StarDestroyer.Net BBS

They're yellow and squiggly and look disturbingly like sperm.

http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=3428

You start with a virtual "pond" populated with bits of food and a few hundred randomly generated little tadpole-like creatures called swimmers. They're all different patterns of colors, move in different ways, and have different numbers of limbs. Since they're randomized, most of them don't move their limbs in a way that propels them particularly well. These guys tend to die off pretty quickly.

But some happen to be better at swimming than others. These guys will tend to reach the food, keeping them alive and allowing them to focus on finding a mate. They choose mates by color, going after partners that are most similar to them in coloring, and produce offspring that share characteristics of each partner. (With a small chance of random mutation, of course.)

Over time, natural selection lends itself to a simple form of evolution. Leave the program running while you watch a movie, and you'll come back to find that your little colony of randomly-wiggling swimmers are now squirming purposefully across the pond as they look for food and mates. Not only that, but since they generally favor their own color for mating, they tend to segregate into little "races" that compete with one another.

The player can create random swimmers, clone them, randomly mutate them, genetically alter them, move them around the map, drop food, etcetera. Swimmers can be saved independent of the pond itself, as well. I have three different ponds saved which I let run while I'm doing other things. The "master race" of the thread title is a strain of one-limbed yellow swimmers that have repeatedly driven the dominant races of the other two ponds into extinction when put together.

I have one running now. It's good fun.

I remember this- played it a few years ago. I have a pool running now... They're all primitive and weak, but I found one that has four "doctor octopus" style back-slung arms. Saved it for general coolness, if not survivability...

They take like a minute to turn around, so I guess reproduciton will be a problem. Oh well, survival of the fittest, not the coolest...

I have three ponds. My first produced a two-limbed breed that does a weird "crossed arms" stroke. The second produced some four-limbed swimmers that look strangely swastika-like as they wiggle back and forth. (Ironically, they're the weakest of the three and can be driven extinct by any of the others.) The third are the aforementioned yellow one-limbers. I have a fourth pond going now, but so far they all look retarded.

So you've found that Ponds naturally progress into a single species that dominates all the others in the same pond? So far my pond only has a huge number of orange mutants that swim the backstroke and blue three-legged ones that swim like sea snakes...

Edit- Christmas Ninja V. 1.2 Swarm! I just gen-modified that "Doctor Octopus" species to become red-and-green swimming machines, and then sent eight fo them in formation into the pond. Let's see if my Intelligent Design skills can defeat Darwin at his own game...

Edit- I am no God. How do you get the little bastards to figure out the "turn to eat or mate" idea?

So far all of my ponds have produced a single "winning" race, yes. My fourth appears to be going that way as well. Little three-legged guys with a terribly inefficient fanning motion.

I must have hit the genetic jackpot with the Master Race. I did the "colors" pond, with the three initial clumps of food, and deleted the random swimmers. Into each food clump, I placed ten copies of the winner of a given pond. The Master Race ate all it's food, then zoomed across and ate half the food of the swastika-shaped guys. The two-legged strokers got a bit of a foothold while the swastikas were going down, but it didn't do them much good in the end.

We should get everyone playing this, and post the save files of individual swimmer species.

Christmas Ninja V 1.3 can turn now- Turn Gene Three works well for quick rotations IMX. Now they just fucking go in the opposite direction. Time to fix that one. Meanwhile, Darwin's orange two-legged mutants are doing better at surviving because they can turn but are less efficient and homogenous. Go team Spaghetti Monster!

Edit- Nevermind that one! Team Darwin's Orange just got totally instantly wiped out by these Green guys stealing their food. Now it's down to Green vs. Blue with these inefficient three-legged bowtie shapes. WTF happened so quick? Did Orange burn itself out by eating all the food or something?

MRDOD wrote:Edit- Christmas Ninja V. 1.2 Swarm! I just gen-modified that "Doctor Octopus" species to become red-and-green swimming machines, and then sent eight fo them in formation into the pond. Let's see if my Intelligent Design skills can defeat Darwin at his own game...

Edit- I am no God. How do you get the little bastards to figure out the "turn to eat or mate" idea?

My gene-splicing Kung Fu is weak. I can turn a completely retarded swimmer into one that can at least move around a little, but my best creations still get owned by anything that's had time to evolve on it's own.

MRDOD wrote:Edit- Nevermind that one! Team Darwin's Orange just got totally instantly wiped out by these Green guys stealing their food. Now it's down to Green vs. Blue with these inefficient three-legged bowtie shapes. WTF happened so quick? Did Orange burn itself out by eating all the food or something?

Populations sometimes "eat themselves into a corner" so to speak. Once they hit the wall, there's a wide swath of emptiness behind them, and they starve to death.

With four legs it seems that high Turning will allow you to execute turns. Christmas Ninja V 1.5 can now survive on its own and a colony of 8 has been established. Hopefully Darwin will take it from here, as I'm much more efficient and fast at everything but turning...

After my Red (and Green) Terrors evolve enough to extinct the pool, I'll post a save file.

Edit- Colony Alpha is also interbreeding with the Greens so I expect I just lost my advantage, but the Geneered Ninjae will pwn your Master Race once I'm done with them.

Excellent. I plan to create a standard "Garden of Eden" but erase all the random swimmers. Then I'll drop in ten Christmas Ninjas and ten of the Master Race, and see what happens.

I'll probably get superior numbers and form a small colony, and your Master Race will spread thin and eventually suffocate me from food once I lost the area I've enveloped. Still working on speed to counter that, purging all mutations I don't like that I can see (Color change, three legs, and others have been cleansed. Praise the Emperor.). I spit on your Darwinist Master Race.

Edit- Hah! Green Swimmers interbreeding with my Ninja has caused them to lose the function of their legs (movement genes must be dependant upon number of legs). It's like sexual warfare- we have the perfect color to interbreed with them and cripple them with mongrel offspring.

MRDOD wrote:Edit- Colony Alpha is also interbreeding with the Greens so I expect I just lost my advantage, but the Geneered Ninjae will pwn your Master Race once I'm done with them.

The Master Race is a veteran of combat with multiple pond-winning species. Hell, neither of the other two "winner" species knew what the hell hit them. I just started a basic Garden of Eden, wiped the random swimmers, and dropped in five MR. They hit the population cap of 400 within the first 6000 ticks.

LordShaithis wrote: The Master Race is a veteran of combat with multiple pond-winning species. Hell, neither of the other two "winner" species knew what the hell hit them. I just started a basic Garden of Eden, wiped the random swimmers, and dropped in five MR. They hit the population cap of 400 within the first 6000 ticks.

I'm still working on this, but I have the advantage of directed purpose. I may not be the most competant God, but I am a God nonetheless.

Though some things are out of the question like changing the limbs, I've been infusing the sucessful four-legged members of other pond-members for some hybred vigor, and now they are leaving the old, weak, and slow behind in the hunt for new food areas. A few ponds growing their own races for me to copy the genetic ideas from and in the case of four-leggers interbreed and who knows what will happen?

Edit- The Christmas Ninja now outnumber the food supply in their quadrant and only the fastest can race to the sparse food sources. Evolution in action- the fastest one has been cloned and named "V1.5".

I just threw five MR and ten of the #2 race into a blanked Garden of Eden. By the time the population hit the cap around 5000 ticks, the MR outnumbered the opposition 2 to 1. Muahahaha.

I'm not even going to bother to ask how they can breed that fast and not, like, light on fire from the friction. Do you have the save file?

A purple race has arisen from some mutation in the former blues. They seem faster and more efficient than mine. That's sad- I was just one-upped by a first-generation pool. Assimilate and conquer, little friends. Those purples seem like a weaker "Master Race"- fast as hell but not as awesome looking as mine.

Edit- Interesting. I started a Colors game with 10 Purple Race, 10 Christmas Ninja, and however many gigantic mutant yellows they give you in the middle. By 400 Ticks 200 Purple Race were migrating into Yellow Territory, where they ate every single piece of food, killing the primitive yellows. The Christmas mostly multipled within their own sphere during the same time. Hopefully crossbreeding will preserve whatever made the Purples so fast.

PM me your email address and I'll send you a sample of the MR.

I've been trying to engineer a species of swimmer by crossbreeding successful races, but so far the MR is so dominant that my attempts make no difference. I erased the random swimmers from a "colors" map and filled each food cluster with one of my three "winning" races, making sure each was a different primary color so they wouldn't intermix. The MR dominated easily.

Then I went ahead and did it again, but made them all solid red, so they would interbreed. By rights this should have made the two-leggers twice as attractive to mates, and the swastikas four times as attractive. When I came back from eating dinner, the MR was all that was left. If the existence of the other two created so much as a blip in it's genetic history, I certainly didn't notice.

Sent. The Purple are going to be Christmas Colored for Victory, but they actually killed every single one of the original Ninja V 1.5 within 16000 Ticks. I'm crushed that my Intelligent Design skills were unable to defeat Darwin.

Email sent!

I've found that if you go to the Sample Pond titled "Eels" you'll see what amounts to a blue-colored Master Race which breeds a bit more slowly. (Which I've discovered isn't necessarily bad.) So I've take a sample Eel, and gone to a Colors map.

In each food clump I placed 4 MR and 4 Eels together. Then I changed their colors so that all the swimmers in the first clump were blue, both Eel and MR. Then I made the second clump all yellow, and the third all red.

Thus not only will they interbreed, but they'll do so three times, and the products of these unions will have to duke it out. Once I have a winner, I'll put it into another Colors map versus the pure Eels and pure MR, and see what I get.

All right, Colors trial. 10 Purple Race on the left, 10 Master Race on the right, and between them for fun are 10 Christmas Ninja V1.5.

10000 Ticks- Master Race has about 1.5x the Purple Race's numbers, pop-cap hit long ago. Master Race is eating Christmas' food, who breed extremely fast due to their relative slowness. Not as fast as the Master Race, of course (this is due to the MR's speed and turn rate, which their efficient body structure allows them to right away eat and then breed repeatedly. Otherwise they are not that different from the Purple.) Purple have started dying because the Msater Race is taking all their food now that both hae eaten their circles.
16000T- Christmas extinct. Amazingly, a random mutation produced a Red Master Race, who interbred with my Christmas Swimmers. There are many red ones and a single Christmas Master Race, but for the most part their interbreeding just made mongrol offpsring who died from crippling genetic problems. Purple are now maybe 20% of the population, plus a few of their blue offspring. Amazingly again there's been a color-mutated MR apparantly because many of the Purple now have yellow stripes and there are Purple Master Race going about.
20000T- There's only a few Purple left, but damn are they good at trying to survive. I took two samples after making sure they weren't crossbreeds (not to infringe upon your genetic copyright, of course).
22800T- Last Purple Race, a crippled degenerate who luckily spawned on a food pellet, dies.
Smalled for space.

The Purple Race were only a 1st Generation Pool Winner, who couldn't even defeat my Christmas Ninja without effort. Amazing that they survived so long.

The reason why Purple Race is slightly less efficient, I have discovered, is that their two legs do a reverse frog swim sort of move. This propels them very fast, but is less efficient for turning and does not give constant motion like the Master Race (it takes time to move the legs forward for another stroke).

However, I am rectifying this with Purple Race V1.1, who are currently colored orange and outperform the Purple by a margin fo about 10%. The survivng oranges will be recolored and faced off again with your Master Race and then the survivors of that will face off with the Purple Race V1.1 ("Orange") repeatedly until I have conquered your evil yellow spermoids.

Victory for the Master Race!

It's strange though. The MR emerged from a relatively short game, and is for all intents and purposes a first-generation winner. I mucked them around with some of the other races, but never saved the result. After all, those other two races sucked, so why let their polluted genes in?

Anyway, my three colonies of MR/Eel hybrids are still going at it. I think it's too even a match to end in extinction, but I'll let it go a while and pull samples of whoever has the biggest population.

EDIT: Coming up on 64k ticks and yellow is about to go extinct.

My Orange-Purple match was interrupted rudely when the Purples started producing 2/3rds Blue mutants who were faster than either. They've currently ripped the Orange a new asshole (so to speak) so I assume they're better than the weak purples.

Funny how stuff like that happens when you least expect it.

Edit- I was able to alter the overall Purple-Orange-Blue Race's movement genes to create a more efficient frogstroke movement. Geneering strikes again! Time to see if the Master Race approves.

Holy shit. Team Orange For Teh Win!
Populations as of 400 Ticks, Approximated
Orange: 220+ (!)
Master Race: 150 (?!)
Purple-Blues: 50 (Not my fault, the subject I geneered had a turning defect so now they all swim in circles. Who cares, though? Orange is pwning!)

Coming up on 75k ticks and blue is on the verge of total victory. Next it's these hybrids versus the MR and Eels, to see if that crossbreeding did them any good.

LordShaithis wrote:Coming up on 75k ticks and blue is on the verge of total victory. Next it's these hybrids versus the MR and Eels, to see if that crossbreeding did them any good.

Hah, as I said above it's 500 Ticks and the Purple Race V1.1 ("Orange") outnumber the Master Race significantly already. Limit was hit just a second ago.

Send me a specimen? I have the MR, Eels, and MR/Eel hybrids going at it on a Colors map right now. The MR jumped out to an early lead, eating their circle and scattering. The Eels are oddly subdued, and in last place. The Hybrids are in the middle.

Ah, I just checked in on them, mid-post...

The Hybrids have eaten part of the Eels circle and taken the lead, while the MR is scattered and starving. I think they breed too fast. They multiply in huge numbers, then eat all their food and starve in that interval between hitting the artificial population cap, and the first mass of deaths that clear the way for more breeding.