Genetic Game of Life

Genetic Stories

This section addresses a current work in progress, or perhaps a leap of faith into the deep end of the gene pool.  Specifically, the ability to write narrative stories about the interactions of ents and cells as they proceed in their evolution.

First of all, there are additional anthropic attributes that ents and cells both have to give them more human-like characteristics:

Book

Life Book 3

Personality Attributes

Each ent and cell has a randomly assigned tarot card with upright or reversed orientation.  This serves as an archetype that assigns symbolic life themes to an object’s core life path, spiritual lessons, and unconscious motivations.

Additionally both ent and cell objects have an assigned Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.  An MBTI type indicates an individual’s general preferences for directing attention, taking in information, making decisions, and organizing their approach to life.

Ents and Cell both have a gender of male or female. Ents and cells both have a color, although cell color is not displayed. They also have an inherent age, based on the generation in which they were born.  Cells are considered to be timeless.
Ents and Cell both have a procedurally generated phonetic name based on their ID — the sequence number in which they were established.

For example, the first primary ent – shown as the red queen in the videos above – has an ID of 00 and a derived four-character name of Sahu.  The name of the first cell that Sahu resides in is named Deyo.
  
Tarot Card The Fool
Examples

The Fool card in upright orientation represents: New beginnings, innocence, spontaneity, a leap of faith. Starting a journey with trust and optimism.

An MBTI type of ISTJ represents:  Traditionalist & duty-fulfiller – hard worker who values their responsibilities and commitments 

Other Story Elements

Some additional details set the scene for a story:

  • Each cell has a keeper. A keeper is an individual who manages the square grounds that are their domain along with any narrative-appropriate number of associates, assistants, or minions.  Keepers welcome any ent guests who may arrive for a visit.
  • Every generation – a period of 20 years – a transition occurs in which the guests of a host Keeper must depart,  go to sleep, be awakened, or be born on the Keeper’s grounds.
  • Guests can have arbitrary interactions with their host or with other guests residing in neighboring estates.  These may include establishing relations, exchanging wealth or other items, and all manner of social activities.  Perhaps if they are separated by a departure or sleep, they may meet again someday.

Glider Gun

2D Glider Gun 1

Thematic Plots

OLife depends on a separate program to set the scene for the narrative called ABS Story.  ABS was a – possibly now defunct – system  for construction of solo-player Dungeons and Dragons scenarios.  

 ABS allows the player to directly select, or use a dice-roll to pick, various narrative story elements from an extensive lists of options.  From this list, it then creates an appropriate prompt for a story generator.  These days we have the benefit of using AI models such as ChatGPT for this task – which does a pretty good job of writing such a story.  A randomly generated ABS Story Example is included on a following page.

Pentadecathlon

2D Pentadecathlon 1
ABS Interface 1

Putting it Together

So above we have all of the appropriate elements of a story:  A cast of characters, their life motivations and personality traits, an orchestration of which individuals move where and when. What happens to individuals in every generation, and a plot with various details.

What happens when you put this together?  Not a particularly enjoyable piece of literature.  

OLife prepares the AI with a very lengthy and detailed description of all the technical details and terminology to be used.  It tells the AI what needs to happen to produce a narrative story, what it can write, where it has freedom, and what words it should never use, such as ent and cell. 

The primary disconnect is that the orchestrated movement and activity of individuals based on Life is a rapidly expanding story of many individuals, however taking the time to write a meaningful detailed narrative is not. 

As noted above this is a work in progress.  The emergence of AI models such as ChatGPT has greatly accelerated the rate at which the code of OLife can now be maintained and extended.  Perhaps a solution will someday arise to better help with the goal of writing good literature.

   

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