rednuht

That's every time the legs switch places. Without that bonus, you'd get a lot of QWOP-ish individuals dragging one foot behind. :)

Thanks, I'll look into it!

The genome is represented by a set of parameters that control the rotation speed on each joint, 3 parameters per joint.

The rotation speed for each joint on each simulation step is given by:

  x * cos(y + z * simulation_steps);

where x, y, and z are the parameters. I've experimented with more sophisticated models, but it was hard to get any kind of evolution in the attention span people give to a browser game. :D

Good point!

The genome is pretty simple, just a few motor parameters for each joint in the body.

3 floats for each joint, to be precise. Then those are combined to set the speed of the motor in each joint on every simulation step.

I tried more complex genomes, but it just takes way too long to get any kind of improvement. It didn't make for a fun casual browser experience. :)

It's quite hard to get any better than 10 or so steps, luck starts playing a major role after a while.

Some gait branches seem to reach a dead-end where any improvement would need to come from a major overhaul of the gene combination instead of small mutations.

The terrain starts to get more variation as the distance increases, so that's another piece of evil against the walkers. :D Maybe I should turn that off.

I've let it run for a couple of days. I don't think I got past 12 steps, but it looked pretty regular walking for a while. :)