Controlling the Camera

Arrows: move the camera arround
Q: Zoom out
A: Zoom in

Clicking on an object will give you the name of the object. If you click on a bug, it will tell you what kind of bug, it's energy level and other information.

Parameter Settings

There are a number of user-defined parameters that can be specified during the creation of a new ecosystem or world. These parameter settings dictate how harsh or gentle a world has been created, which in turn determines how the animals will interact, grow, survive and evolve. Too harsh a world, and the animals will starve, too gentle a world and you will likely witness a rapid population explosion followed by a rapid die off! The default parameter settings should lead to a stable ecosystem.

World:
The name of your new world

Number Energy Sources:
The energy sources provide energy for the plants. Generally, the more energy sources your world has, the more habitat there is for plants. (However, plants are unable to grow in an area that receives too much energy – so use moderation.)

Number of Blocks:
Geographical boundaries represented in the 3D system as rocks and trees.

Start Number of Animals:
The initial number of inhabitants

Plant Food Mult:
Determines how much energy each unit of plant gives to a herbivore. The outcome of your world will be very sensitive to the value you assign to this parameter!

World Size:
Width of the world in “units”. To give an idea of the scale, a large plant is 14 units in diameter, and a large rock is 40 units across. We had success with worlds from 2000 to 5000 or so.

Plant Grow Period:
Another very sensitive parameter. Determines the “metabolism” of the plants - how quickly they grow, reproduce and die.

Start Num Plants:
Initial number of plant “seeds” randomly scattered over your world.

Plants Head Start:
How many rounds of growth the plants are allowed to develop before the animals are introduced. (If your world seems to take a really long time to start up – try reducing this value.)

Herbivores Only:
Set this to prevent omnivores or predators from being born in your world.

Leave Corpses:
Setting this will cause animals to leave edible corpses behind when they die.

All Plants Edible:
Allows a herbivore to eat any plant, no matter how large. Otherwise, herbivores are only able to eat plants roughly their own size and smaller.

Allow Speciation:
Only animals that are relatively similar to each other are allowed to mate.

Pond File:
Specify the name of “Pond” file to use. Through the use of “Pond” files, a user may allow animals to be exchanged between worlds. Allowing animals to be imported from a Pond file that is shared with an established world might give a quicker start to a new world.

Import Animals:
Periodically import an animal from the specified pond file.

Export Animals:
Periodically export an animal to the specified pond file.

Emergent Behavior, and Evolving Complexity

The behavioral complexity of the animals typically increases as a stable simulation progresses. When a new world is created, the initial inhabitants have randomly determined control systems. (In other words, they’re stupid.) Initially successful individuals generally develop crude search patterns that exposes then to new areas and food sources. After many hundreds of generations, more complex strategies occasionally emerge that incorporate active avoidance of blocking objects, and the ability to hone in on food. (Slightly less stupid.) There is no specific AI coding in the control systems of the animals. Any behavior they display has emerged through the evolution of their neural-nets. For the complete details, please see the report below.

Functional Description of the ALife System used by the Evolutionz software

Trouble Shooting

First of all, for any unexpected behavior of the program or if the program gives you an error,
INSTALL THE LATEST DRIVER OF YOUR VIDEO CARD
Many problems, both on ATI and Nvidia video card can come from the drivers.