Using a randomized terrain with special goals. 

If you try this formula for your Genetype settings instead of using the
Fitness settings you can do some neat things:
return
this.velocity*5000+-(this.strsiz-90.0)*(this.strsiz-120)*6+this.distance*100
00.0+this.vertvel*5000.0+(this.nnsiz-200.0)*(this.nnsiz-200.0)*0.0001;
Make sure if you copy and paste this formula, that you make it one line in
the program.

Doesn't this.distance=100*this.velocity? If it does, then I can remove it,
and just change the other settings. The number being subtracted inside the
paratheses is to make it so that as you get away from 0 inside the
paratheses, the fitness is decreased at an exponetial rate.
(x-a)*(x+a)=x*x-a*a ---> quadratic equation.

My goal was to see how well I could try to find a high speed for narrow
ranges of complexity. I made the map have both positive and negative
heights, and until just this morning, used terrain height instead of blocks.
I'll see what happens with the blocks. There's water at a reasonable level
to add a little bit of a challenge to the contest. This should produce
some very interesting creatures.

PS I sure wish there was a better way to set goals. Maybe I can write a
program to generate the Genetype function to get a range of sizes.

Forums: 
williamsharkey's picture

Distance is not the same as velocity. If a creature walks in a circle, it
has a distance of 0 and a velocity of circumference/time. If a creature
walks straight, the distance should equal velocity*lifespan. That is how I
understand it.

Maciej Komosinski's picture

> Distance is not the same as velocity. If a creature walks in a circle, it
> has a distance of 0 and a velocity of circumference/time. If a creature
> walks straight, the distance should equal velocity*lifespan. That is how I
> understand it.

These are influenced by the "performance sampling period" which makes
"checkpoints" while a creature is alive.

So when you have the period set to 100, each 100 steps a distance is
added to the total creature's distance, and the 100-steps velocity is
averaged.

MacKo