 4 page word doc to a 1 minute video (with sound) and you'll see why no one else is worried.

..and thus a tiny fish evolves onto land simply because random deviations in its stomach evolved the ability to eat grass? It would need to have some ability to walk too.

I say each organism has a list of attributes. Each niche has a list of requirements. An organism fits more or less based on the attributes it has. Attributes could be weighted and could replace eachother too. I don't see the problem with this.

No, if the fish's stomach was able to digest grass, it would still be limited by it's fins and stuck in the water, as it couldn't travel there. Should it emerge on land, it would die, and either [extinction: tiny fish] or its comrades that live in the water would happily ignore their grass-eating ability for years to come. We did mobility limits a while back, it should hold.
Besides, there's no specific [accept: food type: grass]. It would be something much more general, which could cover multiple species of food. [accept: food type: general vegetation] or [accept: food type: woody stems] would be more like it. Just because a species can do something doesn't mean it has to.

roadkillguy wrote:

..and thus a tiny fish evolves onto land simply because random deviations in its stomach evolved the ability to eat grass? It would need to have some ability to walk too.

I say each organism has a list of attributes. Each niche has a list of requirements. An organism fits more or less based on the attributes it has. Attributes could be weighted and could replace eachother too. I don't see the problem with this.

Yeah. I agree that there has to be a set of rules. However, that's going about defining niches, not the evolution process.

Something in the game has to tell a fish it cant walk.

roadkillguy wrote:

Something in the game has to tell a fish it cant walk.

That would be taken care of by animation procedurals. They wouldn't figure out a way for the fish to walk if it couldn't.

Could someone please start collecting all these procedurals together so we don't have to keep flopping across the same ground without feet? I for one think that, with Auto-Evo in a concept, we should grab all the pertinent data to cross-check situations just like these, in case there's something that we haven't thought of yet.

Let's start with:
Everything concrete about the OE
Other stuff about pre-sentience, such as behaviors
Whatever else we have lurking about Org and early civ.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Could someone please start collecting all these procedurals together so we don't have to keep flopping across the same ground without feet? I for one think that, with Auto-Evo in a concept, we should grab all the pertinent data to cross-check situations just like these, in case there's something that we haven't thought of yet.

Let's start with:
Everything concrete about the OE
Other stuff about pre-sentience, such as behaviors
Whatever else we have lurking about Org and early civ.

Does this include the multicellular transition and template organism concepts?

A good proc site: http://pcg.wikidot.com/

@ Pez: Sure, why not?
@ Keen: Over my head, but I'm sure someone else here will find it helpful.

ADMIN wrote:

roadkillguy wrote:

Something in the game has to tell a fish it cant walk.

That would be taken care of by animation procedurals. They wouldn't figure out a way for the fish to walk if it couldn't.

I would think animation procedurals would come after niche finalization in the code.

It could go like this:

Organism randomization
Organism analysis
Organism placement and population (Based on analysis)
Final organism animation (honestly I have no experience with this)

Also, AFAIK that link doesn't have any actual algorithms, only lists of games that use them...

Hm. Finally checked through the site, and even though there is a page called pcg algorithms, it seems to contain brief info on the term or just a wiki link. Next time I'll have be more careful when someone suggest me a link...

Naah it's ok. I saw all the links and I honestly thought it would share how everything works.


Anyway, I think the problem is that NPC auto evo needs to know what will eventually happen in a given scenario. In other words, it needs to know all the possible evolutionary mismatches that would mean certain death to an species in the simulation, within a minute after it started. It should check for these after randomizing the creature.

Wrong atmosphere (Fish in air, monkey underwater)
Wrong food type (The animal evolves to eat something it cant digest)
Wrong transportation (Fins on land, legs in water)

I know there's more of these but I can't think of any more at the moment..

If a creature happened to evolve one of these randomly it would die in the simulation and become extinct unrealistically. (An animal would never evolve something that kills itself.) The game would then have to check for and fix them to 'simulate' evolution. This way, randomization wouldn't destroy the game.


My subconscious tells me that this isn't necessary, so feel free to fill me in if I'm missing something.

Mmm... excepting mutations which are one-offs which don't allow organs to properly funcion (and which aren't usually passed on because the creature dies off, or they're caused by errors when the DNA is replicated,) I can't think of much else.

Atmosphere/respiration actually isn't strictly tied to air vs. water in real life. Worms breathe through their skin, so some of them can breathe underwater too, and snails are pretty darn good at going from one to the other. Of course, some respiration types are limited by size. And of course, you could have gills and lungs.

.... why the animal would "evolve to eat something it can't digest" is honestly a mystery to me. Eating behavior is ruled by whatever the stomach type is in the OE. Niches for predators will be filled by pretators, niches for herbavores by herbavores. Omnivores are classified under predator (because of the consumer stage thing) but they have the ability to accept plants as food, and can be tagged to plants as a food resource.

I don't think the random "mutation per generation" would suddenly swap something so complex as the whole species' stomach chemistry. It would make legs longer, patterns more distinct, claws sharper, venom stronger - but not mess around with a whole organ system. Conservation of change.

Wrong transportation... valid. However, legged creatures often can and do swim, but they're not living in there... and some things can't swim at all. We'll have to figure out restrictions on that one.