Summer Scholarship Programme Project Proposal

This project is based on an existing SCOPE proposal to develop an ALife demonstrator. The SSP proposal seeks to take some existing code and extend it to produce a prototype demonstrator.

The current code is written in C++/DirectX for a Windows Platform. It has a simple 2D world inhabited by "Monsters" which can breed, mixing genetic material. The world and the monsters evolve over time and the results can be studied. What we want to do is turn this into a prototype demonstartor which will be fun, intuitive and informative for the target audience of high school students.

A few of the following possible extensions will be implemented (implementing them all would lead to a complete demonstrator as outlined in the SCOPE proposal):

• refactor code to separate world engine, creature engine, world renderer and creature renderer.
• allow arbitary speeding up of simulation
• make the world a reactive and adaptive system, introduce environmental factors (e.g. temperature) maybe based on DaisyWorld idea?
• make the genetic evolution of child creatures more apparent (e.g. use of coloured spots/patterns on skin)
• allow specific creatures to be loaded / saved / distributed via the web
• allow users to set individual genes / traits
• introduce learning into individual creatures (will AVIDA system work?)
• allow users to "program" creatures
• introduce predators.
• introduce creature tracking / logging
• extend the interaction with the environment (poisons, nutrients, shelter)
• introduce communication between creatures
• improve the visual display (full 3D)
• extend to run in massively distributed environment (e.g. over web).

Week 6 - Refactor and document code
Weeks 7/8/9 - Implement extensions
Week 10 - Report

C++. Interests in AI, ALife and graphics rendering preferred.

basic HPC.

access to a PC running Windows, Visual Studio.

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