VOLVE 5.0
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ALIFE: Invision evolve4 forum has returned
August 22nd 2007The old Evolve forum is back!!! It is an Invision Power Board and all your old passwords and logins will work. Just go here: [url=http://evolve4.invisionzone.com/]http://evolve4.invisionzone.com/[/url]
3D programming help
August 19th 2007In 3D perspective mode the simulation is pretty fast for grid sizes like 700 x 600. But when viewing the current [b]one year of alife[/b] files it is kind of slow. The reason isn't because of the large number of creatures. The reason is I must iterate over all grid locations to find the spores and organic material. (Barries are precomputed as they never change). Organisms/cells are stored in linked lists and are easily accessed without having to iterate over all the grid locations. What I need help with is a smart clipping algorithm to reduce the region I iterate over on the Evolve plane. I already perform what is called frustum view culling. That means, given an Evolve object I can get determine if it is "in view" or not. The greatly reduces the size and time spent building the OpenGL object lists. But unfortunately to find the organic material and spores I must iterate over the Evolve grid. This gets slow when the size is large like 1,500 by 1,500. What I need is a set of 3D vector math equations to do the following: [i]Give me the smallest bounding box on the evolve plane that is intersected by the current camera view (the view frustum)[/i] Using this bounding box I can shrink the amount of iteration I must perform when the user is only looking at a small part of the grid. I tried to write my own, but it was tricky and never succeeded. If some whiz 3D hackor can give me this, I can make the 3D mode faster irrspective of the grid size (for the cases then the user is looking at just a small part of the universe). Pretty pictures and introduction on frustum culling: [url=http://www.lighthouse3d.com/opengl/viewfrustum]http://www.lighthouse3d.com/opengl/viewfrustum[/url]
ALIFE: The 'Fuck You' organism evolves!!!
August 19th 2007OMFG! I am being told to fuck off, by the first instance of evolved artifical sarcasm. day-0035.evolve is filled with these organisms: [img=http://www.stauffercom.com/images/fuq.gif] [i]the "fuck you" creature[/i]
ALIFE: Status report
August 11th 2007Some energy hogs located near the fish mouth caused the population to plummet to around 600 organisms. Day 27 has overcome the energy hogs and now the population has increased to around 1,300 organisms. I like this simulation a lot. It is much more interesting than all that I have tried in the past. I like the mobility of the creatures and the moderate intelligence I am seeing. Also the simulation varies from day to day which makes it fun to check on the progress. I think there are three reasons for why this sim is a good one: (1) it is an XY simulation (all creatures reproduce sexually) (2) The grid size is very large and open. (3) Max. Apply is set to 10 (previously this was always set to 1). A bigger [b]Max. Apply[/b] increases the amount of tinkering that the mutation process may cause to a offspring. There's a better chance for a moderate "macro mutation". (See the section on mutations to learn what Max. Apply does)
Why Sex?
August 4th 2007Why do we have sex? I mean from an evolutionary point of view. Why is there a process in which male and female variants merge genetic material in the creation of offspring? Bacteria just split two equal copies (with mutations) in order to replicate. This great puzzle of biology is the topic of this blog post. I am currently dabbling with a new hypothesis. Everyone assumes that asexual replication was first, then sexual replication emerged at a later time. [b]What if this view is backwards? What if sexual replication came first? And asexual reproduction emerged later?[/b] Maybe the genesis of life on earth consisted of a catalyst-like chemical reaction where two interacting chemicals were needed. A male chemical and a female chemical which somehow interacted to produce more of both. Anyway, I'm sure there's lots of readily available facts to refute this hypothesis. I'll consult google and see.
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