Posts about the technology behind the game
This month, I’ve been adapting the game’s simulation of evolution to closer match what happens in nature. Before, every species had a fixed population size. While living out their lives, each creature was awarded a ‘fitness score’, a number that combines swimming speed, steering, and stability. The 20% of creatures Read more…
Sorry this update is coming in later than usual. I had a long-distance move this month, and also my first wedding anniversary. My wife and I didn’t have a honeymoon when we got married, so for the anniversary we took a trip to Taiwan and Japan, which we had never Read more…
In the last post, I talked a little about adjustments I’d made to make symmetry more common. Before finalizing code changes that will affect creature evolution, I try to generate populations of creatures with those changes and then score them, alongside (and in comparison to) creatures who evolved without code Read more…
The past few weeks I’ve been looking into why creatures in the game exhibit less symmetry than real creatures do in nature. As a bit of advance warning, this is something I am still working on, so unfortunately this blog is going to end not with an answer to the Read more…
The past few weeks I’ve been focusing on improving creature physiology. The basic implementation of creature bodies is finished, but they have a surprising sensitivity to the parameters of their environment and to how evolution is implemented in code. As an example, a few months ago, I adjusted the drag Read more…
Hello everyone! For this update, I thought I would cover a little of how things work underneath the hood. I want to ensure that the simulation of evolution and animal life in the game has a lot of depth, and I thought this brief look might help to give a Read more…