Let there be cars

[Shaikoten]

"THIS IS WHERE THE CARS LIVE! COME GIT YOU SUM!"

[40oz]

QWOP was actually very fun if you were willing to try not sucking at it.

[AirRaid]

More broke than my momma's girl parts.

[magicsofa]

Aliotroph? said:

I wonder how much better these could do if they could vary engine power and maybe even weight distribution. I suspect the effect would look even more like motocross than this does.

I thought it already was varying weight distribution just because of the shape?

One thing I find weird is how the wheels move independently of the axles or whatever...seems the biggest issue with small wheels is that they have enough give to let the axle smash into the ground.

[AirRaid]

is the terrain randomly generated every time you load the swf?

[SaladBadger]

I've let it run through the night and a bit of today and it's only reached generation 30 (I left mutation rate at 5%, that may be why). Seems like in this session a small bias for bigger front wheels with a distinct 4-point X-like body has evolved out, but I've also seen cars that look like mutated baby carriages, and stretched-out horse heads. I've also seen some x-shaped cars evolve out with tiny wheels, but those usually get stopped quickly.

EDIT: Or, I only ended up reaching 30 because the thing stops running when I minimize the window. heh.

[Sharessa]

It's always double of what the last generatin's max is.

I got lucky and got like 2-3 strong designs in generation 0, so now at generation 9, they are getting to about 235. But at that point is a really steep hill they don't seem to be able to get over.

[Creaphis]

The maximum score in parentheses at the bottom of the screen is double the largest distance traveled in the previous generation. This means that if a car travels the maximum distance in one generation, the maximum score will be double that distance in the next generation. This also means that, if you have a regressive generation, where no cars manage to travel as far as the best car in the generation previous, then the maximum score will be lower in the next generation.

This thing is fun to watch. What I'd like, though, is the ability to manually select which cars to "breed" - too often, two different successful car designs evolve simultaneously but then ruin each other by combining their traits indiscriminately.

[Macro11_1]

Creaphis said:

...

[...] Too often, two different successful car designs evolve simultaneously but then ruin each other by combining their traits indiscriminately.

Are you making an allegory for life in general here? (sorry, couldn't resist. :P)

Also, I have been running 2 windows at once... started off with a generation of 100% ish mutation rate, then put it back down to 2%

It's currently on generation 154, and has (318)

The other I have kept at 2% and it is on generation 41 and has a max of (338)

This is pretty neat, but I agree with creaphis,having some sort of ability to select parts to use or something to that effect would be nice.

[printz]

How the hell do I make the flash program run while the browser is out of focus? Both IE and Opera disable it when I switch to another application (or even tab!) which defeats the possibility of waiting for it to grow without having to look at it >_<

[magicsofa]

I had that problem in Chrome when I switched tabs but when I opened it in its own separate window it kept going

[Clonehunter]

ONly in Gen 16 I am. Prbably because my computer went to auto sleep mode.

[Technician]

I've pretty much hit a slump. This new run of cars started out with a bang but quickly went stale.

[AirRaid]

Sharkmobile is gonna kick your ass.

Edit: Unfortunately sharks don't evolve very quickly, and it's gonna take forever to get that rear shock into an upright position where it wont keep catching and slowing it down.

[Maes]

AirRaid said:

is the terrain randomly generated every time you load the swf?

It always appears to be the same to me, so perhaps it's stored. Then again I didn't exactly measure each ridge or bump.

Another interesting thing to try is to set the mutation rate lower than 5% (or even zero) ASAP, and so "force" the first haphazard designs to evolve. Especially if you got e.g. uniwheels or unbalanced towers, they will be forced to breed designs that compete for just a few meters at a time (then again, when the first two-wheel-to-the-ground design evolves, it will blow them away).

And if for some reason big wheels evolve since gen one, they tend to dominate afterwards, unless their suspensions suck.

As for the score: within one same generation, it simply indicates the maximum reached (if there was a record break). It doubles between successive generations, and it may decrease if for some reason you get evolutionary regression.
For that same reason, cars are allowed to ride as far as the maximum score and not beyond it (e.g. a single car goes to 150, all others to 10-20): this way, a particularly good design that may however have some other kind of flaw will not completely dominate the gene pool of the next generation, but will instead breed with the other "scorers" of its generation, even if they are much lower in position.

[AirRaid]

The terrain does randomise, I tried a few new breeds.

Maes said:

this way, a particularly good design that may however have some other kind of flaw will not completely dominate the gene pool of the next generation, but will instead breed with the other "scorers" of its generation, even if they are much lower in position.

And I'm not too convinced about this. One run through, a couple of like second gen cars had TINY (like pinpoint) back wheels, and big front wheels. They went slowly, but since smaller wheels give better traction and acceleration, they went a bit further than the other rolling designs. So it stuck with those. For 10 generations I got tiny back wheels which got stuck easy, but the other mutations couldn't hold up so it kept making those.

Sharkmobile is on generation 16 and not doing too badly now. Though I've still yet to see any car get past 200, ever.

[Maes]

Well, if there's more than one car with a non-fatal but otherwise mediocre trait, it's natural that they will drag the whole pool to mediocrity. Resetting a run as soon as the maximum fitness score is hit is to prevent a single outlier from leading the pool: if you got one big wheeler and 2-3 small wheelers that all stood out from the bottom, they will be forced to breed anyway. You will lose the immediate advantage of big wheels however, which will instead have to be bastardized.

That's how it works in real life too, except where there is strict Alpha-dominance breeding. And even then there are the females which might not be alpha but get banged anyway ;-)

[Aliotroph?]

magicsofa said:

I thought it already was varying weight distribution just because of the shape?

I wasn't quite clear enough. Basically I wanted them to be able to change their behaviour. things like leaning forward on certain slopes or back on others, varying their engine power on different hills, etc.

[Quast]

If you guys like programs like this, give http://www.swimbots.com/ a try. I've been messing around with it for years and it's a lot of fun, and you can leave it running for days or weeks if you want without any issues.

[Technician]

Generation 251 and the cars seem to be at an evolutionary dead end. The cars cannot get past a certain section of road. There is a dive and a steep hill combination that no car can get past. The problem is not their design, it's the fact no car appears to gain enough momentum to to even challenge the hill, they simply come to a dead stop. Why aren't these cars becoming stronger. They have perfected their shape, but they have no torque.

I guess it's game over. I'd like to know if it's intentional.

[Sharessa]

I got a car with a dog head that evolved in gen 4 or so from some worthless designs. It works well because the "head" (basically a long triangle "snout" with a triangle "ears" on top) makes it impossible for it to flip backwards because it's a great counterweight. Unfortunately on my track, there's this big hill that they keep flying down then faceplanting at the end of. Oh well.

Quast said:

If you guys like programs like this, give http://www.swimbots.com/ a try. I've been messing around with it for years and it's a lot of fun, and you can leave it running for days or weeks if you want without any issues.

I used to mess with that a bunch back in the day. I remember that one type would end up becoming very successful and end up eating all the food and dying. I also remember one species that was successful for no good reason. It had RIDICULOUSLY long legs which rendered it just about immobile, but the fact that it could swing its mouth back and forth in huge arcs made it so it could live long enough to breed more. It was silly.

[Maes]

Technician said:

The problem is not their design, it's the fact no car appears to gain enough momentum to to even challenge the hill, they simply come to a dead stop.

Big wheels have almost no traction if they find themselves moving slowly or from an almost-stop. Small wheels should overcome this, but OTOH they usually don't make it this far. I think the key is to push for evolving medium-sized wheels rather than very large ones, so that you combine reasonable cross-country will hill-climbing capabilities. However evolution at least initially is skewed in favor of big wheels.

[Gez]

Too bad that no amount of mutations will breed a third wheel. What? There have been two-headed calves and three-legged ducks in real life, so why not? It could get much needed additional torque power this way.

[Maes]

Now, imagine a genetic algorithm applied to either automatically generated Doom levels (it would need some sort of fitness input though -idgames reviews?) and custom monsters (they would evolve a combination of existing traits based on how many player kills/player damage they get).

[printz]

Looks like I don't have the same problem at my Macbook i.e. it doesn't deactivate when I switch the tab (I'm using Opera here too).

[Spleen]

AirRaid said:

PS the number in brackets isn't the furthest reached, it's the target it sets itself to see if that design is sucessful. It gets longer each generation or so regardless if it's reached.

The number seems to be a hard cap on the score you can get in a trial, equal to twice the highest score during the previous generation. I've had it get smaller when one generation's highest was about 125, and then the next was about 122 - it lowered from about 250 to about 244.

[Belial]

Gen 49, 388 top score.

[Gez]

Red graph is max, black graph is average, isn't it?

What's slightly depressing is that even after 30 generations, it still produces so many stillborn designs (cars that will score 0 or barely above that and stop pretty much instantly). The thing would progress faster if in each generation it retained, unmodified, say the two or four top-scoring designs from the previous generation.

[Technician]

Even at gen 251, you'd still get the odd stillborn but it would eventually keep modifying successful designs.

[Coopersville]

Interesting program. I had mine running until about generation 89 until Firefox closed for no reason. All of my cars each just, except for three or four derp ones, made it between 200-250pts., 250 being the home of a very sudden incline they hadn't evolved beyond yet.