theotherguy
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- Jul 5, 2003
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I found this neat little program called Gene Pool: http://www.ventrella.com/GenePool/gene_pool.html
Basically its an artificial life simulator in which there are many physically simulated life forms made of multiple cells and a bunch of green dots representing plants.
Each cell has two attachment points , and other cells can be attached to either of them and then swing freely in the world. An algorithm is then applied to the organism using variations of a sine wave to make it move through the world. Having multiple cells work together is essential for the organism to move.
Each organism has a head, which functions as both a mouth and a sexual organ. The organism's goal in life is to eat and produce babies. It will try to position itself so that I can put a food pellet into its mouth (represented by a green arrow) or onto another organism which it finds "attractive" (represented by a white arrow)
When it produces children, an organism will pass its genetic information onto the child. So, over time the population of organisms evolves towards better swimmers that are attractive, and eventually one or two species will take over the entire pond.
It's a really interesting program to let run overnight and then see the results. Personally after about 3 hours my entire tank was filled with these little blue guys I call "the blue horde" which would quickly eat all of the food in the pond, then most of them would die off and eat the food as it regrew and the cycle would start all over again.
Basically its an artificial life simulator in which there are many physically simulated life forms made of multiple cells and a bunch of green dots representing plants.
Each cell has two attachment points , and other cells can be attached to either of them and then swing freely in the world. An algorithm is then applied to the organism using variations of a sine wave to make it move through the world. Having multiple cells work together is essential for the organism to move.
Each organism has a head, which functions as both a mouth and a sexual organ. The organism's goal in life is to eat and produce babies. It will try to position itself so that I can put a food pellet into its mouth (represented by a green arrow) or onto another organism which it finds "attractive" (represented by a white arrow)
When it produces children, an organism will pass its genetic information onto the child. So, over time the population of organisms evolves towards better swimmers that are attractive, and eventually one or two species will take over the entire pond.
It's a really interesting program to let run overnight and then see the results. Personally after about 3 hours my entire tank was filled with these little blue guys I call "the blue horde" which would quickly eat all of the food in the pond, then most of them would die off and eat the food as it regrew and the cycle would start all over again.
