Artificial Life
By Stormy Productions
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Description
Watch life evolve in the palm of your hand! Oddly hypnotic and relaxing, Artificial Life is a simulation of the growth and evolution of microorganisms - basically artificial life forms. Initially, each organism is given a random set of rules governing its behavior. If the rules end up being useful for survival, the organism may live long enough to mate with another organism and pass its genetic code on to some offspring.
Over time, the organisms with the most useful behaviors will pass on their genetic code, leading to interesting patterns of behavior unfolding before your eyes - flocking behaviors, solitary predatory tactics, scavenging, and hiding are some examples - and all this behavior is evolving from total randomness.
Two modes of play!
* Sandbox Simulation
* Survival.
In Sandbox Mode, you can adjust environmental factors as well as the chromosomes defining the behavior of individual protozoa. There is no overall goal in Sandbox mode, other than to enjoy watching life evolve over time.
In Survival mode, you get to test your own custom protozoa against a random population. See if you can do better than natural selection. The goal is to have your protozoa survive as long as possible. The simulation ends when your custom protozoa dies.
Controls:
* Double-tap the screen to select an individual protozoa.
* Pan and zoom using using touch and pinch gestures to explore this virtual world.
And, if you don't like how some of the organisms are behaving, you can always resort to the finger of death and destroy that which displeases you.
Queue up some music with your iPod app and then launch this app for some relaxing times in the microscopic world of Artificial Life.
You can read more about the app and view a video demonstration at:
www.stormyprods.com/alife
Thank you all for the feedback! It is appreciated. As time and practicality permits, more suggestions will be incorporated into newer updates. You've all suggested lots of great ideas!
** The Science Behind the Simulation **
This app was inspired by the computer science technique known as Genetic Algorithms. The idea behind genetic algorithms is to apply evolutionary techniques such as inheritance, mutation, and selection to computing problems. I thought, why not go full circle and apply these techniques to a basic biology simulation? This app reflects one such attempt. I hope you enjoy it!
What's New in Version v2.2.2
Bug fixes:
* Fix for screen flickering that could occur on a non-Retina display device when a protozoa was highlighted
* Fix for intermittent times when a protozoa would stop performing actions
iPhone Screenshots
Customer Reviews
Some Suggestions
Fun app. There are some problems though.
Breeding is pointless. In survivability mode, it ends the instant the single protozoa you started with dies regardless of whether it has produced a hundred offspring or none at all. In the sandbox mode you can pick one and follow it, but again when that one dies, you lose all ties to it. You can't follow a family ofprotozoa in either mode. Therefore there is no point to breeding. The life span of a single unit is all you're ever able to look at.
The protozoa don't want to go to the sun. I program the unit to go away from the sun if it gets too close and towards the sun if it gets too far away. Unfortunately, the speed it uses when going towards anything other than the sun is many times faster than the crawling speed it uses to go back the other way. I'm not sure why this is, but the result is unit after unit eventually getting stranded way out in the middle of nowhere. Why are the speeds different? Why not just make it react the same to everything?
If you want to reorder your chromosome list, you need to build it completely from scratch from each time. The interface needs some way of dragging and dropping or telling it to swap the order of two adjacent chromosomes or something. Anything would be better than having to reenter each line one at a time. Another good idea would be to allow copying and holding a complete chromosome list so you can transfer it from one protozoa to another.
The logic is funny. If I decide to use only 5 chromosomes (for example) and I make the 6th chromosome some kind of catch all, it doesn't necessarily "catch all." There's a behavioral difference between whether just the 6th line says "if my life > 0 find a mate" andthe 7th through the 10th are random other things and if the 6th through the 10thchromosomes all use the same "catch all" statement. It shouldn't make a difference, but it does.
And
What you need in an update is to be able to select the things in a family like how many generations and also a gene like if the nearest hiding spot is xxx units away and the nearest protazoa is xxx units away then find a mate ect.
I also think the tail is like power like I'll see one with a tail get attacked a couple of times but go on and live while ones with no tail die. Also the tail gets longer for howmany things it's eaten/killed
Used to be great.
While many of upgrades to statistics are great, the overall gameplay has suffered. Protozoa behave oddly, an often contrary to how they are programmed. For example, stated action is something like "go to nearest relative" yet the Protozoa hugs the wall when a relative is only a short distance away. I am also not a fan of the 50% life cost for mating. It was fine how it was in my opinion. What used to be my favorite game is now virtually unplayable. Would love to change this rating... Please fix!
- $0.99
- Category: Games
- Updated: Mar 20, 2012
- Version: v2.2.2
- Size: 17.3 MB
- Language: English
- Seller: Stormy Productions
- © Stormy Productions
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.Requires iOS 3.0 or later
