Sentience as RPG

Okay, seeing as we're skipping Microbial for the moment and heading straight to the main engine, I'm gonna start working double time on all stages taking place within said main engine. Minus post-ascension. That can definitely wait.

Anyways, I've been thinking about the transition from Aware to Sentience, and my brain hatched an idea. Now we know that player-evo is out the window indefinitely, and standard auto-evo would be just cruel to put on the player, it's clear that progression will be achieved through limited direct edits to the organism.

Now, as a way to help establish Racial Psychology and provide the player more in-game freedom, I think we might be able to set up intelligence as a tech tree, certain branches unlocking and locking as intelligence is earned.

For those unaware, (no pun intended) the current intelligence model is as follows:

Spoiler:

Okay, this model follows a clear "points" system, giving the player a simple progress bar the fill with certain actions. Rather than that, we could kill not two but three birds with one stone, and implement the "tech" tree, in which intelligence points (IPs?) would unlock certain behaviors and psychologies. With this model, we could flesh out AI for all species, not just the player's, provide an interesting and strategic method of progression towards sentience, and a way to include multiple psychologies for sentient races.

Thoughts?

I like this idea, and that someone

Quote :

it's clear that progression will be achieved through limited direct edits to the organism.

agrees with me here. It's really the only way to make a playable game.

I suppose limited direct edits could possibly be a consideration... Maybe.

Very interesting points system, I take it the way it works won't actually be visible to the player, though, they have to use their imagination to think of creative ideas. I like the idea of people thinking up inventive to downright absurd ways to do things and getting points for it... Good system. Confusing prey with silly walks can only be good. But how exactly does this work for the AI? Do they progressively begin to do the things that get the most points? Doing more complicated things and using more planning before?

The Uteen wrote:

I suppose limited direct edits could possibly be a consideration... Maybe.

Very interesting points system, I take it the way it works won't actually be visible to the player, though, they have to use their imagination to think of creative ideas. I like the idea of people thinking up inventive to downright absurd ways to do things and getting points for it... Good system. Confusing prey with silly walks can only be good. But how exactly does this work for the AI? Do they progressively begin to do the things that get the most points? Doing more complicated things and using more planning before?

The AI will just have the possibility of developing mental strategies rather than physical ones to deal with problems, just like any other mutation.

The player would be told what actions give intelligence points, but they'd of course have the control over where said points were allocated.

And what's wrong with direct edits?

This seems cool. My only consideration would be that we need to award intelligence points for more than just killing stuff if we're not going to skew this unfairly against omnivores and herbivores.

Points for herd strategic behaviors, such as scouting (meerkats, geese, etc. on guard for predators) and for seeking out new ranges would be nice.

Overall though, nice! It's hidden from the player, but intuitive enough that they can drive themselves towards intelligence fairly easily. And it doesn't seem as if it will be holy Belgium for Roadkill's ever expanding army of millions to program.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

This seems cool. My only consideration would be that we need to award intelligence points for more than just killing stuff if we're not going to skew this unfairly against omnivores and herbivores.

Points for herd strategic behaviors, such as scouting (meerkats, geese, etc. on guard for predators) and for seeking out new ranges would be nice.

Overall though, nice! It's hidden from the player, but intuitive enough that they can drive themselves towards intelligence fairly easily. And it doesn't seem as if it will be holy Belgium for Roadkill's ever expanding army of millions to program.

We are going to skew this unfairly against omnivores and herbivores. Herbivores are thick as rocks.

But we're omnivores, Rex. I don't want it to be hard-lined impossible for omnivores to be sentient. And there's a possibility that out there, somewhere, it is advantageous for a species of herbivore not to be as thick as a rock.

I mean, compare the relative intelligence of Horses and sheep. Horses obviously got at least one intelligence point somewhere down the line. Sheep didn't. Horses might not have made it to aware, and probably never will, but there ought to be some variety in the cognitive ability, at least so that we can have smart prey and stupid prey coming out of auto-evo for your carnivore.

And logically, wouldn't killing smart prey give more intelligence points? A wolf that's picking off a bunch of sheep is not using as much brain as one that's trying to separate a herd of deer.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

But we're omnivores, Rex. I don't want it to be hard-lined impossible for omnivores to be sentient. And there's a possibility that out there, somewhere, it is advantageous for a species of herbivore not to be as thick as a rock.

I mean, compare the relative intelligence of Horses and sheep. Horses obviously got at least one intelligence point somewhere down the line. Sheep didn't. Horses might not have made it to aware, and probably never will, but there ought to be some variety in the cognitive ability, at least so that we can have smart prey and stupid prey coming out of auto-evo for your carnivore.

And logically, wouldn't killing smart prey give more intelligence points? A wolf that's picking off a bunch of sheep is not using as much brain as one that's trying to separate a herd of deer.

Omnivores still kill things. We got this far because when we climbed down from the trees we started to hunt.

In regards to straight herbivores, there are other methods of earning intelligence, such as inspecies interaction or manipulation of objects. However, a straight herbivore cannot develop sentience. This was determined a long time ago.

Tenebrarum wrote:

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

But we're omnivores, Rex. I don't want it to be hard-lined impossible for omnivores to be sentient. And there's a possibility that out there, somewhere, it is advantageous for a species of herbivore not to be as thick as a rock.

I mean, compare the relative intelligence of Horses and sheep. Horses obviously got at least one intelligence point somewhere down the line. Sheep didn't. Horses might not have made it to aware, and probably never will, but there ought to be some variety in the cognitive ability, at least so that we can have smart prey and stupid prey coming out of auto-evo for your carnivore.

And logically, wouldn't killing smart prey give more intelligence points? A wolf that's picking off a bunch of sheep is not using as much brain as one that's trying to separate a herd of deer.

Omnivores still kill things. We got this far because when we climbed down from the trees we started to hunt.

In regards to straight herbivores, there are other methods of earning intelligence, such as inspecies interaction or manipulation of objects. However, a straight herbivore cannot develop sentience. This was determined a long time ago.

We actually started to scavenge first, but yeah. And not all omnivores actually do very much hunting at all. I mean, pigs are technically omnivores in the most literal sense of the term (As they will eat anything.)

If we're using this to determine behavior then there shouldn't be just one way to earn intelligence. However, as there will be more than one way to earn intelligence, which was my original concern, this system should work. If it is possible for a herbivore to earn some intelligence, then we're good.

hrm, this reminds me about what I was thinking about some days ago. I developed a civilization evolution system with 4 aspects, Technology, societal needs, philosophy, and science, each aspect of a society influences the others, and the others influence it.
(I haven't verified via the wiki/forum to see if the concept won't conflict with approved ideas and it isn't quite fleshed out yet but wanted to bring it up)
The creatures mentality that they had in creature stage would influence the philosophy aspect of their society in my mind, so your idea seems to work out beautifully for this system. IDK about a "tree" though, unless it wasn't very linear so it would support diversity then sure.

Dr_Chillgood wrote:

hrm, this reminds me about what I was thinking about some days ago. I developed a civilization evolution system with 4 aspects, Technology, societal needs, philosophy, and science, each aspect of a society influences the others, and the others influence it.
(I haven't verified via the wiki/forum to see if the concept won't conflict with approved ideas and it isn't quite fleshed out yet but wanted to bring it up)
The creatures mentality that they had in creature stage would influence the philosophy aspect of their society in my mind, so your idea seems to work out beautifully for this system. IDK about a "tree" though, unless it wasn't very linear so it would support diversity then sure.

you Forgot Ideology.

Ilike. We should start brainstorming actual events that would give intelligence and then work out how the best way to maths it would work (yes maths is a verb now).

So to start with we have:

Hunting
Simple
Ambush
Pack

Exploration
Unexplored Area
New Material
New Organism

Experimentation
??? (suggestions welcome)

Most of the exploration ones will be easy enough to maths, but the hunting ones may be a bit harder to define.

For experimentation --Maybe like screwing around and dissecting the deceased? Maybe not. On second thought I really don't feel like programming physical organs inside of creatures.