****************************************
EVOLUTION
(c)1994 by Tom Hollander
****************************************
Installation
------------
Make sure you have the file VBRUN300.DLL in your
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM directory. Copy the file EVOLVE.EXE
and this file EVOLVE.TXT wherever you want and run it.
If only everything was this easy!
History
-------
This program has a somewhat interesting history. The
original idea, I am told, came from Richard Dawkins'
book, "The Blind Watchmaker" (not that I've read it!).
At the time, my mother was inspired and wrote the
program in LOGO on our Texas Instruments TI-99/4A (a
good computer for its day!)
Last year, remembering the program, and also wanting
to play with Visual Basic's graphics facilities, I
decided to port the program to Windows.
However, since the program is based on "trees", I had
to rewrite LOGO for VB. More on that below...
What does it do?
----------------
Evolution is not a very good name, I just called it
that since the original was.
Evolution is really a game about artificial selection.
The little V shapes you see at the start of the program
are trees. Each tree has (I think) eight "genes" which
can have a number of values. The genes for the trees
include colour, width, branch length, branch angle,
tree depth, branch length ratio, branch angle ratio and
so on.
The tree in the centre of the screen is the parent. The
four trees you see around it are its four children
(asexual reproduction, here!). Each child will have
just one random "gene" set to either one more or one
less than its parent's gene value - hence, there will
be evolution!
As GOD, your role is to choose which child will be the
most successful. You do this by clicking once on the
child you want to be the parent of the next generation.
Note that there may be twins. Note also you can click
on the parent to get a new set of children if you don't
like any of the current batch.
When playing the game you can take any approach you like.
Usually I just choose the most interesting looking trees.
If you prefer you can try to "breed" the trees to look
like something - beetles, frogs and butterflies seem
to come up a lot.
You could also choose a random approach (by always
selecting the top-left child, for instance) for some
sort of simulation of how it might have happened in a
real, random world.
If you breed them too big, they might overlap and become
hard to see. If this happens you should consider breeding
them smaller.
Feel lucky you aren't using the original TI-LOGO version.
It used to come up with an error message, "Out of Ink"
when the trees got too big!
VB Virtual LOGO
---------------
This program was written using my VB virtual LOGO routines.
Please see VIRTLOGO.TXT and LOGO.FRM for info on using
Virual LOGO.
__________________________________________
Tom Hollander
June 1995.
E-mail me at tholland@pcug.org.au.
Visit my web page at http://www.pcug.org.au/~tholland
