pbdiode 2012-08-29 19:51
Interesting concept, but I have to say I was a little lost playing it, even after reading your descriptions.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD24 → Worm
By imosa
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coolness | 1171 |
Interesting concept, but I have to say I was a little lost playing it, even after reading your descriptions.
I really really really don't understand what's going on here. Unfortunately your description could not change that. Could you please explain more? How do genes influence branching? What's L and R? Do I have to study biology to understand this? I will revisit this and hope that I can better judge by then :)
I kinda doubt I'll be able to completely explain what's going on. There's just too much information and not enough explained during game play.
Do you have to study biology? The point of the game is kinda to help visualize how evolution can improve a species, dispite not being governed by intelligence; however, ideally the game would also do a lot better job of explaining what evolution is.
I'll try to make a better explanation here.
First of all the Ls and Rs stand for Left and Right, and they are the decisions that a worm makes when reaching a fork in the map. Each column in the chart on the left is a worm's DNA, his programming so to speak. In fact, that sequence of Ls and Rs is all that the worm is, no additional information is being hidden.
Look at the picture above. One column is highlighted red and there is a red line on the map to the right. The game is highlighting a single worm for our examination. The black lines are other branches in the map currently occupied by other worms. Grey lines (not pictured) are parts of the map that are not occupied. Moving on, our highlighted worm enters the map from the bottom and hits his first decision. His DNA tells him to go Left, second decision and his DNA tells him to go left, third decision and his DNA tells him to go left, fourth decision and his DNA tells him to go right. You can see how black lines branch off from the red line where other worms have been programmed the same up until that point but then diverge. The number of genes is 20 so after 20 decisions the worm stops (trying to follow through 20 decisions is almost impossible because the individual branches become hard to distinguish).
Now notice the yellow dots on the map, and the number immediately above each column of DNA. The number is worm's fitness, representing how good this worm is, and it is determined by how many yellow dots the worm moves through. Our highlighted worm has a fitness of one, and if you follow the path you can make out some yellow discoloration where it's path becomes vertical. That is the one dot that gave the worm it's fitness.
So, you start the game with 20 such worms making 20 such random decisions (see next to the generate button), all of which make up your population. Now we get to the evolution. When you hit the "Generate!" button the game generates a whole new population from the old one (the old one is completely gone). I won't go into exactly how but the important thing is that a new worm's DNA favors the decisions of worms who have the highest fitness in the current generation. As you continue to hit generate, and create new generations, the power of evolution is displayed. You will notice the average fitness of the population increasing (you don't even need to do the math, just look and you'll see).
This is where the game effectively ends. You use the keys to change some parameters (these don't take effect until you make a new generation) and generally just look at it.
Now, there is one caveat to the process which may also explain why you can't find the game aspect. There is no mutation, and more relevantly there is no role for the player.
If you continue making new generations you will eventually get to the point where all the worms will look exactly the same. The population stagnates and nothing will ever change. In nature, random mutation prevent this. In the game, the players job was intended to use mutations on individual worms (in the same way that it happens in nature on the genetic level) in order to raise the population's fitness as high as possible, as fast as possible. The problem was representing these mutations in an effective manner along with time constraints.
Unfortunately, I really don't understand the game. :( This is one of those games where a tutorial would definitely show how to play the game properly. However, I do say there are some logic to this game, but again, it is hard to see that.
It seems like this could be an interesting evolution-based toy, but it's not really a game yet. I'd be curious to see how you would turn this into a game though, although I think it'd need more than allowing mutations, since that'd just be a game of basically counting.