Evolville 0.0.1: The Beginning
Evolville is an imaginary computer world, inhabited by creatures.
They live, move, eat, communicate and evolve.
This is going to be series of posts for simulation, starting from scratch and test various evolution strategies. Our world will evolve, our creatures will evolve, our code will evolve.
Welcome to Evolville!
The Beginning
At the beginning there was nothing.
No big boom, no hydrogen, no neutrinos, nothing.
Only empty white world in Quil.
(require '[quil.core :as q])
(q/sketch
:title "Evolville 0.0.1"
:size [400 400]
:setup #(q/background 255))
The Gods
The World has nothing, but it wasn’t empty.
The God of Setup managed to create world as empty map, so in future it can get terrain and be inhabited by creatures. Map is the best data structure, you know.
The world was not static either and I’m not talking about space extension. The world already had some fuzzy notion of time and was constantly updated by The God of Update couple of times per second.
The God of Draw was just sleeping. Why care if the world is empty?
(require '[quil.middleware :as m])
(def world {})
(def nothing (q/background 255))
(defn setup-world []
(nothing)
world)
(defn draw-world [world]
(nothing))
(defn update-world [world]
world)
(q/sketch
:title "Evolville 0.0.1"
:size [400 400]
:setup setup-world
:draw draw-world
:update update-world
:middleware [m/fun-mode])
Obviosly, nothing happened so far.
First Creature
God of Setup was not satisfied with inactivity of the God of Draw.
He created a small creature in the middle of the world.
So that God of Draw has no free time anymore.
(def world {:creatures [{:loc [200 200] :size 10}]})
(defn draw-world [world]
(nothing)
(doseq [creature (:creatures world)]
(let [{:keys [loc size]} creature
[x y] loc]
(q/ellipse x y size size))))
Movement
Created creature seems dead, and the God of Setup gave it speed and direction to move (angle)
(def world {:creatures [{:loc [200 200] :size 10 :speed 1 :dir 45}]})
God of Update took this under his responsibility.
(defn move [creature]
(let [{:keys [loc speed dir]} creature
[x y] loc
delta-x (* speed (q/cos (q/radians (- 360 dir))))
delta-y (* speed (q/sin (q/radians (- 360 dir))))]
(assoc creature :loc [(+ x delta-x) (+ y delta-y)])))
(defn move-creatures [world]
(update world :creatures #(mapv move %)))
(defn update-world [world]
(-> world
(move-creatures)))
Unfortunately, our eyes can’t process the infinite world, so God of Update made a trick. Each time creature appears outside of the visible part of the world, it appears on the other side of universe.
Finite, but infinite world.
(defn- overflow-x [x]
(cond (> x (q/width)) (overflow-x (- x (q/width)))
(< x 0) (overflow-x (+ x (q/width)))
:else x))
(defn- overflow-y [y]
(cond (> y (q/height)) (overflow-y (- y (q/height)))
(< y 0) (overflow-y (+ y (q/height)))
:else y))
(defn move [creature]
(let [{:keys [loc speed dir]} creature
[x y] loc
delta-x (* speed (q/cos (q/radians (- 360 dir))))
delta-y (* speed (q/sin (q/radians (- 360 dir))))]
(assoc creature :loc [(overflow-x (+ x delta-x))
(overflow-y (+ y delta-y))])))
Pack of them
In the next few million years, Gods observed how lonely was the single creature in the world.
To make it happier, they created 300 random creatures. Each creature was born in random place,
have random size, random speed and moves in random direction.
(defn make-creatures [n]
(repeatedly n (fn []
{:loc [(q/random (q/width)) (q/random (q/height))]
:size (q/random 5 15)
:speed (q/random 1 3)
:dir (q/random 360)})))
(def world {:creatures (make-creatures 300)})
Now the world looks like prebiotic soup, where real things may happen.
To be continued…
mishadoff 19 March 2018