Delicate Balance - Evolved Virtual Creature

[kjlg74]

@JASONE1986 I'm not sure I know what you're referring to. There are no mirror effects being used here. Do you mean the two-way symmetry in the creature's body?

[JASONE1986]

@kjlg74 sure, you have tuned the body settings??

[kjlg74]

@JASONE1986 Hi JASONE1986. Sorry that I overlooked your last comment until now! The symmetry you were asking about is not currently an option that can be turned on or off. It's always available to the creatures, but it's under genetic control, so sometimes they evolve symmetric bodies and sometimes they don't - it's like a genetic switch - a mutation could turn it on or off. Nothing to do with the creature brains, though.

[JASONE1986]

@kjlg74 what i meant was "tuning" the body settings like inserting own "genes" based on formula

[kjlg74]

@JASONE1986 There is a fixed number of genes that control body shape. Beyond designing their roles and their effects years ago during development of the program, I haven't tuned them. The creatures can tune them using evolution, but they cannot add more genes.

The genes that control the brain can increase in number, though, up to a limit. The creatures can tune them and add new ones using evolution. I've never tuned them myself. I'd need to build some kind of tool to do that. I might, one day.

[JASONE1986]

@kjlg74 is it able to edit the creature brains with a text editor? do you got a documentation for the ,creature format?

[JASONE1986]

@kjlg74 and 2nd question:

can we build a "goal" based on traces on the ground that the parents did, maybe build a family tree based on traces on the ground and not to cross the family tree again is a goal, i think the creatures would be more diverse and spezialized on their "task"

[konstiblum]

have you thought of covering your creatures with a skin modifier so that they get a more organic, less boxy look?

[kjlg74]

@konstiblum I've never tried that kind of thing before. Sounds complicated. I should look into it sometime and see how feasible it is. There's a term for that, right? Is it "skeletal animation" or something (treat the blocks like bones with a surrounding skin that distorts a bit when the angle changes at a joint)?

[konstiblum]

@kjlg74 It is funny that karl sims originally had this idea somewhere in the last century. he mentioned it at the end of a paper. it is something very obvious but strangely nobody has done it yet. i think it would make evolved creatures more likeable for a more general, less technically inclined audience.

[kjlg74]

@konstiblum Thanks. I had forgotten that Sims made mention of that in one of his papers. I should re-read those.

[konstiblum]

@kjlg74 once you have procedurally generated the organic skin mesh for your creature, the process of animating it would rather be called "mesh deformation". the skeletal animation is already provided through your evolved creature.

[MrStripyHead]

what does it eat?

[kjlg74]

@MrStripyHead people ;P

[TehOwnerer999]

Is the 3DVCE program upgrade finished yet?

[kjlg74]

@TehOwnerer999 No, not yet. It's really being very uncooperative. I've been forced to download the source code for the graphics engine and rebuild it myself just so I can track down the source of an error that's causing crashes. A lot more work than I had anticipated. Looks like it may be a tedious process :(

[TehOwnerer999]

@kjlg74 Alright, well thanks so much for taking the time to upgrade it, a lot of people greatly appreciate it. Thanks :)

[kjlg74]

@TehOwnerer999 Thanks for the encouragement!

[Zetimenvec]

do you think it would be possible to do a "no render" mode, where it doesn't actually output the visuals? or would this be indistinguishable from turning the settings all the way down and pointing the camera at the ground?

[kjlg74]

@Zetimenvec That's definitely on my to-do list. It's a feature that's been sorely lacking since the beginning.

[tostrong4you]

Do you think you can make the program run using multiple cores so it will calculate faster? What do you think will happen if it were left o for a year at a super computer? I want to finish mine so badly, it just makes my computers fan get loud and my father gets mad and makes me turn it off, little by little, ill get there

[kjlg74]

@tostrong4you I'll try to look into multi-core stuff at some point. It would be nice to have it simulate one creature on each core, simultaneously.

I suspect that if it were to run for a year you'd get things that are pretty cool, but not a whole lot cooler than stuff already on this youtube channel. I think there are just inherent limits given the fitness functions, genetic representation, physics engine, and other constraints.

[TheRealShadowBrain]

Lol you sound like a text to speech module with your voice in this vid at some points.

I think you need a new mic...

[kjlg74]

@TheRealShadowBrain I have a much better mic kicking around someplace. I should try to dig it out and dust it off one of these days.

[TheRealShadowBrain]

@kjlg74 Cool.

Got any news on the Rebuilt version of the program?

Is it fully functional yet?

[kjlg74]

@TheRealShadowBrain Thanks for asking. I got quite busy for over a week now and had to put it on hold. It's not functional yet. It was crashing with an error that I couldn't track down because I was using an already-compiled version of the graphics engine (OGRE). To continue, I need to download the graphics engine and compile it myself, then generate the crash once again and begin actually tracking down the cause. Hopefully that will be easier than it sounds, lol

[belliebum12]

How do you change the ground texture? Is it only in your version?

[kjlg74]

@belliebum12 No. You can do it too. There should be a folder somewhere called "textures" if i recall correctly. You can see all the images that the program uses in there. You can replace any of them with something different if you want. Just make sure the replacement is the same size (width & height, I mean, not file size), same format (jpg or png or gif or whatever) and has the same file name (save the old one someplace in case you need to undo the change).

[RoySchl]

made evos like that myself, often got tree like creatures without or with very little movement...

[kjlg74]

@RoySchl Say, do you still have any of them?

[RoySchl]

@kjlg74 oh sorry forget to mention... i got those with my own little program, so is would be terribly uncompatibel

[kjlg74]

@RoySchl Oops! My bad :)

[m2ger8]

so cruel throwing things at the creature :)

[kjlg74]

@m2ger8 It looks cruel, but really the creatures tell me they love it ;)

[TheReasonWhyGuy]

I hope it evolves to the point that, it never falls over :P

[kjlg74]

@TheReasonWhyGuy I've already increased evaluation time from 1400 time steps to 3000. Hopefully that will do it.

[TheReasonWhyGuy]

@kjlg74 lol... if only this was a hundred years from now... this would be so much faster... hell, they might even have far more advanced simulations... maybe even close to real evolution grade simulations... with cells and everything :D

Sorry, I'm fantasizing again >.>

[kjlg74]

@TheReasonWhyGuy Oh the fun that could be had with that much computing power!