Newsgroups: comp.ai.alife,comp.ai.genetic
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uunet!hearst.acc.Virginia.EDU!murdoch!uvacs.cs.Virginia.EDU!mjd4c
From: mjd4c@uvacs.cs.Virginia.EDU (Michael J. Daniel)
Subject: Re: Genetic Game
Message-ID: <Cz7y6p.EoK@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
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Organization: University of Virginia Computer Science Department
References:  <christian.02rw@darkin.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 13 Nov 1994 18:32:49 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai.alife:1284 comp.ai.genetic:4249

In article <christian.02rw@darkin.demon.co.uk>, christian@darkin.demon.co.uk (Christian Darkin) writes:
> This is a posting about a videogame.
> 
> Remember `Space Invaders`?  Blocks of dumb, stupid aliens coming down the 
> screen at you, waiting to get shot out of the sky.  All you needed to do 
> was blast away at them until they were all gone.  Now imagine if they 
> weren`t identical.  Imagine that each one was slightly different from its`
> brothers.  Those aliens that survived for longest would be the best adapted
> ones.  The slow, the weak, the passive would be the first to be destroyed.
> Only the fittest, the most intelligent would survive.
> 
> And they would survive to breed.  From the last few aliens, the next
> generation would be created.  Slightly stronger.  Slightly faster.  Slightly
> fitter.  The offspring would become the next attackers.  And so on...
> 
> This kind of game would be the perfect environment for experimenting with
> genetic algorithms and artificial intelligence.  After each new generation,
> the resulting new species would be committed to disc so that every time the
> game was played, the evolution would advance.  Over a period of weeks and 
> months of play, natural selection would evolve better and cleverer 
> creatures.  

Have you actually tested this game?
I think the second child to play this game will kill the hardest guys
first, and easily beat the game.

You see, GAs rely on a predictable fitness function.
The children will win simply by changing the rules.
Something the (current) computer is incapable of.


The worst survive, and just get worse.


Wishing you success,
  Michael
