Warrior evolution design, and a request for feedback.

Where is your blog ? Link pls ?

Anyway I wrote a evolutioner as well...

But I didn't bother running it... (only shortly)

If anybody wants a binary copy of my evolutioner so they can run it let me
know !

I send all necessary stuff to you, so you can run my evolutioner 24/7 if you
like !

But do let me know the results !

Bye,
Skybuck.

Mine is not so fancy.

First it makes random warriors to start with, then it mixes up instructions
after each round, let's them fight and keeps the best ones.

Bye,
Skybuck.

Some further thoughts:

I once read our dna is 99.9% similiar to that of fruit flies and other
creatures.

This could indicate that the majority of dna is either junk... or very
valuable...

Like a basic blueprint for successfull live...

What makes us different is maybe simply a few parameters.

So here is maybe an idea:

Analyze all successfull existing warriors, put all their instructions into a
database table or something like that.

Then try to creature new creatures from that.

Or maybe make a super creature for all creatures and let it evolve...

Or maybe find common instructions among all creatures.

Maybe there are golden rules/golden instructions which most successfull
warriors share/have

Bye,
Skybuck.

For some people, once we’ve discovered the existence of GAs and
Corewars, it almost goes without saying that we must try to combine
them.

A few suggestions:

Give representation a lot of thought. Object code is very brittle:
small random mutations tend to be lethal. You can choose to just live
with the brittleness. You can pick a representation more like the way
people write warriors, using macros and labels and such. You can make
more sophisticated evolutionary operators, which are designed to be
less disruptive. Something in keeping with the design in the blog
would be to incorporate a smart repair algorithm.

Give individual warriors real names, not just strings of numbers and
letters. IIRC Sys4 used a hangman’s list of words. In Redrace, I used
a spell check dictionary. When the warriors in the population had
pronounceable names, I suddenly cared much more about their fates.
(People are irrational creatures.)

Include an optional background process that grabs random warriors in
the population and displays them running in graphics mode. That way,
when your population learns a new trick, you’ll get a visual cue.

- Dave Hillis

> Give representation a lot of thought. Object code is very brittle:
> small random mutations tend to be lethal. You can choose to just live
> with the brittleness. You can pick a representation more like the way
> people write warriors, using macros and labels and such. You can make
> more sophisticated evolutionary operators, which are designed to be
> less disruptive. Something in keeping with the design in the blog
> would be to incorporate a smart repair algorithm.

A method I've been thinking about a lot is splitting existing warriors
into objects. But there are a lot of things you'll need to give as
input and need to take care of, for example:

- Pointers inside the object-block: They can't change/will change the
object itself
- Bombing distances/step sizes etc: The evolver can savely evolve
those variables
- Size variables: For example in a boot-object-block, it needs to boot
other objects (so it needs to point towards other blocks, and know its
size)
- Processes-input: Some blocks only work in 1 process, others in 8,
others in N
- Pointers to the outside: Used for coupling blocks together
- Process-output: How much processes will be outputted to those output
blocks
- Much more...

If you have a decent way to write down these aspects you can convert
known warriors into a format that can be used by a mixing evolver. It
will take working parts of warriors and create new ones, with new
variables and steps. Using this kind of evolver its much more likely
to get a decent warrior. It'll be a small step for this kind of
evolver to take a qscan, paper and booter to make a good warrior.

I know some other people (Will?) played with this kind of evolver,
having objects rather then simple lines of code. Also, this kind of
evolver can be combined with the line-based-evolver to create new
objects.

Have more people thought about this?

Roy

Dreams:
-evolver running in memory and only access HD to save at specified
interval.
-option to benchmark against hill or pure dynamic (fighting in a pool)
-option to add/feed external warrior at anytime
-ability to detect steady state / reaching local optima and do
something about it

Check out this site: http://www.corewar.info/evolve.htm

P. Kline