Hi everyone - its been a long time since I've posted any updates here.
I have been working a lot on the project behind the scenes since releasing the first video earlier this year. After developing it quite a lot, I decided to write an academic paper about the simulation for the International Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE), and it was accepted for an oral presentation! So I travelled to Japan over the summer to meet lots of interesting people working on ALIFE. It was a great time.
I just noticed that the conference had uploaded my presentation to YouTube, so I figured I would share it here. If you can bear my awkward presentation style and a glitchy recording, then go check out the video.
The updated version of the simulation is also available to download as an executable for Windows at the GitHub repo: github.com/DylanCope/ProtoEvo
I am in the process of creating a proper video like the first one that showcases the new mechanics and dives into the biological inspirations, but I have a number of imminent deadlines stopping me from working too much on it.
I'll be going live with @drnphd this coming Sunday the 12th of Februrary (2PM EDT / 7PM GMT) to discuss the simulation!
Come join us to hear about some of the nuts and bolts of the project, where I'm planning on going next, and Dr. N's perspective as a postdoc and lecturer with a focus on molecular biology, gene regulation, genomics.
You can find Dr. N on Twitch, his show is a lot of fun: www.twitch.tv/drnphd
In the past he has also had a chat with Léo from @TheBibitesDigitalLife, and you can check that VOD out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLsxG...
New Release! Alpha Version 0.1.3
The simulation has gotten easier to run, both it terms of installation and performance requirements! Thank you to everyone on the discord for the great feedback, help debugging, and suggestions for quality-of-life improvements. Come join the conversation if you're interested: discord.com/invite/GY5UJxbBnq
You can find the latest release on the GitHub page, along with instructions for installation and tips for getting the best performance: github.com/DylanCope/Evolving-Protozoa
In other news, the video is almost at 100k views and the channel has over 4k subscribers now! I've been blown away by the enthusiasm and interesting discussions that have been started off the back of this project. I'm working on a big update to the simulation for later down the line, and there will be many more videos discussing the fascinating evolutionary biology that I have been reading (spoilers; check-out "Some Assembly Required" by Neil Shubin).
I have been having various discussions across the comment sections about running and developing the simulation. Its a bit of a mess, so someone recommended I start a discord server for the project. If you're interested, join with this link: discord.gg/GY5UJxbBnq
I don't really know what I am doing with discord, but hopefully the basic setup works.
You can run the simulation yourself by downloading it from GitHub!
It requires a bit of technical know-how, but I have provided some instructions to help people get started with it. I've also provided some guidance for running the simulation with poorer performing computers. You can even run it "headless", meaning that you can temporarily disable the graphics entirely and let the simulation run faster for however long you like, and then reenable the UI later and see what has evolved!
By the way, if you cloned the repo recently you may want to pull the code again. I had accidentally left a development version of the project on the master branch that had some issues.
github.com/DylanCope/Evolving-Protozoa
PhD student research scientist studying machine learning. Interested in reinforcement learning, language, and evolutionary computation.