We have decided to avoid I.P addresses and focus on URL data. Stringing URL’s is much more realistic to achieve and offers the same effects as unique I.P addresses ie the data will be processed in the same way.
We have also changed the feeding habits and behaviour patterns of the organism. There will be a built in search function that people can use to search for URL’s, we will then string the URL and convert it to data food for the organism. Depending on how much you feed it determines how big it gets and how happy it is. We also have a type of “learning” thing going on whereby if you dont feed it, it will go in search of food on its own using a memory function, from URL’s visited before.
Growth
How will the growth be visually manifested is an area we are currently looking into. We dont know wether to work in pixels or througha vector image. We have this idea where we draw a cell in vectors and create 4 or 5 points, the coordinates of those points are randomly selected and changed on the x/y axis to ‘morph’ it. The value in which it is changed by depends on its state.
States
The organism will have 2 states:
- Happy
- Unhappy
These states affect how it evolves and behaves. We have come up with these basic instructions:
1. When happy:
- Colour changes to ‘green‘
- Waits to be fed - (Because its happy with the way it is being treated – doesnt need change)
- Grows at a comfortable speed – (maintains its state because its happy)
- If over fed it becomes to big for its box and starts to become unhappy – (environmental factor)
2. When unhappy:
- Colour changed to ‘blue‘
- Goes through browser history to find food for itself
- Doesnt grow as much because of its unhappy state
- Becomes harder to make happy depending on how long its left unhappy – (stubborness?)
- If it goes without food for more than a set time it will die – (Starvation and neglect)
We are hoping that the data can be visualized in a real time method so there is some genetic art kinda thing going on, we still need to look into code for this.
