Egg Worm Generator
July 6th, 2009
Egg Worm Generator by Kyle Gabler. This was supposed to be a shooter, where you shoot peacefully evolving creatures. But I didn’t finish, and the creatures turned out too stupid to fight anyway. So instead, its a fishtank where you observe randomly generated creatures evolve and kindof learn to walk. Inspired by Karl Sims stuff from 1994. Press ’s’ to speed it up.
Download and play HERE for Windows.
Update 1: If you have trouble getting it to run, Alan in the comments recommends making sure this Microsoft thing is installed. Thanks for the tip! Does that help?
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64 Comments, Comment or Ping
Heya guys,
For what it’s worth, you guys should totally set up a twitter account for the site and tweet whenever you post a new game prototype. I don’t do well with checking sites, but would be here anytime I saw the updated link!
Either that or an email update list :)
July 7th, 2009
How do you get ANY games here to work?
July 7th, 2009
I second the twitter account idea.
July 7th, 2009
@ Experimentalgameplay.com:
Love you guys, but now I can’t even run your games… what’s wrong? I’ve got WinXP without any SP (and I’m not gonna change it). Is that the problem?
@ Thomas Mannino:
You know there’s RSS, don’t you? Just watch it in Google reader of something – I do and I must say it’s like thousand times better than e-mail subscribing.
Seriously, try it: https://www.google.com/reader/
(and this site’s feed’s here: http://experimentalgameplay.com/blog/feed/)
July 7th, 2009
Sorry to hear some of the games aren’t working for you. Which ones? Is there an error? Is anyone able to run them successfully?
July 7th, 2009
I tested them all on my machine – which is just running Windows XP. Could it be your version of Flash (for my games at least)?
July 7th, 2009
Works for me! This game reminded me of the video that inspired you! :D (for people not reading the readme: http://www.archive.org/details/sims_evolved_virtual_creatures_1994
It would be really cool if there were some online highscore. People could use this as their screensaver. It’ll generate really awesome superfast right-moving creatures!
July 7th, 2009
Sigh, without the ‘)’: http://www.archive.org/details/sims_evolved_virtual_creatures_1994
July 7th, 2009
I, too, cannot get it to run. The exact error I get is:
“This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.” (It didn’t.)
The files in the archive were EggWormGenerator, readme.html, res/audio (which was empty), res/fonts/TCCEB.ttf, res/images/sign.png, res/images/slideTitle.png, res/images/slideInstructions.png. Is anything missing there?
July 7th, 2009
Love it. How long have you let it run (at speed toggled fast, of course)? I’m on generation 300+ w/ top speed @ 22.06 from a 31st gen worm and it seems to have maxed out. I bet this was a fun one to code up.
July 7th, 2009
Is it just me, or does toggling the speed effect the ability of the creatures to walk? If I toggle to fast speed, many will make it, if I toggle the next generation to slow, none make it. This is Generation ~1500, current max 19.7 if you are curious. Also, displaying the generation that the worms came from appears to be bugged.
July 7th, 2009
I left mine on all night. Now on generation ~14,000. Current 5 best speeds are:
157.37m/s
111.99m/s
63.61m/s
56.57m/s
54.63m/s
….
all the way to
…
32.63m/s (16th place)
Those two top speeds are increcible, but I never saw them because I was asleep! It’d be good if clicking on a high score resurrected that worm for an exhibition race on its own.
Now the game has kind of malfunctioned and will only run in high speed mode. Pressing S seems to pause it. But I can see that average 1st place winning speeds are around 11m/s now.
July 8th, 2009
It doesnt work :(
July 8th, 2009
Hi, I’ve downloaded “IK Trees” from the game section but it doesn’t work on my PC (Vista). It says “Not a Win 32 operation valid” or something like that. Same whit “Spin to win”. But if downoladed from other sites they work. Why?
July 8th, 2009
Kyle, question for you.
Why you created usual WordPress blog? EGP – full social network for indie developers (some TOPs, blogs, profiles, news and something like a forum), but now it is blog! I dont understand you. Formely EGP was original games portal, You should have been further developed your project, not to develop wordpress blog. Internet has got many indiegames-blogs, but social network of indiegames was only one. And you destroyed this.
R.I.P. :(
Sorry for my English, i wait your answer.
July 8th, 2009
I get the same error here as Jason laporte
“This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.”
July 8th, 2009
I’ve got the same problem as Jason LaPorte.
July 8th, 2009
What happens on mine is the same as most XP errors: “EggWormGenerator.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. we are sorry for the inconvenience.” That window pops up as soon as i click on the file.
July 8th, 2009
doesn’t work, same error as above.
by the way, a lot of games from http://experimentalgameplay.com/blog/games/ weight just 16KB and don’t work…
July 8th, 2009
To everyone getting an error: I’m pretty sure you need to install the Visual C++ redistributable package. It’s downloadable from Microsoft here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9b2da534-3e03-4391-8a4d-074b9f2bc1bf
To the EGP people: are you planning to make the monthly challenges public when you set them, or only afterwards? I would love to join in during the same timeframe, even if you were only going to be posting your own games on the blog.
July 8th, 2009
Man, I know this game is a prototype, and its current form is amazingly entertaining, but I would love to see this system evolve into something else. For example, at least another one where there are more diverse critter behaviors/body structures, and those which fare the best actually pass on their forms/behaviors. I mean, that’s a bit insane, but it’d be an awesome achievement, eh?
Also, I’m currently at 70… and I though 12.71 was good :D.
July 8th, 2009
Any chance of a Mac-compatible version?
Pretty please?
July 8th, 2009
Yep that C++ package fixed it, thanks!
July 9th, 2009
Anyone screenshot or video the final result of a few thousand generations of evolution?
Mine was at 4,000 odd when I left work, and genetic diversity was pretty low. They’d evolved steadily from three-box worms with a thin midsection to more articulated four- and five-box worms that moved in a more recognisably wriggly fashion. I was excited to see if they’d keep going down this increased-complexity route, but had the same problem as the commenter above – fast mode still runs fine but switching back to normal near-pauses the game, so I can’t really see what the animations look like anymore.
As mentioned by someone else, it’d be awesome to be able to click a high-score and see the creature move, even if it isn’t a full replay of their run.
I think most of the really high speeds are when the eggs glitch a bit at the start and fly all over the place, causing some creatures to hatch just near the end.
July 9th, 2009
I always love these kind of things, and this one is very cute.
If anyone wants something more like Sims videos (more 3D and complex, less cute)
here’s a link to a good one http://www.stellaralchemy.com/lee/virtual_creatures.html
July 9th, 2009
Kyle, have you seen Jeffrey Ventrella’s “Gene Pool”? Resembles this idea although his is about swimming rather than walking and it’s a bit more developed. Still, I’d really love to see this go further… if someone could combine “Incredibots” with an evolutionary algorithm that would be amazing!
July 9th, 2009
I love the concept. If you want to make it more interactive, it would be cool if you had to pick out and shoot the under-performers. :)
July 9th, 2009
I LOVE this!
There should be a save-”game” feature so you can continue generating where you left off.
There should be a way to replay the high scores because you know we’re going to miss it.
It’s interesting how the hatching circumstances effect the evolution. The worms can be encumbered by other worms, unhatched eggs, and being born on the wrong side of the next. But this is like life, isn’t it?
July 10th, 2009
Okay, so I let it run to 75 generations, and not one of my worms has ever crossed the finish line. If I speed it up, all of them make it, it seems, but then even after many many generations, none make it when slowed down.
Another XP issue maybe? I’ll try it on Vista later.
July 10th, 2009
Works fine on Vista for me, I can see now that in XP the worms themselves are slow and, well, drunk compared to my Speed-crazed Vista worms.
Also, the generation bug is a simple variable slipup – the generation displayed is actually the place they finished.
July 10th, 2009
My worms evolved legs at one point, so I was pretty proud of them.
Unfortunately, they’ve regressed again – it’s generation 72, and they’ve lost their forelimbs, the poor things.
July 10th, 2009
This seems to be insipired by this little program which tries to evolve a car that can get as far as possible:
http://www.wreck.devisland.net/ga/
July 11th, 2009
ok running at normal speed on my XP Desktop for 83 generations produces not a single winner. Fast speed and I get a few but it felt like cheating and I wanted to be able to notice results.
Run it on my laptop running Windows 7 and my mind blows! Worms leap out of their eggs hyperactively and I get 6 winners in 4 gens.
Something is not right here…
July 11th, 2009
Actually it’s now getting interesting. Approaching generation 100, the XP worms are finally beginning to discover a consistent set of genes to carry themselves over the line despite their disadvantage. They’re even fairly consistently improving their times. Meanwhile the Win7 guys circa gen 25 seem to have gotten mired in a set of genes that simply works but doesn’t work well and doesn’t improve much. Current generations aren’t much faster than the gen 1 top speed progenitor.
It’s fascinating. Different environments are producing different varieties of worms.
By the way a pause button would be great. The situation has already changed quite a bit while writing this comment!
July 11th, 2009
While the place the worm finished for their generation seems to be the variable it is displaying instead of the generation, on my Vista machine I’ve seen that that is not consistantly the case.
Back on the shooter idea – what if the red dot was your garden, and the green dot was your opponent’s garden, and you’re trying to evolve worms that eat his plants and not your own?
Then you would need an AI spaceship to compete with. :)
July 11th, 2009
Pretty cool simulation to look at. Any chance you release the source code? Not only because it would be educational/fun to toy with, but it would be helpful to see how XP/Vista/7 environments produces different behaviors, and how the speed scales with processing power.
July 11th, 2009
Nice and entertaining for a while :D
It would be nice if the little critters weren’t totally square- a kind of flexible triangle of “skin” between each block would make them more wormy.
It’s kind of interesting; even after a hundred generations, there are still some worms running into the red at high speed – faster then they run to the green. So far, 1st place goes to (gen14) Austin, with 24.16 m/s record. Actually, all he did was get born late on top of the egg pile with a really long body, fell forwards and he touched the green square with one wave of his arm/leg/tongue/spleen. Not very fair, in my opinion. And this goes with other worms as well; the beginning fall messes up the speed. I saw a little worm born in the back race his way to the front, and only receive a little higher than 1 m/s, while another is born late in the back have his egg pushed so close to the red that he was forced to die upon being born. It was depressing. *sob sob* Why! Why wormy, why?
Also, some of them do pretty well, but then they flip over and start wiggling the wrong way, or vice verse. It would be nice if they knew how to turn around. Or do they? I’m not sure…
July 11th, 2009
Anyone else see the occasional stillbirth? I mean eggs hatching red worms that simply decompose. The most depressing thing in the whole game…
Meanwhile after leaving both pc’s running overnight I’ve got some interesting results in the top winners. Win7 worms remain fairly homogeneous with consistent results in the 20m/s range.
XP shows a few freaks, the top score of all time being listed at 681.39m/s! Would’ve loved to see that. I get the feeling her egg was tossed very close to the green glowie. Her genes don’t seem to have survived – besides a couple more outliers above 20m/s the mean speed is around 7.5m/s.
It should be noted that neither group are currently seeing much if any shift in the top 16. I get the feeling that the fast worm traits also include a high propensity for suicide.
July 11th, 2009
Wow this game is cool. Nothing ive ever played before though it does remind me of humpsters by the klooigame guy. gg =]
July 11th, 2009
@FELIX
It wasn’t the eggs, I’ve had worms come in first with a speed of 6 m/s and worms born near the left that come in second with a speed of 14 m/s.
Has nothing to do with where they’re born.
July 12th, 2009
I can’t get it to work at all. For, it seems, every time I download, it corrupts. >.<
July 13th, 2009
funny :D
July 13th, 2009
i left my computer running overnight with this game accidentally running on high speed. By the time i noticed, it had created almost twenty thousand generations. I felt kind of bad turning it off after all the efforts of the weird worm creatures, but i got a screenshot of the 20000th victor, at 24m/s. The all-time fastest was 29.64 m/s. 30 m/s seems like the limit.
July 13th, 2009
nice little prototype. Good work!
July 13th, 2009
How fast your worms go is changed by changing the speed level. Speeds are not consistent between regular and fast speed. Which is a shame, actually. I would constantly turn off the fast speed to look at the new generation, and it would never even make it to the right, but then I’d turn it back on and it’d make it to the right in 30 m/s.
Excellent idea, but almost ruined by the inconsistency.
July 15th, 2009
I instaled some pacage to make the games I download from this website to work and I still get this error “(whatever the game is) is not a valid win32 application” what do I have to do to make them work!?
July 22nd, 2009
But I have got two concerns with it:
Fist is that another happens in reaction like i does with living creatures. That instinct and behaviour is evolving. (When I’m gong up/ forward im going to… when being to fast or slow I’m going to… when im touching the ground with one part it’s reacting etc)
Second the mutation sould happen “among” creatures that are alike, so that groups can form. (having three or four winners)
Just some thoughts ;-)
July 25th, 2009
The people who are asking for a twitter account need to FIND OUT WHAT RSS IS.
Not angry, just want people to read the CAPITAL TEXT. Although it’s too late, already, of course.
July 25th, 2009
The game still doesn’t work for me. i downloaded and installed the package, but…
August 5th, 2009
Installing the “Microsoft Thingy” works beautifully, thanks. :)
August 8th, 2009
Any chance the source code will ever be provided for this? I’d love to make this more complex with different shapes and variables.
August 28th, 2009
I’m at Gen 8500
All Time Top
290.90m/s
274.20m/s
260.45m/s
251.88m/s
234.84m/s
These seem to be really fast compared to other peoples.
August 31st, 2009
Oh guys, I’d really love to see more of this, with more features like, saving a generation to let it start again, different environments, high scores, and web exchange possibilities
It’s a fucking awesome concept. I’d reminds me of the” Game of Live”.
Please keep on developing this!
September 9th, 2009
Commenting once more cuz its so interesting.
You could aswell include a mode to turn off the graphics and let the computer straight away find out about generation, let’s say 100 000. Then you would get an output of the fastest worm, and if u do this like 10 times u could compare if one form is simply the best or if there are different ways.
Also this programm seems “chaotic” to me, because theres no way to determine who next round will look.
If a little more developed this programm/ simulation style would offer enough material for a whole doctotr thesis one chaos theorie/biology/evolution/whatsover
If u cut some limitations, and let it run for like a million years the worms might even get conscious of themselves and start a own civilization, with computer simulations of worms….
September 9th, 2009
Every few generations, some worms get born and they’re already dead. They didn’t even touch the red dot. Why is that?
Other than that: Really cool concept! I’m currently at generation 836 and the fastest guy is from generation 808 with 31,35 m/s.
December 3rd, 2009
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