Inelegant Gait - Evolved Virtual Creature

[MediaFilter]

Where's the cool music from?

[istackr]

this is why you dont drink radioactive waste :/

remember that kids

[monomorph1]

How can you speed it up? There's no reason why it needs to run at real time. Takes forever to evolve something.

[kjlg74]

@monomorph1 I agree. That I forced it to do rendering whenever it's evolving was one of the worst of its design decisions. In the next version, whenever I get a chance to keep working on it, I'll have the simulator run without rendering at all, for extra speed. I'm not sure how much of a speed up it will be, but I'll find out :)

[fractal420]

On your evolution software what does it mean when a creature suddenly turns brown and poofs before the alloted time of its trial ends?

[kjlg74]

It means the creature somehow managed to break one of its own joints! Killing it right away is one of the ways I'm avoiding certain kinds of cheating where creatures abuse the physics engine. Breaking a joint can impart a huge amount of (unrealistic) momentum for "free". Not allowing joints to break can result in even worse cheating, in fact.

[ecreif]

i decided to write my own evolution software... so my question is why didnt you setup boundary values for the forces etc. or do they even manage to overcome those boundaries? whats up with preferring creatures that using less force?

[kjlg74]

Sorry for the slow reply.

If I recall correctly, there are boundaries on the amount of force a creature can exert at a given joint - but run-away physics engine errors can violate those constraints. In the end, the best way to catch "cheating" was to have a body part speed limit. Any creature exceeding it is assumed to be cheating and is killed. It seems to work well enough. The limit is much faster than anything creatures in the videos are doing.

[Yumminess0]

suicidal creatures =O

[gamedeep]

good name!

[11mc22]

lol nice