Gridworld news & patch notes

Gridworld v1.30 is live!

I’m proud to announce version 1.30, the biggest update yet.

This release brings stability and UI improvements, along with major new or improved simulation mechanics: digestion, toxins, multicellularity, webs, and more.

Core Changes

Introduction of digestion.

Creatures now digest food instead of instantly converting it to energy. Digestion is specialized per food type, making it harder to switch between herbivore and carnivore diets. This adds ecosystem complexity, punishes omnivores, and greatly increases the chance of predator–prey splits, which in turn leads to co-evolution between predator and prey.

Toxins Rework

Toxins now disrupt neural signals instead of causing damage. They’re divided into two categories:

• Poison: stored for defense.

• Venom: injected into targets, or emitted on tiles.

Multicellular Mechanics Rework

Previous experiments with chains, muscles, and groups didn’t work as hoped. v1.30 introduces a unified system: creatures can now connect, lock rotation, and move as one. Predators use this to immobilize prey, and temporary multicellular organisms now emerge much more often.

Webs

Creatures can now place sticky webs to trap prey or defend themselves.

Slimes

Creatures can produce slime as a defense mechanism, slowing down others.

Neuron Changes

Many new neuron types have been added, while others that didn’t work as expected have been removed or reworked.

DNA Improvements

Simplified DNA by removing mechanics that did not work as intended such as switches and neural ranges.

Pheromones Rework

Pheromones now remain on a creature instead of being emitted.

Stability

• Faster saving and loading

• Significantly fewer crashes

Graphics

• Better looking symbols with more detail

• Cleaner, more readable UI

Menus

• New microscope windows to inspect creature properties:

  • Diet and food preference

  • Toxins and poison

Store & Trailer

• The Steam store page has been fully updated with new gifs and text

• A brand new trailer has been created to showcase the game in its current state.

Under the hood

Many technical changes have been made that improve the game in many ways.

Save Compatibility

Old worlds and creatures are not compatible with v1.30 due to the extensive core changes.

Please start fresh with new worlds to experience the update as intended.

Other Improvements

• Countless small bug fixes

• Many additional tweaks and refinements

Gridworld v1.30 is live now with a 20% launch discount.

Thanks for your support over the years. I hope you enjoy v1.30

• Multihreading
• UI improvements / refactoring
• Neural network inspection
• Creature editor

• Paint: Paint has been reintroduced. Paint is simply a coloration of a tile that fades over time, similar to poison but without the damage.

• Less Crashing: Instead of crashing, an Error message is now displayed when a creature cannot be loaded or imported for any reason.
• Chained Creatures: The physics of chained creatures have been improved and are now less buggy. The functionality of connecting and disconnecting has been improved and bunch of new neuron types are introduced to aid chained creatures.

• MomentumSensor: Senses the momentum of the creatures.
• ChainSensor: Sense if the target creature is chained to the owner.
• ConnectionSensor: Sense if the owner has a chain connection.
• RelativeSensor: Sense if the target creature is a child, parent or sibling.

• ChainNeuron: This neuron type does not connect to other neurons in the creature’s neural network, but instead only connects to neurons inside the neural network of chained creature. If the chain connection is lost, the neural connection is also lost.

• Painter: Produces paint on the target tile. Paint is a coloration that fades over time.
• ChainLeg: Provides movement to a chain of creatures.

• Spike: Used for defense. The spike damages a creature that pushes against it.
• ChainFeeder: Shares energy between the creature and one of its chained creatures.

• Nerf
• NerfEnd
• Vein
• VeinReleaser

• PainSensor: Pain sensing is now directional. Example: if a creature is attacked on its left side, the pain sensors on the left side will be triggered. Non directional pain like lava and poison still triggers all pain sensors.
• DNASensor: Can now also sense first three letters of the DNA representation.

• Feeder: The feeder can no longer give energy directly to another creature. It can only drop food on a tile.

• Changed input neuron energy cost from 0.05 to 0.01 to encourage the use of input neurons
• Set dynamic rendering to false. This is because dynamic rendering when enabled increases memory use when the simulation is unstable, for example if a population boom occurs. It disabled it now by default because it caused crashes for some people.
• Default energy loss by cold set to 0 as new default.

• SkinColorChanger: amount of color change: control the amount of color that is changed.

• MembraneMaker: auto chain: if true, automatically chain the created membrane to the creature.
• ChainEnd: always active: if true, chain direction is always activated.
• Connector: connect to parent: If true, creature can connect to its parent
• Mouth: the eatMode variable has been revisited. the following eat modes are now available - everything: set no preference - color (neuron): set preference of the mouth neuron for color of food. - color (creature): set preference of the creature for the color of food. - type (neuron): set preference of the mouth for the type of food. - type (creature): set preference of the creature for the type of food.

• Photosynthesis: The issue with photosynthesis is that it allows for unchecked growth in the population size, which drags down performance to a crawl. To counter this a bit, the following variables have beed added: no movement allowed: if true, no energy gain when creature is moving. no rotating allowed: if true, no energy gain when creature is rotating.
• EnergySharer: to child only: if true, can only connect to child creature.

• Max brain size: One of the issues when running simulations in which the energy settings are not as punishing, is that the creature's brain tends to grow bigger. This affects performance. In order to counter this I added a max brain size variable. This way you can use less punishing energy settings and higher a creature population with less performance loss.
• New DNA replication conditions.
• Min energy for creatures: Minimum energy for creatures before they die can now be set.

• Render chains: Visualizes chain connections between creatures
• Render paints

• Added previous button in microscope.
• Add hotkey for previous target.
• Removing of food types can now be done per food type in the world editor.
• Paint can now be placed in the world editor.
• New variables to display added in the microscope window.
• Increased maximum light energy in world editor to 10.
• Increased maximum allowed friction for tiles to allow for more experimentation.

• Fixed buggy physics of chained creatures.
• Fixed bug in which sometimes the wrong neuron types where displayed in the microscope.
• Fixed bug in which default creature mass setting was not saved.

• Multihreading
• UI improvements / refactoring
• Neural network inspection
• Creature editor

• Paint: Paint has been reintroduced. Paint is simply a coloration of a tile that fades over time, similar to poison but without the damage.

• Less Crashing: Instead of crashing, an Error message is now displayed when a creature cannot be loaded or imported for any reason.
• Chained Creatures: The physics of chained creatures have been improved and are now less buggy. The functionality of connecting and disconnecting has been improved and bunch of new neuron types are introduced to aid chained creatures.

• MomentumSensor: Senses the momentum of the creatures.
• ChainSensor: Sense if the target creature is chained to the owner.
• ConnectionSensor: Sense if the owner has a chain connection.
• RelativeSensor: Sense if the target creature is a child, parent or sibling.

• ChainNeuron: This neuron type does not connect to other neurons in the creature’s neural network, but instead only connects to neurons inside the neural network of chained creature. If the chain connection is lost, the neural connection is also lost.

• Painter: Produces paint on the target tile. Paint is a coloration that fades over time.
• ChainLeg: Provides movement to a chain of creatures.

• Spike: Used for defense. The spike damages a creature that pushes against it.
• ChainFeeder: Shares energy between the creature and one of its chained creatures.

• Nerf
• NerfEnd
• Vein
• VeinReleaser

• PainSensor: Pain sensing is now directional. Example: if a creature is attacked on its left side, the pain sensors on the left side will be triggered. Non directional pain like lava and poison still triggers all pain sensors.
• DNASensor: Can now also sense first three letters of the DNA representation.

• Feeder: The feeder can no longer give energy directly to another creature. It can only drop food on a tile.

• Changed input neuron energy cost from 0.05 to 0.01 to encourage the use of input neurons
• Set dynamic rendering to false. This is because dynamic rendering when enabled increases memory use when the simulation is unstable, for example if a population boom occurs. It disabled it now by default because it caused crashes for some people.
• Default energy loss by cold set to 0 as new default.

• SkinColorChanger: amount of color change: control the amount of color that is changed.

• MembraneMaker: auto chain: if true, automatically chain the created membrane to the creature.
• ChainEnd: always active: if true, chain direction is always activated.
• Connector: connect to parent: If true, creature can connect to its parent
• Mouth: the eatMode variable has been revisited. the following eat modes are now available - everything: set no preference - color (neuron): set preference of the mouth neuron for color of food. - color (creature): set preference of the creature for the color of food. - type (neuron): set preference of the mouth for the type of food. - type (creature): set preference of the creature for the type of food.

• Photosynthesis: The issue with photosynthesis is that it allows for unchecked growth in the population size, which drags down performance to a crawl. To counter this a bit, the following variables have beed added: no movement allowed: if true, no energy gain when creature is moving. no rotating allowed: if true, no energy gain when creature is rotating.
• EnergySharer: to child only: if true, can only connect to child creature.

• Max brain size: One of the issues when running simulations in which the energy settings are not as punishing, is that the creature's brain tends to grow bigger. This affects performance. In order to counter this I added a max brain size variable. This way you can use less punishing energy settings and higher a creature population with less performance loss.
• New DNA replication conditions.
• Min energy for creatures: Minimum energy for creatures before they die can now be set.

• Render chains: Visualizes chain connections between creatures
• Render paints

• Added previous button in microscope.
• Add hotkey for previous target.
• Removing of food types can now be done per food type in the world editor.
• Paint can now be placed in the world editor.
• New variables to display added in the microscope window.
• Increased maximum light energy in world editor to 10.
• Increased maximum allowed friction for tiles to allow for more experimentation.

• Fixed buggy physics of chained creatures.
• Fixed bug in which sometimes the wrong neuron types where displayed in the microscope.
• Fixed bug in which default creature mass setting was not saved.