Evolville 0.0.2: Life and Death
Evolville is an imaginary computer world, inhabited by creatures.
They live, move, eat, communicate and evolve.
In previous post we’ve seen the origins of the World.
It looks pretty simple: white space inhabited by some creatures. All those creatures just moving in random directions causing world look like boiling soup. Even it seems that some creatures exist, there is no life yet.
God of Setup was responsible for adding creatures to the world initially, but they can’t produce new creatures by themselves. Also, there was no death, once creature appeared in the world it was living there till the end of time.
There is an awesome example of simulation game, called Conway’s Game of Life. Life and Death defined with just four simple rules, but even this simplicity cause to observe very interesting things, like viruses, stable population and replicants.
We’re going to define similar rules for our 2D-world, so let’s start.
Living Creatures
Our world had only list of unknown creatures so far.
(def world {:creatures [{:loc [200 200] :size 10 :speed 1 :dir 45}
{:loc [100 300] :size 20 :speed 4 :dir 135}
{:loc [350 150] :size 30 :speed 2 :dir 60}]})
This is ok for soup, but not ok for living creatures.
Every creature is unique, so it should have a name. Let’s change our structure a bit.
(def world {:creatures {"A" {:loc [200 200] :size 10 :speed 1 :dir 45}
"B" {:loc [100 300] :size 20 :speed 4 :dir 135}
"C" {:loc [350 150] :size 30 :speed 2 :dir 60}}})
Now, we can uniquely identify each creature by name.
Life
We define Life as an ability of creatures to give birth to other creatures.
One of the simplest form of life is cell division.
Since our world not aware about energy, dna and chemical processes yet, we say, one creature can spawn another creature. Then each of those creatures spawn another creature and so on. Exponentially.
Spawning takes some time, so let’s say our creatures will be spawning once per 3 seconds.
(def spawn-rate 3000) ;; new creature will appear every 3 seconds
(defn spawn [world [id creature]]
(let [now (System/currentTimeMillis)
last-spawn-ts (some-> creature :spawn :ts)]
(cond
;; initially make creature aware about spawning
(nil? last-spawn-ts) (assoc-in world [:creatures id :spawn :ts] now)
;; if time has passed creature can spawn
(< (+ last-spawn-ts spawn-rate) now)
(let [[child-name child-creature] (creature/random world)] ;; generate random creature
(-> world
(assoc-in [:creatures child-name] child-creature) ;; add it to the world
(assoc-in [:creatures child-name :loc] (:loc creature)) ;; give it parent location
(assoc-in [:creatures id :spawn :ts] now))) ;; update parent spawn ts
;; nothing changes, leave the world as is
:else world)))
Our spawn function takes the world, and a creature.
It could return the unchanged world state, or add creature to it.
This convention is kinda useful so far, so let’s do a utility world function which changes the world by appling function to all creatures.
(defn for-each-creature [world f]
(reduce f world (->> world :creatures seq)))
Global spawning for all creatures will look like this
(defn spawn-creatures [world]
(w/for-each-creature world spawn))
Meanwhile, God of Update hired an assistant Action to help him with programming.
Action refactored world updates and made them structured set of actions.
All of our creatures can move and spawn.
(defn act [world]
(-> world
(move-creatures)
(spawn-creatures)))
Spawners
Spawning is the uncontrolled form of Life. No matter what happens, each spawner produce another spawner every three seconds.
As soon as the world starts with at least one spawner, it will be flooded with living creatures soon.
Death
To make sure the world is balanced, we need death. There are lot of strategies could be implemented to cause death, but let’s start with the simplest one - ageing.
Opposite to spawning, ageing is an uncontrolled form of death. No matter what spawner is doing, it will be dead at some point by ageing. It’s just a matter of time.
Since ageing is not controlled, it is not a complex process either. Creatures will lose some part of their size on every world update. If size becomes less than zero the creature will die and lost for our world, forever.
(def age-rate 0.05)
(defn age [world [id creature]]
(let [newsize (- (get-in creature [:size]) age-rate)]
(cond (<= newsize 0) ;; remove dead creatures
(u/dissoc-in world [:creatures id])
:else (assoc-in world [:creatures id :size] newsize))))
(defn age-creatures [world]
(w/for-each-creature world age))
Note: clojure lacks of
dissoc-infunctions, so we took it from there
Warning: Spawning works in terms of time (e.g every three seconds), ageing works in terms of frames (e.g every frame creature lose 0.05 in size). These values are not always related with the same ratio, therefore there is no simple conversion between frames per second and native clock so far. Accept the fact, that our world is not ideal at all, we will try to solve the issue later.
After adding ageing to our world actions structure, we can observe this picture.
Two things here. Creature spawn another creature periodically and creature lose its size with the time, therefore dying. Those are two opposite processes, so you need to work really hard to balance them. If spawn rate is greater than age rate, the world become overpopulated, otherwise all life forms will die.
That’s educational for us, but let’s move further and develop more complex rules for life and death.
Breeding
Similar to the reproduction process, when two parents produce child, we define breeding rule in our world. If two creatures collide, they will produce another creature (omit gender for now).
To avoid fast overpopulation, let’s say creatures can breed only once per three seconds.
(def breed-delay 3000)
(defn breed [world [id creature]]
(cond
;; if creature can not breed leave the world unchanged
(not (can-breed? creature)) world
:else
(let [mate-creature (->> (w/creatures world)
(filter (fn [[_id mate]]
(and (not= id _id) ;; exclude breeding with itself, lol
(can-breed? mate)
(collide? creature mate))))
(first))]
(cond (nil? mate-creature) world
:else
(let [now (System/currentTimeMillis)
[_id mate] mate-creature
[cid child]
[(ec/uuid)
{:loc (mapv #(/ (+ %1 %2) 2.0) (:loc creature) (:loc mate))
:size (random/random 10 20)
:speed (random/random 2 4)
:dir (/ (+ (:dir creature) (:dir mate)) 2.0)
:breed {:available-at (+ now breed-delay)}}]]
(-> world
(assoc-in [:creatures id :breed :available-at] (+ now breed-delay))
(assoc-in [:creatures _id :breed :available-at] (+ now breed-delay))
(assoc-in [:creatures cid] child)))))))
(defn breeding [world]
(w/for-each-creature world breed))
Though this code may look a bit clumsy, it adds breeding to our world.
The logic is following, if some creature can breed and there is at least one another creature who can breed and both those creatures collide, there is new creature born at their location. Newborn creature gets random speed, random size, but inherits average direction from the parents. Both parents got breed delay as well as new born child can not breed for 3 seconds.
Example: If parent A moves to the right (angle 0), and parent B moves to the left (angle 180), their child will get direction (0 + 180)/2 = 90 and will go up. It could go down as well, but let’s stick to the deterministic average rule.
Direction inheritance is the first example in our world, how parents affect their children.
We disable spawning and promote breeding as a new form of Life. Ageing is still active.
Having such simple rule in our imaginary world we can observe interesting patterns, which are similar to our real world.
Loneliness
One creature can not breed, so no life appears in the world.
Lonely creature will occasionally die because of ageing.
Forever Alone
Even if there is another creature in the world, but their paths never cross, there is no chance for life in the world. It’s like if you can not meet girl in Virginia, you can’t make children with her. This is, probably, why a lot of people like to travel.
Just a bad timing
If two creatures have crossing paths, they can make child theoretically. But bad timing is not on their side. Girl and boy live in the same town and visiting the same places. But they can never meet, as I said bad timing.
It’s not you, It’s me
Sometimes you know the girl, your paths often crosses, you even like it, but haven’t enough resources (money, car, house) to make her happy. The same here, one of those creature follows another, but has not enough speed to make breeding. World will collapse.
King’s Family
Considering the previous example, if one creature step back (reduce speed) or push more (gain more speed), the breeding could happen and they could produce a lot of children. The only issue is such population will contain very limited creatures. All of them will be moving in one direction, inherited from both parents. There is rare chance for other creatures to affect their direction. Like king’s family. Princess is not for you.
Rich and Dirty
Another problem with King’s Family, it doesn’t give a chances for other creatures in the world. You can see the Kingdom growing, but some lonely creature slowly dying near the gate.
Love
Much better when two people have different interests and love each other. For example, two creatures have opposite directions, but move to each other. They produce creatures with variable directions, causing more chances to breed with other creatures in the world.
It may seem first there is the same limited vertical area like in King’s Family, but it’s only at the beginning. At over 100000 creatures, it will cover almost whole world.
The true power of Love!
Broken Love
Sometimes love can be broken. Consider pair of creatures who moves towards each other. They slowly produce a population which is able to survive.
Now we start with the same configuration, but there is a third creature which is breeding faster. This creature blocks left creature from breeding, causing death to overall population. Don’t hang with losers.
Queen of Ants
You can mimic basic behaviour not only from human population. Ants are awesome creatures for evolution algorithms, so let’s do something from ants world. Consider one big ant (mother of all ants, called queen) which doesn’t move, but able to breed with other ants moving towards her. That could be a rise of Ants Empire.
There are plenty of other analogies you can see in the world simulated using breeding and ageing rules, but let’s move forward.
We’ve seen uncontrolled and controlled life (spawning, breeding) and uncontrolled death (ageing). Even ageing is works for small populations, most of the time simulations end with a lot of creatures in the world. Just because age rate is constant, and growth is not.
Seems like we need another form of death, let’s call it overpopulation.
Overpopulation
Overpopulation is an effective way to control the population size in the nature. If we have a forest with a lot of wolves and few rabbits, obviously most of the wolves will die, because there is not enough resources for them for a living. The same applies for humans and most of the other creatures.
Based on this we define an overpopulation rule for our creatures. If creature collides with two or more creatures, it dies.
(defn- overpopulated [world [id creature]]
(let [collisions (->> (w/creatures world)
(filter (fn [[_id _creature]]
(and (not= id _id)
(c/collide? creature _creature))))
(count))]
(if (>= collisions 2)
world
(assoc-in world [:creatures-new id] creature))))
(defn overpopulation [world]
(let [w (w/for-each-creature world overpopulated)]
(-> w
(assoc :creatures (or (:creatures-new w) {}))
(dissoc :creatures-new))))
Sounds simple, huh?
Here we just use temporary :creatures-new key, to keep track of living creatures, so
we don’t modify our world before we check all collisions.
Something goes wrong. First, left and right creatures kills the middle one, what is correct. But then they produce a child which cause mutual collision for all three and therefore everyone dies.
Well, let’s assume that child and mate collisions doesn’t count. If parent produce a child, child can’t kill them. The same for pairs. If two creatures breeds, they can’t kill each other, we’re not Mantis creatures.
Just track who is creature parents and who breeds and then remove them from collisions list.
(defn- parent? [id creature]
(some-> creature :parents (get id)))
(defn mate? [w aid bid]
(or (= (get-in w [:creatures aid :mate]) bid)
(= (get-in w [:creatures bid :mate]) aid)))
Looks like it works.
As a breeding, overpopulation has also some interesting patterns.
We don’t discuss all of them, but take a look at one which is really nice.
Balance
As we have seen, if three creature collides, one of them dies, and the rest two continues breeding for a while. But what if four creatures collide at the same time.
Unfortunately, everyone dies. Look at this like a situation, where everyone pushes, but no one wins. Like war. Or beer pong.
If even one creature could relax a bit, everything will be fine.
Here we reduced speed of top left creature by 0.1
Consider this like life advice, sometimes you need to relax.
And finally, let’s go back to the boiling soup, from the previous post.
Remember the 300 creatures were moving constantly?
Now we try to apply to this boiling soup rules of life (breeding) and death (ageing and overpopulation).
Everything happens in the matter of second, so we added some delay and extra statistics for you.
Finally, our world looks more interesting. Some creatures are born, some dies. If breed rate becomes too large, overpopulation fixes that. If there are small amount of creatures, much easier for them to breed.
Life and Death is all about balance.
To be continued…
mishadoff 30 March 2018