http://www.swimbots.com/


It's time to challenge the laws of survival of the fittest! To separate the microorganisms from the... slightly more successful microorganisms! And then, to pit them in heated battle against the foul creations of your fellow Forumites! This... is...


GENE POOL!


The idea behind this game/simulation is that your computer randomly generates microbes called "swimbots" that swim around in their own little aquatic environment. The swimbots have two directives: to eat, and to mate. Each time a pair of swimbots mates, they produce offspring that contains some of their genetic code - sometimes the offspring will take after one parent, or some combination of both. There is always a chance of mutation with each new generation. This mutation may be beneficial (ie, a new appendage that makes swimming easier or more energy efficient), or it might gimp the swimbot up completely (by changing the gene that gives it 2 efficient swimming arms to give it 7 or 8 useless swimming arms that flail about pointlessly).

Mating also depletes the swimbots' energy, passing it onto the new offspring. To replenish energy, they have to eat food (represented by the little green balls). If a swimbot can't get to food before it runs out of energy, it will die - and so will its genetic material! If a swimbot is able to find a mate, mate successfully, and then replenish its energy to mate again, it has a better chance of passing on its genetic material.

After a time, you will start to see a dominant species arising in your little gene pool. Once that happens, you can take part in the tourney! This is how it will work: participants will send me their swimbot file (I'll explain how to do that in a bit), and once I have 4 of you, the competition will start. You can load up to 4 custom swimbots per pool. I will create an empty pool (just bits of food), and then load a breeding pair of swimbots in four different corners of the pool. The simulation will run for a half-hour or so, at which point I will attempt to determine which species is the dominant one.

If I get a bunch of swimbots, we can even have a multi-tier tournament! Won't that be exciting?

The prize for winning is a smug sense of self-satisfaction.


Here's how to send a swimbot:

First, select your favourite swimbot (I chose this guy because the simulation said he was the "oldest virgin," so I figured this would be his only moment of glory:



It will give you some options, like clone, and mutate, etc. Here, you'll want to click "Save," which brings up this dialog box:



Note that these names are fixed - you have to name your swimbot "swimbot*.dna", or else it won't load into the simulation. Once you've saved it though, you can rename your swimbot file, and just rename it to one of the standard filenames when you want to load it back into a later pool, for example.

By default (and I don't think you can even specify otherwise), the swimbot files are saved in the same directory as the genepool.exe file:



When you want to send it to me, just give me a PM, and I'll tell you where to send it (I don't want to give out any functional e-mail addresses publicly). Rename your swimbot file to whatever you like:



...and e-mail it to me. You can also post screenshots of it in the thread if you'd like to intimidate your opponent. Of course, I'll be documenting the competition as it's going along.

Happy evolving!

(Thought about posting this in GQ initially, but it's not much of a game after all - though you can actively try to engineer a super swimbot, either through selective breeding, or by manually dicking around with its genes. In the end, I posted it here and made a competition out of it, and figured I'd need enough people viewing the thread to get the ball rolling, and for people to make their own swimbot.)

Finally, a game as creepy as HappyKitty himself.

How can you be sure that none of the files people send you is a virus?







I am downloading this now. Let the games commence!

Sexy. Downloading now.

I'm going back to recruiting.  My Brown Frond Nodules never managed to mate when I threw two in a blank pool of food.  They actually swim in the opposite direction they are trying to go.  It was kind of heartbreaking, really.

My creature is ready for competition!



http://i363.photobucket.com/albums/oo79/ginenbijnoam/infestedpool.jpg (margin rape)

I love the little recurring mutations that pop up every now and again. Especially the creature that appears about once every 20 matings, which has three body parts. Torso, Mouth, and Genitals. You can grab em, and fling em, and they'll coast along at a pretty good clip just eating and fucking anything in their path, endlessly, with almost 0 effort. That's what I want to do when I grow up.

You can see a good example of this in noam's link, the little black line with no legs and a hungry mouth. If it weren't for the fact that you have to actually get them started, they would be the best creature ever.

I had to start my gene pool again.  I thought that by creating really harsh conditions where there was hardly any food, and where the food that there was gave the swimbots hardly and health, the swimbots would have to evolve to be really hardcore.  Instead they all just gradually died.

So while my pool was basically just full of (fairly successful if dull) pink and orange worms I went to take a shower, and when I return I find that the pool is basically empty with the population and food gone right down all of a sudden.


Turns out its the work of this fellow (try to ignore his massive erection)


I seem to have created a terrible monster that just swims around and eats everything and has sex lots and in the process destroys the entire ecosystem leading to the extinction of both itself and every other species. As you can imagine, I am quite proud of them.

As a further test I started a new pool and introduced a pair into the centre. Once again, they successfully destroyed absolutely everything even faster then the last time:


Also I like graphs.

Do they have a creationist version of this game?  I don't have billions of years to wait around for beings that are capable of worship.  However, I do have the next seven days clear as long as I can have the seventh day to just veg.

-God