New Life expectancy: default lifespan + number of organisms segments
New default parameter settings
"Better" random function to create new random organisms
(randomly created organisms will have between 1 and 10 genes, independent from
symmetry)
Through mutation organisms couldn´t have less than 4 or more than 64 segments, now between 1 and 840
Fixed a bug in the original program where organisms disappeared, but still consumed CO2
( I only managed to fix the second part of this problem)
New "Altruist" gene (Genetic Laboratory): Organisms can be "altruistic"
(see below: "Magenta" and "Mint" color)
Reaction genes (Genetic Laboratory) : All segments can react on colors by touching, ONLY if an organism has "Teal" segments:
"1" = "attacks" (Organism gets closer)
"0" = "ignores" (no reaction)
"-1" = "flees" (Organisms swims away)
13 new colors and altered the function of some of the old colors (main part of this mod):
-RED: Carnivore: -feeds on other consumers (red, orange, maroon, pink) and olive
-GREEN: Photosynthesis: -no changes
-BLUE: Shield: -no changes
-CYAN: Movement: -no changes
-WHITE: Virus : -infects everything except mint and ochre
-GRAY: Killer : -kills everything except olive, dark and pink
-YELLOW: Reproduction : -one extra child per yellow gene (was one child per yellow segment)
-MAGENTA: Healing : -heals own segments (= restores color), faster if the organism has more and longer magenta segments
-heals other organisms, if magenta segments touch each other
-heals other organisms, if its magenta segments touch another organism and both are altruists
-Altruist organisms don´t attack/infect/kill/poison magenta segments
-PINK: Destruent : -feeds on pink, white , cream, beige and brown
-ORANGE: Omnivore : -feeds on everything except brown, red, maroon, olive, cream, ochre
-attacks blue and navy color
-FOREST: Colony photosynthesis : -photosynthesis = 0.9 * effectivity of green segments
-if an organism with forest segments touches another organism forest effectivity = 0.9 + ...
-normal segment touches normal segment: 0.9 + 0.1
-normal segment touches green segment: 0.9 + 0.2
-normal segment touches forest segment: 0.9 + 0.3
-green segment touches green segment: 0.9 + 0.3
-green segment touches forest segment: 0.9 + 0.4
-forest segment touches forest segment: 0.9 + 0.5
-VIOLET: Poison : -poisons (segment it touches changes color to "BEIGE") other segments except olive, dark and ochre
-TEAL: Movement and Reaction : -Organism can move (like cyan)
-Organism can use reaction genes (see above), reaction is stronger if teal segment is longer
-MAROON: Herbivore : -feeds on green, forest, navy and ochre
-attacks blue
-Organisms with maroon segments have one extra (= real) child, if infected by other organisms
-OLIVE: defense cracker : -destroys (segment it touches changes color to "NAVY") blue segments
-destroys (segment it touches changes color to "BEIGE") violet, gray and ochre segments
-MINT: Immune system : -removes infections, faster if the organism has more and longer mint segments
-removes other organisms infection, if mint segments touch each other
-removes other organisms infection, if its mint segments touch another organism it hasn´t infected itself and both are altruists
-Altruist organisms don´t attack/kill/poison mint segments
-destroys (segment it touches changes color to "BEIGE") white segments
-CREAM: Parasite : -feeds on everything except red, orange, maroon, pink, olive
-attacks blue
-segment energy absorbing effectivity = 0.1 * red/orange/maroon/pink segment effectivity
-DARK: Mimic : -if a dark segment touches another segment it copies the color and its reaction genes
-if the color of the other segment it touches is violet or gray: segment color will be olive (copying them would poison or kill it)
-Segments that are still dark don´t count to calculate organisms reproduction energy
-OCHRE: Pushing away : -Organism pushes other organism away, pushing is stronger if ochre segment is longer
Hey, i'm a recent downloader of biogenesis and it seems that you are the only person updating it. Is this game dead? Where is the creator? Or is there some other forum or website that I don't know about?
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Awesome news, it's good to see you're still making updates.
Just fyi, I'm working on a mod that enhances the statistics window, allowing for all kinds of chart.
The only thing I have finished is one that show the percentage of certain genes related to others along a line-graph-type pf history, rather than the simple color box at the top that current versions have. I'm cleaning up the code and will then begin a real mod.
I'm also working on all other types of charts, including whatever you guys come up with. The charts will be bigger (about 640*480), more frequently updated, and more detailed. I'm thinking you could also have charts on average number of genes, average length of genes, average numbers of mutations in each birth, average number of children for each bot, average life span, etc. You could also overlay data on a single chart to compare trends among different fields.
Perhaps even allow for user-modified lengths and chart appearances at run-time?
It would also be cool to click on an organism and see how much of his energy he has gotten through feeding on other creatures vs. photosynthesis, etc. There's just so much potential for cool data analysis here!
Also, even though it's a more complex problem, it would be great to achieve an efficient way of tracking a gene pool and determining a family tree or chain of ascendancy for a particular organism. It could be an optional feature, with a disclaimer that it requires more computing power and memory.
It would also be cool to have relatively accurate algorithms for determining which creatures are of the same (or similar) species, and then allowing for charts that portray the rise and decline of a species.
These last two problems I'm far away from solving, but I've only been working with the BioGenesis source code for about a week, so we'll see.
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Hi! This post would be longer but I'm working on issues with sourceforge.net. Congrats on the amazing progress you have made on the statistics view! I hope to see your mod soon, and wonder if you might give us a rough estimate?
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And also, I'm interested to see what these new colors will add. Hopefully you've spent a lot of time working to make sure they maintain a balance in the game's ecosystem.
Also, hopefully my charts will help new users make sense of all the different color possibilities.
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Hey, huh, when will it come out I'm a recent downloader of biogenesis and it seems that you are the only person updating it. Is this game dead? Where is the creator? Or is there some other forum or website that I don't know about?
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I'm working on a few smaller mods, slowly, and I think MarcoA is still planning on uploading the Color Mod 1.2 at some point, though I haven't heard much from him in the last couple weeks.
As for the original creator, it seems he's mostly dropped out of the picture since last August or so.
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That really sucks. :( I love this applet and I loved your mod even more. It would be awesome if you released it now (1.1.5?) and then released the full color mod later (1.2)
Heehee, split it in two, you see…
Additionally, you and some friends should develop an artificial life simulator cough for mac cough that is more complex than biogenesis (The most complex ALife simulator on the inter web so far-for mac-is unfortunately biogenesis. :P)
I just really like ALife simulators, but I have a mac so I can't most of the ones on the internet. (Because they all are for windows)
And the ones that are for mac suck. :( Do you have any ALife sims for mac that I haven't heard of? And please look into creating one yourself (Or some friends if the work is too much :P)
Thank you. :)
Sorry, lil hyped up today. Hee..
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My roommate has a Mac that is much faste than my laptop, so I've experienced similar frustrations. Biogenesis is a great program, though, and I see a ton of potential for it.
To MarcoA, have you ever looked deeply enough at the code to determine whether it would be possible to orchestrate some kind of distributed computing mechanism? It would be great to have several networked (or web-linked) computers contributing to a larger sim.
Also, it would be really cool if each gene (or just certain genes) had variables for some kind of movement or rotation (either automatic or stimulus-based). It would be like a more advanced implementation of the ochre gene. You'd then have moving organisms with simple mouth-like movements, etc.
Also, if I get these charts really down, I might actually just do away with the drawing function in StatisticsWindow and bring in other libraries for more advanced visualization. It would be great to export them even, and look at them later.
I've mentioned other ideas for mods in another thread, but what do you all think of these ideas?
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Personally, I love the moving lines idea. A color that moves based on stimuli/automatic would be great. Then the creatures would evolve with more complex bodies…maybe a stomach could evolve (made out of red lines :P)
Another suggestion would be to rename the colors, there kinda complicated. But you shouldn't worry on that, more on the release of 1.2 and maybe Richard's ideas.
@Marco: you're killing me that you're not releasing 1.2, could you release what you have now? I just really need it!!! :P
Last edit: Spencer Chrysler 2013-06-05
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That's what I was thinking as well. We'll see what we have to play with as soon as this next version is released.
Until then, I'm working on learning how to JFreeChart to make amazing, customizable charts to track gene ratios, etc. If we had these right now, it might actually be a great tool for MarcoA in his efforts to balance the system...
And I agree, we could come up with color names that do more to explain the dynamics of the system. We could also write a really great read-me or include a chart that depicts relationships between colors -- which would really help people know what's going on right off the bat.
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Couple of questions:
What is the deal with the lost energy per death? Why would I want energy to lose when someone dies? Then the energy would go to 0 and there would be no one left…
And what settings would create the most biodiversity?
What settings would create the most prey-preditor like society (Where each organism had a select diet, not an omniscient one)
And what setting would create the most like-a-real environment? With decomposers and herbivores and carnivores, etc?
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Well, for the second question, you could pick a particular hierarchy of genes, such as green, orange (herbivore), and red -- and then tweak their probabilities so that they show up more. And of course, you could take that same concept and make it more complete and complicated.
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Basically just large areas. Also, if you run more than one instance, and have different settings in each instance, and then link them up through the network option, then you'll encourage biodiversity by having different types of environments that creatures have to adapt to.
Also, on a case by case basis, you can tweak the cost/probability of genes if you see that one is taking over and has consistently dominated an ecosystem. I usually have to do that with White genes and Grey genes.
Lastly, if you see that it's mostly plants or mostly carnivores, you can change the efficiency of photosynthesis and predator-type genes in the Metabolism page.
That's about it -- at least as far as what comes to mind right now.
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Here's the biggest, most ambitious thing that I'd love to see happen with BioGenesis. I might take it up as a personal project, actually.
I'd love to see the lines be movable, as we said, but I'd also like to see the locomotion system transfered from the simple cyan/teal random movement to a more sophisticated system.
Essentially, I'd like to see behavior for each organism (both rotating/scale of its line and locomotion across the screen) be controlled by a simple "brain" that is subjected to its own changes and evolution.
I'd like to see that brain learn (perhaps through weighted parameters that adjust, like NNs or something) and I'd also like to see the structure of that brain be controlled by a set of genes.
That way predators, for example, could learn to avoid each other, to seek out prey, etc. Also, forest genes, prey animals, and altruistic behavior could have more of a fighting chance, because they could learn to evade predators and group together.
Also, the brain could control the opening/closing a mouth, and the movement of a line that served as a "shield" or something.
It would be a beautifully complex system.. and of course require a lot of development and a lot more processing power. But I think it's achievable.
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If you had these features plus a landscape that is dynamic/non-uniform (plus features to have one big landscape take advantage of all CPU cores rather than multiple instances of the program), then you'd have my dream program.
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I got the 1.1 version working with JFreeCharts this week (for the most part), and I want to implement really customizable run-time charting so that you can look for patterns yourself amongst the data.
But programming a great GUI in Java is a pain in the butt! Is there any tool that provides capabilities similar to Visual Studio for C#, etc.?
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Also, what do you think of having a certain amount of "health" for each line segment, or some other kind of system whereby they sometimes disappear if they take enough damage.
IIRC, that's part of how Primordial Life worked (the original game/screensaver on which Biogenesis was built).
By doing so, you'd encourage more robust organism designs, with more interesting layers. Right now, the best organism is (usually) always going to be a tightly packed green ball with a perimeter of offensive or defensive genes. The exact choice of those genes is determined by ecosystem dynamics (rock-paper-scissors, really), but the basic optimal design remains the same.
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You can download the mod here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/biogenesiscolor/
Included Readme:
<Biogenesis Color="" Mod="" 1.1="" readme="">
Original program by Joan Queralt Molina
http://sourceforge.net/projects/biogenesis/
Color Mod by MarcoDBAA:
Changelog (1.1 changes are included):
German translation and german readme
Portuguese translation (thanks to Analematico)
New Life expectancy: default lifespan + number of organisms segments
New default parameter settings
"Better" random function to create new random organisms
(randomly created organisms will have between 1 and 10 genes, independent from
symmetry)
Through mutation organisms couldn´t have less than 4 or more than 64 segments, now between 1 and 840
Fixed a bug in the original program where organisms disappeared, but still consumed CO2
( I only managed to fix the second part of this problem)
New "Altruist" gene (Genetic Laboratory): Organisms can be "altruistic"
(see below: "Magenta" and "Mint" color)
Reaction genes (Genetic Laboratory) : All segments can react on colors by touching, ONLY if an organism has "Teal" segments:
"-1" = "flees" (Organisms swims away)
13 new colors and altered the function of some of the old colors (main part of this mod):
-RED: Carnivore: -feeds on other consumers (red, orange, maroon, pink) and olive
-GREEN: Photosynthesis: -no changes
-BLUE: Shield: -no changes
-CYAN: Movement: -no changes
-WHITE: Virus : -infects everything except mint and ochre
-GRAY: Killer : -kills everything except olive, dark and pink
-YELLOW: Reproduction : -one extra child per yellow gene (was one child per yellow segment)
-MAGENTA: Healing : -heals own segments (= restores color), faster if the organism has more and longer magenta segments
-heals other organisms, if magenta segments touch each other
-heals other organisms, if its magenta segments touch another organism and both are altruists
-Altruist organisms don´t attack/infect/kill/poison magenta segments
-PINK: Destruent : -feeds on pink, white , cream, beige and brown
-ORANGE: Omnivore : -feeds on everything except brown, red, maroon, olive, cream, ochre
-attacks blue and navy color
-FOREST: Colony photosynthesis : -photosynthesis = 0.9 * effectivity of green segments
-if an organism with forest segments touches another organism forest effectivity = 0.9 + ...
-normal segment touches normal segment: 0.9 + 0.1
-normal segment touches green segment: 0.9 + 0.2
-normal segment touches forest segment: 0.9 + 0.3
-green segment touches green segment: 0.9 + 0.3
-green segment touches forest segment: 0.9 + 0.4
-forest segment touches forest segment: 0.9 + 0.5
-VIOLET: Poison : -poisons (segment it touches changes color to "BEIGE") other segments except olive, dark and ochre
-TEAL: Movement and Reaction : -Organism can move (like cyan)
-Organism can use reaction genes (see above), reaction is stronger if teal segment is longer
-MAROON: Herbivore : -feeds on green, forest, navy and ochre
-attacks blue
-Organisms with maroon segments have one extra (= real) child, if infected by other organisms
-OLIVE: defense cracker : -destroys (segment it touches changes color to "NAVY") blue segments
-destroys (segment it touches changes color to "BEIGE") violet, gray and ochre segments
-MINT: Immune system : -removes infections, faster if the organism has more and longer mint segments
-removes other organisms infection, if mint segments touch each other
-removes other organisms infection, if its mint segments touch another organism it hasn´t infected itself and both are altruists
-Altruist organisms don´t attack/kill/poison mint segments
-destroys (segment it touches changes color to "BEIGE") white segments
-CREAM: Parasite : -feeds on everything except red, orange, maroon, pink, olive
-attacks blue
-segment energy absorbing effectivity = 0.1 * red/orange/maroon/pink segment effectivity
-DARK: Mimic : -if a dark segment touches another segment it copies the color and its reaction genes
-if the color of the other segment it touches is violet or gray: segment color will be olive (copying them would poison or kill it)
-Segments that are still dark don´t count to calculate organisms reproduction energy
-OCHRE: Pushing away : -Organism pushes other organism away, pushing is stronger if ochre segment is longer
Use the Biogenesis forum http://sourceforge.net/projects/biogenesis/forums to ask questions, make
suggestions and report bugs
Greetings, Marco
Download mirror for Biogenesis Color Mod 1_1 : http://www.gamefront.com/files
/user/MarcoDBAA
Fantastic! Excellent work, thanks a lot!
Thanks for your appreciation.
Color Mod version 1.2 is more or less completed. I am just balancing stuff. Release in a few weeks, if everything works out.
Don´t expect something earth-shattering. As i said here, i am not a real programmer ;)
What's going on with the v. 1.2?!
Looking forward to seeing more!
It´s nearly finished. I was lazy.
Here is a picture:
http://s14.directupload.net/file/d/3242/fc7myhzt_png.htm
Last edit: MarcoA 2013-04-30
Hey, i'm a recent downloader of biogenesis and it seems that you are the only person updating it. Is this game dead? Where is the creator? Or is there some other forum or website that I don't know about?
Awesome news, it's good to see you're still making updates.
Just fyi, I'm working on a mod that enhances the statistics window, allowing for all kinds of chart.
The only thing I have finished is one that show the percentage of certain genes related to others along a line-graph-type pf history, rather than the simple color box at the top that current versions have. I'm cleaning up the code and will then begin a real mod.
I'm also working on all other types of charts, including whatever you guys come up with. The charts will be bigger (about 640*480), more frequently updated, and more detailed. I'm thinking you could also have charts on average number of genes, average length of genes, average numbers of mutations in each birth, average number of children for each bot, average life span, etc. You could also overlay data on a single chart to compare trends among different fields.
Perhaps even allow for user-modified lengths and chart appearances at run-time?
It would also be cool to click on an organism and see how much of his energy he has gotten through feeding on other creatures vs. photosynthesis, etc. There's just so much potential for cool data analysis here!
Also, even though it's a more complex problem, it would be great to achieve an efficient way of tracking a gene pool and determining a family tree or chain of ascendancy for a particular organism. It could be an optional feature, with a disclaimer that it requires more computing power and memory.
It would also be cool to have relatively accurate algorithms for determining which creatures are of the same (or similar) species, and then allowing for charts that portray the rise and decline of a species.
These last two problems I'm far away from solving, but I've only been working with the BioGenesis source code for about a week, so we'll see.
Hi! This post would be longer but I'm working on issues with sourceforge.net. Congrats on the amazing progress you have made on the statistics view! I hope to see your mod soon, and wonder if you might give us a rough estimate?
And also, I'm interested to see what these new colors will add. Hopefully you've spent a lot of time working to make sure they maintain a balance in the game's ecosystem.
Also, hopefully my charts will help new users make sense of all the different color possibilities.
Hey, huh, when will it come out I'm a recent downloader of biogenesis and it seems that you are the only person updating it. Is this game dead? Where is the creator? Or is there some other forum or website that I don't know about?
Hey man,
I'm working on a few smaller mods, slowly, and I think MarcoA is still planning on uploading the Color Mod 1.2 at some point, though I haven't heard much from him in the last couple weeks.
As for the original creator, it seems he's mostly dropped out of the picture since last August or so.
I will upload my Mod... I could do it "now", but I really try to balance the ecosystem.
Even if I am not completely happy with it, I will upload a version before or at 13/06/2013. More than one year without an update is too much ;)
Joan Queralts (the Biogenesis creator) real last update was in December of 2010.
But it is not dead. You will see at least one Color Mod update. :)
@Richard and MarcoA:
That really sucks. :( I love this applet and I loved your mod even more. It would be awesome if you released it now (1.1.5?) and then released the full color mod later (1.2)
Heehee, split it in two, you see…
Additionally, you and some friends should develop an artificial life simulator cough for mac cough that is more complex than biogenesis (The most complex ALife simulator on the inter web so far-for mac-is unfortunately biogenesis. :P)
I just really like ALife simulators, but I have a mac so I can't most of the ones on the internet. (Because they all are for windows)
And the ones that are for mac suck. :( Do you have any ALife sims for mac that I haven't heard of? And please look into creating one yourself (Or some friends if the work is too much :P)
Thank you. :)
Sorry, lil hyped up today. Hee..
My roommate has a Mac that is much faste than my laptop, so I've experienced similar frustrations. Biogenesis is a great program, though, and I see a ton of potential for it.
To MarcoA, have you ever looked deeply enough at the code to determine whether it would be possible to orchestrate some kind of distributed computing mechanism? It would be great to have several networked (or web-linked) computers contributing to a larger sim.
Also, it would be really cool if each gene (or just certain genes) had variables for some kind of movement or rotation (either automatic or stimulus-based). It would be like a more advanced implementation of the ochre gene. You'd then have moving organisms with simple mouth-like movements, etc.
Also, if I get these charts really down, I might actually just do away with the drawing function in StatisticsWindow and bring in other libraries for more advanced visualization. It would be great to export them even, and look at them later.
I've mentioned other ideas for mods in another thread, but what do you all think of these ideas?
@Richard
Personally, I love the moving lines idea. A color that moves based on stimuli/automatic would be great. Then the creatures would evolve with more complex bodies…maybe a stomach could evolve (made out of red lines :P)
Another suggestion would be to rename the colors, there kinda complicated. But you shouldn't worry on that, more on the release of 1.2 and maybe Richard's ideas.
@Marco: you're killing me that you're not releasing 1.2, could you release what you have now? I just really need it!!! :P
Last edit: Spencer Chrysler 2013-06-05
That's what I was thinking as well. We'll see what we have to play with as soon as this next version is released.
Until then, I'm working on learning how to JFreeChart to make amazing, customizable charts to track gene ratios, etc. If we had these right now, it might actually be a great tool for MarcoA in his efforts to balance the system...
And I agree, we could come up with color names that do more to explain the dynamics of the system. We could also write a really great read-me or include a chart that depicts relationships between colors -- which would really help people know what's going on right off the bat.
It sucks that I have no programming skills. :(
Couple of questions:
What is the deal with the lost energy per death? Why would I want energy to lose when someone dies? Then the energy would go to 0 and there would be no one left…
And what settings would create the most biodiversity?
What settings would create the most prey-preditor like society (Where each organism had a select diet, not an omniscient one)
And what setting would create the most like-a-real environment? With decomposers and herbivores and carnivores, etc?
Well, for the second question, you could pick a particular hierarchy of genes, such as green, orange (herbivore), and red -- and then tweak their probabilities so that they show up more. And of course, you could take that same concept and make it more complete and complicated.
Ah,
anyway to make biodiversity more common?
And marco: where are you!!!
Basically just large areas. Also, if you run more than one instance, and have different settings in each instance, and then link them up through the network option, then you'll encourage biodiversity by having different types of environments that creatures have to adapt to.
Also, on a case by case basis, you can tweak the cost/probability of genes if you see that one is taking over and has consistently dominated an ecosystem. I usually have to do that with White genes and Grey genes.
Lastly, if you see that it's mostly plants or mostly carnivores, you can change the efficiency of photosynthesis and predator-type genes in the Metabolism page.
That's about it -- at least as far as what comes to mind right now.
Here's the biggest, most ambitious thing that I'd love to see happen with BioGenesis. I might take it up as a personal project, actually.
I'd love to see the lines be movable, as we said, but I'd also like to see the locomotion system transfered from the simple cyan/teal random movement to a more sophisticated system.
Essentially, I'd like to see behavior for each organism (both rotating/scale of its line and locomotion across the screen) be controlled by a simple "brain" that is subjected to its own changes and evolution.
I'd like to see that brain learn (perhaps through weighted parameters that adjust, like NNs or something) and I'd also like to see the structure of that brain be controlled by a set of genes.
That way predators, for example, could learn to avoid each other, to seek out prey, etc. Also, forest genes, prey animals, and altruistic behavior could have more of a fighting chance, because they could learn to evade predators and group together.
Also, the brain could control the opening/closing a mouth, and the movement of a line that served as a "shield" or something.
It would be a beautifully complex system.. and of course require a lot of development and a lot more processing power. But I think it's achievable.
If you had these features plus a landscape that is dynamic/non-uniform (plus features to have one big landscape take advantage of all CPU cores rather than multiple instances of the program), then you'd have my dream program.
I wants another update!
I got the 1.1 version working with JFreeCharts this week (for the most part), and I want to implement really customizable run-time charting so that you can look for patterns yourself amongst the data.
But programming a great GUI in Java is a pain in the butt! Is there any tool that provides capabilities similar to Visual Studio for C#, etc.?
Also, what do you think of having a certain amount of "health" for each line segment, or some other kind of system whereby they sometimes disappear if they take enough damage.
IIRC, that's part of how Primordial Life worked (the original game/screensaver on which Biogenesis was built).
By doing so, you'd encourage more robust organism designs, with more interesting layers. Right now, the best organism is (usually) always going to be a tightly packed green ball with a perimeter of offensive or defensive genes. The exact choice of those genes is determined by ecosystem dynamics (rock-paper-scissors, really), but the basic optimal design remains the same.