Some simple requests:
1. Timer. It makes it more fun to watch, almost like a race. In the last few seconds, the current generation might do better!
2. Current Fittest Highlight. Highlight the creature in the current generation that is currently the fittest (e.g. furthest along track). This makes it more fun and clearer to compare the current generation with the previous best, again a bit like a race.
3. Continue Simulation. Once we click "Back" the only way to get back into the simulation and carry on where you left off is to load it. Can we not please just click Evolve again, if the creature has not been changed?
4. Improvement Indicator. Clearly notify us if a newly evolved creature has outdone the existing best, and if so by how much, e.g. 1% improvement in fitness.
More complex requests:
5. Simulation Speed Dial. Please let us turn up the speed of simulation so we can quickly discover if creatures are evolving in the right direction, or need to be fundamentally changed.
6. Custom Optimisation Goals. Let us control/add the parameters to create new challenges. I would love to combine switches for: Maximise/Minimise Horizontal/Vertical Distance; Keep Selected Joint Above/Below/Front/Back.
7. Manual Centre of Gravity. Let us manually position this point (i.e. the point where the flag marker is placed) by selecting a number of joints (the marker is placed at the mean position of selected joints). This means e.g. I can force the marker to be between my creature's two feet (if I want it to walk) and it won't always think it's being fitter by finishing its attempt with falling forward.
Much more complex requests:
8. Give Creatures Hints. Let us pause the simulation and select a muscle, causing it to toggle its contract/expand state. This change would be backpropagated to create a manual mutation ("the hand of god"!) and is like the player saying "try this" rather than waiting and hoping for a random mutution to cause it. This instantly creates a new generation with a new offspring containing the manual mutation.
9. Hardware Utilisation. When I dial up the parameters the simulation slows down a lot. I'm running a Core i9 9900K at 4.7GHz on 8 cores, with an RTX graphics card. While the simulation slows down, I can see that Evolution is not using more than 20-30% of my CPU/GPU. Can you make more use of multiple threads, and the tensor cores in RTX cards which are designed for ML?
Thanks -- what a fantastic game.