Flat Back - Evolved Virtual Creature

Thank you for your reply. Since I posted my initial comment I have being running your program on my computer, with very interesting effects, especially when I impose extraordinary conditions, such as very short run time, with selection based on max. height and time spent touching the ground.

I wish I could explore a virtual world inhabited by such creatures, perhaps with a gun to shoot at a ball with they would hold, protect, toss, etc.

Have you thought of adding sounds?

Beautiful!

I watched many, many of your clips, and I must say they are always fascinating, and the music perfectly chosen!

I am curious about what could happen if, along the possible mutations, there could be a sudden "doubling" of the body or of a body part.

I remember reading something about the evolution of certain alphabets ; some letters appears to be the product of a doubling of an ancestor, such as v + v = w or n + n = m.

One question: Do the colors of the blocks have a meaning?

I apologize for my slow reply. Thanks for the compliment :)
The system does include some kinds of mutations that duplicate body parts in a way. I haven't been collecting any stats on just how often those mutations actually produce useful results in this system - one of many questions there just isn't enough computing time to answer :)
--will continue below..

The colors have *zero* impact on fitness or physics. They are controlled by genes, but they just change over time by chance or by hitchhiking along with other genes that are being selected and amplified.

Hi, Ive only just become aware through the evolution (the irony) of clicking on things that interest me on youtube, it started as looking at crop circles :S (dont ask).
I have always since a child wanted to create something along the lines of this program but never had anything powerful enough to do so (and still dont), I can only program in basic (hey the maths the same) but NEEED to get some serious programs from my brain into a program such as this, how can I go about it, any ideas? PM me plz

Over long runs how does the fitness increase? Is it a linear increase? Does it tend to flatten out? Does it continue to have random jumps in fitness?

Provided that you keep the fitness function and environment static through the whole run, the typical behavior is a kind of S curve. Very steep climb at first, flattening out at the end. That's just the typical behavior. I have seen some that climb linearly for a long time and then level off. They all eventually level off, though, more or less (i.e. improvements get smaller and less frequent).

This creature evolution did continue. After 1800 generations, the best fit is almost 140.

After generation 600, I did increase the population size gradully from 100 to 700. The best fit did stabilize then a big curve appears in the result and now the best fit is over 130.

The evolution is still running, it's over 1400 generations done.

Glad to hear it :)