True Evolution

True Evolution is a project aimed at demonstrating the principles of the theory of evolution in a virtual environment. Conditional organisms, hereinafter referred to as creatures, live in a limited space and can interact both with the environment and with each other. As a result, natural selection arises, which, together with the occurrence of mutations, leads to the formation of adaptations and an increase in the fitness of creatures.

Each creature has a genome — a sequence of numbers in which information about the creature's properties is encoded. The genome is inherited, and random changes may occur — mutations. All creatures are made up of blocks called organs, which are attached to each other by means of movable joints. Each organ in the genome is described by 20 real numbers (genes), while the number of organs is unlimited. There are 7 main types of tissues: bone — has no special functions; storage tissue is capable of storing a large amount of energy; muscle tissue is capable of contracting and relaxing by moving a creature; digestive tissue is used to generate energy and is divided into 2 subtypes: heterotrophic and autotrophic; reproductive tissue — serves to create offspring, it is also divided into subtypes: vegetative and generative; neural tissue — performs the function of the brain; sensitive tissue — It is able to receive information about environment.

The main resource in True Evolution is energy. Energy is necessary for the existence of any creature, as well as for the creation of descendants. As already mentioned, energy can be extracted by an organ with digestive tissue by eating other creatures or photosynthesis. After receiving a portion of energy, it is distributed among all living organs of a being. Each organ spends a certain amount of energy to maintain its existence, while this value depends on both the function of the organ and its size. A growing organ requires more energy, and the more intense the growth, the more energy it needs to exist. It is worth noting that all organs have a certain energy limit, more than which the organ is not able to store. Energy is also needed to create offspring, while the cost of giving birth to a new creature depends on its genome.

In what environment does the simulation take place? There is a randomly generated square-shaped landscape, beyond which creatures are not able to get out. It is illuminated by the sun, day turns to night. The solar energy produced by photosynthetics depends on the brightness of the sun. And the brightness of the sun, in turn, depends on the time of day and time of year. Part of the world is covered with water, the level of which changes periodically (tides occur). Initially, a certain amount of organic matter (microorganisms or simply organic molecules) is dissolved in water, which can act as an energy source for heterotrophs. Organic matter tends to be distributed in the volume of water so that its density is uniform. However, it can move at a fixed speed (the rate of diffusion) and only within a closed volume of water (organic matter from one reservoir cannot flow into another if they are separated by land).

True Evolution is a real generator of artificial life in the virtual world. Due to the variety of strategies for survival, population divergence and speciation occur, creatures adapt and occupy certain ecological niches. One of the advantages of True Evolution is the enormous variability of the initial conditions of the simulation: more than 100 parameters can be changed in the settings, thus creating a huge number of worlds that are not similar to each other. Some may turn out to be completely unsuitable for life, while in others evolution will proceed in different ways, somewhere creatures will remain primitive (in a favorable environment, the pressure of natural selection is weak), and somewhere on the contrary complex structures will develop. In any case, watching every simulation in True Evolution is incredibly interesting!