(Darwin Pond) Master Race gets OWNED!

[LordShaithis]

Original thread about this game HERE.

Recently I've gotten back into Darwin Pond again. When I started it back up, I couldn't find any of my old DNA files, and I mistakenly believed that I must have deleted them. Undeterred, I bred three or four fresh swimmer variants. One of them was a little blue strain similar to the old Master Race.

Well I had done enough tinkering with one-limbed eating machines last time around, so I named this race Blue, saved a sample without much testing, and gave it no further thought. Eventually, I found my old DNA files tucked away in a folder and decided I didn't need two visually identical races. Thus I put the Blues up against the Master Race, expecting the Blues to die so I could delete them without feeling like I was missing anything.

Holy shit. The Master Race used to win by outbreeding the competition, but by the time the population cap was reached in this match, the Blues outnumbered the MR by a margin of 3 to 1. I've NEVER seen a species of swimmer breed so damned rapidly. The Blues actually managed to swim over and eat part of the MR's food circle, which has never happened before. Usually it's the MR doing that to everyone else.

The Master Race managed to rally and seize the lead during the Blues post-expansion population crash, but it was a brief and narrow lead only. By 45k ticks, the MR had been depopulated to the point of irrelevance. By the 60k mark, the Master Race was extinct.

Last time around there were a couple of MR-variants that might eke out a victory over the original if you let them sit long enough, but mostly that was a matter of two nearly-identical races having a 50/50 chance against each other. But this... THING... just marched out and beat the shit out of the Master Race in dominating fashion.

In honor of this victory, I'm renaming the Blue race. From now on, it's name is Explosivo. Below is it's save data. Use it at your own peril, for it is Death Incarnate.

0.136932
0.669707
0.551300
0.811493
0.058441
0.190704
0.050812
0.437225
0.129774
0.631805
0.675690
0.090881
0.659527
0.330170
0.679656
0.054291

[Adrian Laguna]

I've been playing it just now, and there is something that bugs me. I can't get out of the Swimmer Engineering menu. I go and make some kick-ass swimmers but can't return back to the pond. It's really annoying.

[HSRTG]

Bad news O great lord. Explosivo has been de-crowned. Ironically, it was a version of MR you helped create. I have it saved as "Jog/Shaith's MR tweak".

Your Explosivo managed to get a slight (and I DO mean slight) advantage in numbers, but when Explosivo ate through it's food it lost the advantage never to regain it. When the tweak's food "Garden of Eden" went out, it lost a few unlucky souls, but nothing major. Poor Explosivo was almost dead by 50k, but the last one died at around 55k.

0.073914
0.522095
0.775269
0.250458
0.447906
0.480437
0.025867
0.261169
0.720356
0.370117
0.934723
0.706632
0.322211
0.547391
0.399800
0.000000

So far this race has been the best in my experience, managing to wipe out anything and everything that's been thrown at it. Good luck beating your own uber race .

[Straha]

I've been playing recently my most interesting pond had three species develop, one was a Singlie Limbed Species, another was a red single limbed formed by the children of a few red randoms I threw in and the Blues, and the third was the einey species called at first because of the rainbow colour they had, the name stuck because though they swam when hungry they seemed to have no sex drive at all.

In any case my Red species has, so far, out developed the blue species by a considerable amount. But the red and blues have inter-bred creating a green species which looks like it might outproduce the blues, but probably not the reds.

edit: Blue's DNA

Code: Select all

0.027496
0.968384
0.735291
0.292419
0.668121
0.096537
0.023895
0.287587
0.918365
0.744293
0.659637
0.970093
0.661804
0.840057
0.990816
0.152130

[/size]

[Sriad]

I just started with Darwin's Pond with this topic. I'm going to spend some time breeding my own creatures, then see them get destroyed by the beasts posted here.

(Is the original Master Race's DNA recorded in the old thread? I just skimmed the first few pages for breeding techniques.)

[HSRTG]

Is the original Master Race's DNA recorded in the old thread? I just skimmed the first few pages for breeding techniques.

Yes, it is, two or three pages in, but for conveniance (sp?) I'll post it here.

0.073914
0.522095
0.775269
0.250458
0.447906
0.480437
0.025867
0.261169
0.215597
0.370117
0.934723
0.706632
0.322211
0.252053
0.399800
0.000000

[wautd]

Just gave it a try, very good fun and I'm definatly going to continue in finding an uberrace

0.136932
0.669707
0.551300
0.811493
0.058441
0.190704
0.050812
0.437225
0.129774
0.631805
0.675690
0.090881
0.659527
0.330170
0.679656
0.054291

How do you add this dna data?

edit: I think i found it out how to change DNA. How do I load them in the game?

[OmegaGuy]

To load them save it as a notepad file with the extention the game uses and then load it.

[wautd]

To load them save it as a notepad file with the extention the game uses and then load it.

Strange, when i try to save a swimmer I can't (grey text) (same with loading a swimmer for that matter)

I'll look in to it tomorrow (2:30 am right now, sleepy time)

[OmegaGuy]

That's weird, it works for me.

[wautd]

Oic, you have to do it with the test tubes

*slaps forehead*

[Sriad]

The way I've been importing DNA data is copying an existing DNA file, editing it in Notepad, saving normally (not save-as) then re-naming the file to, say, Master Race or Explosivo, allowing it to retain the DNA file designation.

Haven't come up with any real winners of my own yet, just tossed those two into a Colors garden of eden.

Edit: The really remarkable thing about Explosivo, it seems to me, is the blast of speed it gains when it turns around.

[Duckie]

I still maintain that the best swimmer has a single limb, and can move with a burst of speed to quickly grab a single spot of food and turn around to mate within its own ball easily. They eat the shell out, and then can move over to the enemy ball.

It's the only possible design to be had. Purple and its lesser cousin Christmas Ninja are interesting, especially Christmas Ninja's completely artificial design from a fresh garden of eden, but my ideas are completely outclassed by the efficiently of the sea-snake, sperm, and single tail designs.

[wautd]

Presenting my design: the Twits

0.371776
0.553652
0.374032
0.543829
0.901740
0.476045
0.036219
0.447757
0.770029
0.637196
0.627273
0.336080
0.778013
0.578263
0.399800
0.200000

They became dominant in the garden of eden. Havn't got tested them against the other ones yet tough

edit: a lot of times when i try to load another dna code i get the error "invalid genetic data". What am I doing wrong?

[LordShaithis]

I've been mucking around with multi-limbed swimmers exclusively, having pretty much burned out on the whole "Look, I changed two genes in the Master Race and I think it's even better!" thing. So I'll start a fresh GoE, let it churn for a few minutes, and then hover overhead deleting every one-limber in sight. This is usually sufficient to keep them from getting a foothold.

Other times, I'll start a fresh GoE and delete all the swimmers. Then I'll drop in single specimens of various species, all changed to the same color so as to facilitate mating. Since there are no two of the same kind, no single strain can take over. I've bred a few different species this way, but none of them terribly interesting. The most noteworthy is one I've simply dubbed Freak. It looks like it should be a four-legger along the lines of Christmas Ninja, but it only has three legs. Yet somehow it succeeds. Not only that, but adding a fourth leg actually decreases it's effectiveness slightly.

0.737396
0.666446
0.726105
0.392819
0.475113
0.573914
0.765259
0.626984
0.000427
0.680385
0.521606
0.360220
0.084625
0.436340
0.797335
0.126912

[wautd]

Got it running for the whole day now. My own species was in competition with another one for five hours in a row untill mine killed the other one. 3 hours later I come back to see my race is getting bitchslapped by a mutated strain that came out of nowhere

[The Aliens]

edit: a lot of times when i try to load another dna code i get the error "invalid genetic data". What am I doing wrong?

ake sure there aren't any spaces at the ends of your lines, that there aren't any line breaks, and that everything has the same (correct) number of digits. And make sure your file is *.dna.

[ArmorPierce]

My first and most powerful species, Eel Massacre v1.1

0.054437
0.999908
0.504580
0.296914
0.479014
0.965964
0.880238
0.043326
0.865753
0.641296
0.455397
0.880054
0.452092
0.547391
0.729179
0.006968

[Adrian Laguna]

I've been running a Pond for 4.7 million ticks now. It is my first real pond, second pond I've run for a length of time, and fourth pond total. I haven't interfered directly with their genetic structure, but on occasion I will do a Purge, which is basically a major change in the environment. Anything but two leggers were eliminated long, long ago. We're talking at around the 100k mark. Right now I've got purple, orange, and yellow swimmers in more or less equal numbers, and splotches of red and green. Almost no blues.

This is the first time that I've got such a large variety of color, before I had one dominant color and a smaller sub-color. There have been many fluctuations, they were Red first, but they slowly mutated into Orange. A purple strain arose during a purge, and they would have taken over is most of them hadn't been in the wrong place when I engaged in another purge. Orange dominated almost completely until I reset the stats to the default, every slider in the middle. That caused a population explosion (despite the fact that I was actually lowering food production), and many groups appeared. I upped food production later, causing all this diversity. Interestingly enough, the latest purge, while nuking their numbers down it actually increased diversity.

With three slots to the left of maximum food production I have: Swimmer numbers hovering around 240-260 and food moving up and down between ~250 and ~300.

[ArmorPierce]

Something that I've noticed. I think that single limbed species are far superior to multi legged ones. Multi leg ones are too slow and take too long to turn and uses up to much energy. multi legged pond winners are no match for single legged pond winners. Just now the single legged sub species kicked the multi legged mother species ass.

[Adrian Laguna]

Define, 'slow'. My two leggers, at maximum zoom, can make it from one end of the screen to the other in 6 seconds. Another way of putting it, they cover their own body-length in 1.5 seconds.

[ArmorPierce]

From what I saw, the mutli legged species are slower and/or less efficent than their single limbed counter parts.

[Adrian Laguna]

Maybe the multi-legged just need more time to truly shine? I mean, my pond has been going on for 4.9 million ticks now.

I don't know why, but everytime there is some sort of diversity, the Oranges always eventually come out on top. I'm not sure if it is because they outbreed everyone else, or if the group average color is orange, so when they all mix-up Orange emerges the winner.

[MishaMcBride]

Would you post the DNA for your multi legged swimmers? I've been working on a 2 legged strain I call Swish for the exaggerated motion of the tails. I tested them vs MR and they got pwnt, but they won vs Freak in 34k tics. I'd like to see how they measure up with another two legged variant.

0.446972
0.838501
0.160006
0.258026
0.892731
0.521881
0.314091
0.668233
0.759322
0.381317
0.623016
0.321533
0.127716
0.699799
0.666667
0.000000

[wautd]

Got it running for the whole day now. My own species was in competition with another one for five hours in a row untill mine killed the other one. 3 hours later I come back to see my race is getting bitchslapped by a mutated strain that came out of nowhere

Seems my 2-legged Twits prevailed after all. Yay me!