man biogenesis (1): Biogenesis, an artificial life program focused on evolution

SYNOPSIS

biogenesis [RANDOM_SEED]

DESCRIPTION

This program imitates the evolutionary processes that happens on unicellular organism populations in nature. It has been tried to create an example of the elemental bacterial processes, simplifying them a lot and presenting them in a visual and comprehensible manner. Although it is not scientifically exact, regular mechanisms on bacterial evolution and life can be observed and it can be interesting as a didactic approximation to concepts like mutation, evolution or photosynthesis. It is also a good entertainment.

The organisms that will populate this world are not representations of natural unicellular organisms, but an abstraction has been used to be able to look more clearly at their virtual life. These organisms are formed by segments of different colors and lengths. The organism's segments color and length establish its properties, so that we can know what can an organism do only by looking at it on the screen. Moreover, these segments' configuration is a representation in the world of its genetic code, which its descendants will inherit in an identical form, with the exception of random mutations that can happen in each generation.

Organisms that obtain beneficial mutations will be the most successful ones, on the reproductive point of view, and will create a large number of descendants that will propagate its genes and its mutation in the future. However, those that suffer from a less appropriate mutation will not take a long time to die without being able to extend their species' lives longer than their own lives.

OPTIONS

RANDOM_SEED

This number determines the sequence of the random numbers that will be generated. This way it is possible to recreate several times the same scenario if the same number is introduced.

PERFORMANCE

This program has a high CPU consumption. You need to set a few parameters in order to adapt it to your hardware.

These are the parameters that you should configure. Remember that you can do this by selecting the Parameters option under the World menu.

* OpenGL: The use of the OpenGL libraries greatly increases program's speed. This option is deselected by default because it doesn't work on all hardware and drivers combinations. You should try to enable it and restart the program. If it crashes or doesn't work, OpenGL will be disabled next time you run it.

* Disable fbobject: Due to a bug in some graphic drivers, it may be necessary to activate this option for the OpenGL to work. If the first time that you try to activate them they don't work, try to activate them with this option.

* Time per frame: This parameter controls the speed that the program will try to reach. If it is consuming a lot of CPU you should raise it, and if it is not and you want the process to execute faster, you should lower it.

* Initial carbon dioxide: The CO2 is the limiting factor to life expansion. More CO2 means more organisms will populate the world, and more CPU needed to calculate their moves and draw them. If you change this parameter, it may be a good idea to change the world size accordingly to keep the same CO2 concentration.

AUTHOR

Written by Joan Queralt Molina <[email protected]>.
This manual page was originally written by Miriam Ruiz <[email protected]> and Joan Queralt.

COPYRIGHT