Be Excellent To Each Other

Something slightly distracting for a Friday afternoon:

http://rednuht.org/genetic_cars_2/

Basically randomly generates a group of things that are a bit like cars and sees how well they do over a simple track. Then it does some mutation of the designs to see if it improves things.

Use the random seed BeexIsAwesome so we're all using the same track, and post your best distance!

Is there meant to be something in the big box at the top?

[edit]Ah, I had to refresh the page.

Yup. Lots of 'cars' and a racetrack. Doesn't seem to work in IE. Works great in Safari, not tried in Chrome or FF.

123.71 meters so far!

That hill at 123 meters is a bitch!

148.9m in generation 0!

There's a car-sized hole at 163m which is a right bugger to get past!

I obviously win with the score:

"The Websense category "Social Networking" is filtered."

#1: 159.05 d:154.16 h:-4.18/8.43m (gen 5)

sooo 154 m. Nice!

175 is my max - the track looks like a fucking cheesegrater by then

Yeap. not helping. 164 so far gen 13.

The two plank vertical climb at 154 is getting my lot. One's managed it to limp on till 158 but then apparently bread duffers.

None of my cars can make it over the hill at 123m

There is no hill at 123m. Have you got a space on the end of your seed?

Nope, seed is "BeexIsAwesome"

Do we all have the same track?

I've just restarted with the same seed as before, to see if it changes, but that didn't look like my last track at all.

That's the track I have.

Did you not hit "go" after putting it in, maybe?

and now I have that track. How strange. I'm 99% certain I did hit go.

Hitting "surprise!" speeds up the simulation. I now have distance 177 m:

#1: 179.95 d:177.26 h:-7.19/9.55m (gen 45)

EDIT and now 207:

#1: 212.16 d:207.89 h:-11.26/8.41m (gen 64)

176. Took long enough - had to turn mutation rate right up.

212.56 after leaving it running for the weekend. Oops.

176.97 after 47 generations. My best was at gen 25 though!

I hit 6000-odd generations over the weekend, and my best was at gen 536.

I started again. It's fascinating lowering the mutation rate to 1%, as you get 15 or so 'good' cars all getting a reasonable distance.

Flip me, there's a massive squiggly mountain at 206 that I can't see my current vehicles beating.

I'm determined to beat you though.

Well this has destroyed my productivity for today...176.65 (Gen 24) is the best so far.

I like how in the early generations most of the cars are quite frankly an affront before the eyes of God.

211.95,gen 91

And I don't really think it's feasable to get up the backward spiky mountain at that point.

New challenge!

"BeexIsShit"

141.14 on first gen.

Fell foul of that same little spiky bit at 141, too

And there's a delightful vertical wall at 166.

153.61 Fuck you spiky bit!

#1: 175.88 d:169.6 h:-2.73/6.52m (gen 27)
#2: 175.77 d:169.65 h:-2.73/6.52m (gen 26)
#3: 175.72 d:170.1 h:-2.38/6.08m (gen 34)
#4: 172.89 d:166.69 h:-1.47/6.31m (gen 12)
#5: 172.8 d:166.17 h:-2.02/6.27m (gen 25)

I can't see a way to get across the "Ditch of Doom"

#1: 171.05 d:165.62 h:-2.3/6.03m (gen 3)

186.83 d:181.41 h:-2.53/6.28m (gen 13)

#1: 188.47 d:182.8 h:-2.36/6.5m (gen 77)

Started a new population and got this...

#1: 189.04 d:182.94 h:-2.23/5.76m (gen 18)

bounced over the "Ditch of Doom" only to face the "Cliff of Impossibility"

Left it running over night and the best it could come up with was:

#1: 192.37 d:186.81 h:-1.93/7.08m (gen 409)

#1: 203.48 d:197.98 h:-2.33/7.43m (gen 505)

Then there's some crazy ass cliff thing.

Something I've just seen on Twitter, which isn't entirely off-topic.

http://i.imgur.com/dx7sVXj.jpg

Ha! I remember playing with the AI bots. The AI was good but everyone was creating them they did show odd behavior like this and spaz out quit often. They must use this kind of stuff in more recent games surely?

That's slightly creepy and almost believable.

Yes, it's almost certainly fiction, but still creeped me out a bit.