An ecosystem project.

Ok, so we have this scripting language.

And we have tons upon tons of literature on the subject of "artificial life" floating about on the internet.

Why not... combine the two?

I've seen limited instances of it... "ducks" floating randomly about in a pool, for instance. Floating flying fish that reproduce. Heck, even randomly flocking "birds" that hover around a point.

What we need in SL is an entire ecosystem. A simple one, to be sure... but we need one.

For instance. You start off with an object that resembles a "plant". It sits on public property. You could make it "feed" off of user clicks. When enoough people have walked by and "clicked" the flower, it multiplies. It would send a "seed" off into the world to seek out more public land, and then it lands.

There. We now have the beginnings of an eco-system.

Going farther than that... say we made a flying "bird" that just flitted about up in the sky, happily flying around. It could then feed on the multiplying "plants". After eating so many plants, it could then "multiply."

Then, maybe, make a water plant that eats the birds. And then fish that float around in water, eating the water plants.

And so on.

You could amke a group to pay for prim costs and foster further ecological development.

Any takers? this is a WONDERFUL idea

Flowers could also have a built-in limit of reproducing say, once an hour.

Alternatively, clicks could be only one-per-person before spawning a seed.

I'd like to help with the programming

I think the plants should live off sunlight, the calculation is simple enough, if we can figure out the height of the clouds.

We'll also need an object that keeps track of the amount of creatures. People could donate money into this object, and the object AI will calculate tax and prim costs and control reproduction and death through giving creatures permission to reproduce and killing off the oldest when needed.

This way it won't get out of control and will also be easy for everyone to keep going.

All my help would have to wait a bit, still sorting out payment for my account, and I'll have to make a deal with my brothers which allows them to do their downloads, but also allows me to play SL. (I can play SL while they are downloading, but this increases lag, creating difficulties to move around and such)

Id love to be a part of this.

There are some problems with your idea though.

Public land -> plant/animal prims decay to public -> scripts inside those prims die.

prims multiplying -> $10 per prim -> a very very very poor plant owner.

I think a lot of people want to do this! I made a mouse hole that mice come out of. Eventually they will eat cheese and when they eat enough they will reproduce. I'd also like to throw in cats that will chase them.

Regarding prim costs, yes, it will cost money, but it's possible to limit the size of the ecosystem to your budget. For instance, you could set a limit on how many mice you want.

Well, this post didn't say too much, but I am interested!

Lordfly bumped this idea off me last night; I am very keen on it.

To that end I will be forming a group for those intested, underwriting land and non-absurd prim costs for the project until at least 25-Dec-03. Insofar as there are binding commitments in SL, consider this one.

The group "alife" has been created with open enrollment. I am not a dictatorial type and will sort out officer/members as we get established.

This should be fun.

This sort of thing has been my idea from the start, as in it's my great plan for SL to have living creatures.

If you do create living creatures I suggest that the scripts be open source, so that we can make our own animals if we want, that will interact with this group's animals.

How long before someone makes a human animal that will spend all day polluting the land, air and water for the other animals and also randomly shooting them?

Public land i'm taking into account that the flowers and such will "die", that is, go public. If they go public, I'm sure someone will claim them, and they'll be removed from the ecosystem. It prevents overpopulation.

If flowers were able to pollinate on owned land, and said person disappeared, we'd have an out-of-control ecosystem costing hojillions of dollars

It will start small, of course... I imagine we could design systems to seek out flowers and "evolve" their scripts as necessary.

LF

Wouldn't their growth be limited by the money remaining in the disapeared person's account, and since they would be owned by that person they would be removed after the lapsed account grace period?

That aside, if something you own goes public you don't get your money back, do you? And with the state of land ownership and relative scarcity of land in some areas, and cramped object limits in other areas, it might not be a good idea to let these things propagate across the world.

Sorry, I meant the land-owner. If he isn't around to delete the offending flower (which I imagine most people would), it would sit there forever, collecting clicks and multiplying.

Putting it on public land also prevents the flowers from interefering with people's houses/buildings/projects. It would be silly to log in one day and find your office building covered in flowers

And, as a prim note... I would take pains to use as few prims as possible. Plus, I'm sure us in the alife group that Malachi formed could delete flowers that offend wacky prim-eaters

LF

Oh, Eggy that sounds like Ultima Online. LOL

Just to address some concerns expressed above, at the start this project will have a sandbox/terarium/biodome to which all creatures will be constrained. We shall not loose autonomous objects onto the world until extremely well tested and reviewed. Having been in world the night of the self-replicating flying fish plauge, I shan't let that mess happen again.

This does not in anyway refute Lordfly's big picture posts above; it merely says we shall be quite careful in our execution and release.

A very interesting idea , I'd love to see how it works out.


lol not really related but I was reading this post and remembered this lol .. but with prim limits I guess this won't be a problem

I am pleased to report that this project has reached critical mass.

As of this evening we have received a staggeringly generous private donation, have purchased a "sandbox", have had numerous offers of even more fiscal support and have even positively piqued the interest of some Lindens (LL endorsement or support not to be implied... yet .

Work over the next few days will concentrate on the creation of an ugly website for collaboration and some inter-entity communication protocol specifications.

More news will be posted shortly. Thanks so much for the support that has already been offered.

Mouse farm is coming along well

secondlife://Rose/188/137

LF, you have the best ideas!

If you're interested in having someone help with the appearance of the plant life, and if you're not set on naturalistic styles, I'd like to contribute.

This is a really neat idea.

Thanks for the offer. Indeed, Lordfly and I were lamenting our joint lack of ability in this department just last night. Please feel welcome to join group "alife"; it is free and open enrollment.

Great idea! I've been interested in this kind of thing for years, and played with genetic algorithms and other alife type stuff a little bit on and off.

Just joined the group this morning, not sure if I'll have the skill or time to contribute much, but I'd like to at least keep up with what you guys are doing, and contribute whatever I can.

Same here - I'll be joining the group tonight!

When we get the ability to modify notecards via script, we can get some proper genetic-algorithm-bred creatures! THAT will be cool!

Well Mal, I'm disappointed you didn't IM me and tell me about this project. That's what I get for being busy RW! lol I definietly would like to be a part of this project, and would be more than willing to offer some of the SL National Park for testing as well. Additionally, I have skills for building and texturing and am already working towards this goal in my own way. I cannot however support the taxes of an open group with such potential. I am already taxed heavily by the Park, so HOW CAN I HELP?

HigPro, Birdman

I realized that my webhost was ASP/IIS based only after thinking I'd have a mini-bbs running in no time. There will be a static site for annoucement up tommorow. URL will be comming via IM.

Thanks for the offers of support and for those who have already signed on. I expect that how folks can contribute will be much more clear after I finish the proposed outline for project staging.

We do have our artist on board already (Thanks, Fallingwater) and Rhysling's work is interesting; things are moving.

Now if we could only get that Malachi slacker moving....

N.B. The reson for moving the alife group communications off the forums was not for secrecy, but rather to keep project junk from littering the SL forums. Any interested party, please IM me for project URL.

I don't think its necessary to kill the parent when it reproduces. However, I think its a good idea to split the parent's health between itself and the child.

Initially when a mouse reproduced it lost 50 health and the child had full 100 health. I felt that the mice were 'cheating' by constantly reproducing with other with little effort. Now the health is 50/50 between the parent and child so no health is gained by the system. The mice offspring have to work hard and eat cheese if they want to reproduce.

I'm on board with a vengeance. I was asking at a newbie meeting the other night if there were any autonomous agents in SL and all I got was blank looks from folks. This is great stuff and I was already working on some simple stuff of my own along these lines.

I'll look up the group this evening and nose around.