Ecosystem evolution
A downloadable game for Windows
This is a Simulation of Living Creatures.
It simulates a small evolutionary ecosystem.
Short explanation:
Each Creature is moved according to its Nerual Network Inputs/Outputs.
Neural Networks Inputs are given by the eyes View,
plus: Current Energy, Current Stomach fullness and 'pregnant or not'.
Eyes View is divided in sectors, each one has the Amount of meat/vegetable food and Male/Female Creature.
The Outputs of NN determinate the Speed and the Steer of the creature.
Creature can reproduce.
There are Males (Yellow) and Female (Pink)
When Male and Female touch themself, female can get Pregnant (In this case she is highlighted)
After a given time then, if pregnant Female has more than 50% of the energy,
She makes a new Child having for genes the one of Mother crossovered with the one of Father.
The mother gives a percentage (given by a gene) of its energy to the son.
A little mutation of children genes can occur.
While Moving, Creatures lose energy that they can recover by eating food.
When out of energy they die and becomes meat-food (That with time will be transformed to Vegetable food).
Vegetable food grows.
If the amount of Global vegetable growth is less than a threshold new Vegetable will be added at random position.
The output of NN, beside Speed and the Steer of the creature, determines the Violence (Red eyes) and Attack behavior of the creature.
If the genes difference of touching creatures (of the same sex) is above a certain threshold (given by a gene) and the 'DoAttack' output of NN is ON, the Attacking creature will damage other creature.
Created by Miorsoft - Roberto Mior
DETAILS:
Creatures have a brain made by neural network and some physical characteristic.
The genes of each creature characterize all these aspects.
Neural networks INPUTS are:
- Vision:
Divided by sectors.Each sector represent the nearness of Food, Male and female creatures + Their Genetic difference. - Amount of energy.
- Stomach Fullness.
- Creature sex
- Is creature Pregnant?
- Is someone hitting the creature ?
- Healt
Neural networks OUTPUTS are:
- Speed.
- Steering
- Should Creature Attack touching creature ? (just for same sex)
- Will to have son.
The other Genes represent:
- View Angle (FOV)
- View Distance
- Attack Threshold (How much genetically different must be the creature to attack)
- Part of energy a Pregnant female will give to son.
- Mass.
TIPS:
- For TURBO mode Check the "Turbo Button" or minimize the Window.
- Since it is needed some time to see some evolution result , at startup is better to Minimize the window and re-Maximize it after some minutes (1-2 Hours of simulation time).
- After a long run Save the Oldest Creatures or the ones you like. (You can reuse them later or in another Run using the "Add Creature" Button.)
- To Zoom move mouse with right button pressed.
DOWNLOAD & UPDATES
https://github.com/miorsoft/Site/raw/master/ECOSYSTEM.zip
https://miorsoft.itch.io/ecosystem-evolution
WEBPAGE: https://miorsoft.github.io/Site/index.html
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/reexre/videos
DEVLOG:
2020-01-03:
- New walk method with corrected leg shadows.
- Fix Vision Bug (did not rotate when no food in vision field).
- NRG waste by Speed^2.
2020-01-07:
- Added Mass Gene.
- If N of Females < 5 then add a Random Creature
- Added blood effect
- Included BIN folder. Now no need to download/register RC5.
2020-01-20:
- Added Turbo Button (Maximize speed)
- Removed a part of the eyes input that distinguished between vegetable food and meat.
- Added new input to the neural net: Health
- Added new output: WillToHaveSon, so a new child is born only when the sum of these outputs of the 2 touching creatures of different sex is greater than 1.(This output is represented by a heart drawn on the top)
- Improvements in speed and changed NN layers topology.
- Added Tweakable Settings (Just few for now)
2020-01-29 (V5):
- Added other Creature's NN parameters settings.
- Bug fix on Creature Info Display
- Process priority from Idle to Below normal.
- Now children can't Attack.
2020-11-17 (V6):
- Added Creatures NRG Decay setting.
- Faster (Newest vbRichClient version)
2021-03-20 (V6):
- Newest vbRichClient (RC6).
- Improved Legs Movement
More content will be added according to your interest.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Ecosystem Update 7Mar 20, 2021
- Ecosystem Update 6Nov 17, 2020
- Ecosystem Update 5Jan 29, 2020
- Ecosystem Update 4Jan 20, 2020
Comments
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This is sooo great! Is there any way to zoom out and see the entire world? Your interface for following individuals is wonderful, but I really want to look at the entire ecosystem in order to see interactions on the population level as well.
Thank you very Much!
To Zoom move mouse with right button pressed.
Aha...it took me a few minutes to understand what you meant. So you push the right mouse button and drag right to zoom out and drag left to zoom in.
Is there a setting the prevents the camera from bouncing from one creature to another so quickly? Can't really see what's going on. I have the camera set to follow no-one and auto-Follow is unticked.
Hi, thanks for your interest, and sorry for the late reply.
I think the continuous camera change you are talking about is what happens when during evolution the number of creatures (by gender) present goes below a certain threshold. At this point, random ones are automatically added at random locations with random genes. (and the camera focuses on the newly added one).
It takes a long time in the beginning to get interesting creatures that can survive.
I suggest adding lots of them with the "Add Random" button.
Or activate "Turbo" and minimize the window to greatly increase the speed. Then occasionally maximise the window and see the results. (Check "Draw Graph" to see the trend in the number of creatures and food).
Another tip: After a long period of evolution, I recommend selecting "oldest male" and "Oldest Female" and clicking "Save this Creature".
Then they can be retreived in a new simulation by using the "Add Creature" button. (which adds a random creature from among those saved.)
I should add that the creatures are saved in directories with a name indicating the "neural network topology".
EG folder name "Creatures 36-12-8-6 (EG5)" ... where the numbers from the second to the penultimate one indicate the hidden layers. (First and last are Input/output layers)
The default topology (visible in Settings...)
should have evolved creatures ready to add with the "Add Creature" button.
To ZOOM In/out hold down the right mouse button and move left and right
It would be really useful to possibly give us more direct camera control, instead of just zooming. It would be nice to pan by holding down the left mouse button, for example. Would love it if the jumping around were selectable, like so many other camera options.
Loving the simulation so far!
Thank you!
interesting suggestion
This is a fantastic little simulation. My only problem with it is that it makes a noise every time the view moves from one creature to another. Barring that, however, this simulation is great.
Edit: It also appears to automatically follow a creature whenever it gets randomly generated. This is in part why the sound effect is so annoying.
Thanks for the compliments !
Speaking of sound (noise), yes it's true it's annoying. It was a wrong choice.
The beep means that the population is dying out. The sound is reproduced when the number of males or females falls below a certain threshold. At this point, a creature with random genes is added.
If you put the turbo and minimize the window the program should run much faster.
In theory, after a long simulation, the population should no longer risk extinction, and therefore should no longer hear the sound.
Maybe I will remove it in a future update.