Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
http://boxcar2d.com/
BoxCar 2D is a simple evolution simulator that produces cars. You can also play God and design cars yourself.
There is an official top-3 list for best designs at the non-random terrains: http://boxcar2d.com/winners.html
It is a TAS-like challenge, so the obvious question is: Can you improve one of the designs?
I can't even get the designs to work as they claim to do.
The closest one I've tried is called ReTort, which after some iterations, it evolved into a similar form that was able to pass the test of the gap...
For example, in Hang Ten the best cars have huge wheels, so the car gets stuck after a while. Making them smaller allows you to reach further like with this one:
If only it had a better way to create the cars, sliders aren't good enough...
Edit: Can anyone test this one in Speedway. It subbed 15 seconds for me. All I did was a slight change in one of the best one and voila
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Yeah, the designer tool is not good. Actually, the whole program is a bit too simple and restricted. There should be more different car parts and properties to make it interesting. The terrain is also too simple. There is little room for genuinely surprising designs to emerge.
Maybe it is due to version differences? The site is a bit messy and not maintained too well...
Can't anyone make a more interesting program? (For the record, I can't.)
There are a few programs that I know of, but all of them seem too simple and too restricted, even though they all succeed in demonstrating various aspects of evolution. I would imagine that there exists a set of simple rules that produces a very interesting and unexpected sandbox. I have no idea what the rules should be, though.
Hey, now I got it, somebody should make an evolution simulator that produces evolution simulators! An evolution simulator simulator! Just like BoxCar 2D produces cars, the ESS (Evolution Simulator Simulator) would produce evolution simulators. We could then select the simulators that are promising, tweak them and let them evolve into even more interesting simulators.
Appendix:
For the potential fans of the simulation argument, maybe here's the crux: The simulation that we live in was designed as an evolution simulator by an evolution simulator simulator that was designed by an evolution simulator simulator simulator that was designed by an evolution simulator simulator simulator simulator...
It is evolution simulators all the way down...(No, I don't smoke weed.)
I hit 245 on Sisyphus. The particle swarm optimizer used my starting point to hit 247.
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Trying 127.0.0.1...
telnet: connect to address 127.0.0.1: Connection refused
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host