ORGOT PSYCHOLOGY

What's it like to be an orgot animal? Although it's probably more interesting than being an orgot plant, an orgot animal's choices of activity are quite limited. It can move, eat, drink, or mate (only one of these choices per tick). While this may seem rather simple, there is some complexity involved in figuring out which of these things it would be best to do, and how the thing should be done. Drinking is rather simple, but eating may require the killing of prey first. What is prey? How does an orgot recognize a predator and avoid becoming prey? Which is the best direction to move to find food or water? If an orgot is both hungry and thirsty, which should it take care of first?

Let's take a look inside the brain of an orgot and find out how these decisions are made. This will allow us to explore the animal orgot genes that determine behavior. Once we have learned about these, we will have covered the entire orgot genome!

The Master Plan

Orgots obey a scheme called the master plan. This is the overall guiding framework that all animal orgots use to make decisions. How they make use of this framework depends on many genetic factors, as well as on the internal state of the orgot. By internal state, we mean things like hunger, thirst, age, pregnancy, and all the other variables that are displayed in the Variables window. Take a look at the master plan. Any questions?

The overall structure of the master plan is quite simple: If something wants to eat you, run away. Otherwise, if there's a potential mate nearby, make whoopee. Otherwise, eat if you're hungry and near Ultra-Food, or drink if you're thirsty and near water. If you're hungry, but there's no Ultra-Food nearby, then try to eat whatever your genes allow you to eat, if any of that food is nearby. If you're hungry or thirsty but can't find food or water nearby, then move somewhere else. If you're not hungry or thirsty, and not pregnant, then roam around if you want to. Otherwise, just hang out in the same place for a while.

The first step in determining what to do if you're an orgot is to figure out just what is nearby. We keep using the term nearby, but what exactly does it mean? An orgot can only see what's in the eight cells surrounding it. There's no way to see any farther. No matter what the value is for an orgot's Vision gene, it can see everything in the surrounding cells, with the exception of trails. The ability to see trails, as we learned earlier, is entirely determined by the Vision gene.

Once an orgot knows whether there's danger, food, water, a mate, or nothing interesting nearby, it can examine its internal state to get closer to deciding what to do. Has its food or water crossed the action threshold, causing it to be hungry or thirsty? Has the danger threshold been crossed for an essential variable? Is the orgot pregnant? As you examine the master plan, see if you can spot an area where being dangerously thirsty (water supply below the danger threshold) forces a hungry, but not dangerously hungry, orgot to look for water instead of eating nearby food. Since eating nearby food would take up a tick's worth of activity, looking for water is a better use of the time when thirst has become critical. Likewise, looking for food even when near water and thirsty makes sense if an orgot is dangerously hungry but not dangerously thirsty.

OK, suppose you're a hungry orgot. What are you going to eat? That depends on two things. First, what kind of food is around you? Perhaps some leafy plants, shrubs with nectar-bearing flowers, or maybe tall trees laden with fruit; or maybe that squirrel you've been stalking for half a day. Second, what kind of food do your genes allow you to eat? Can you eat nectar? If the only nearby leaves, fruit, or nectar are in a tree, then you'll need to be able to climb or fly to eat these things. (Unless they're on a water plant, which you can eat from if it's next to the shore, or if you can swim or fly.) If you're a carnivore and you've tracked down your prey, you can attack if your strength is great enough relative to that of your prey. If a carnivore succeeds, it gets to eat. Otherwise, it either loses health or dies.

Most of the behaviors, such as eating, drinking, attacking, resting, and mating, are relatively simple activities. However, fleeing, roaming, and foraging are all types of movement, and before a creature can move it must figure out which direction to go. The fleeing direction is easy to figure out: move in the opposite direction from what you're fleeing from. If an orgot can't move in the direction in which it wants to flee, then it picks the available direction closest to that one. If no other direction is available except toward the thing an orgot is trying to flee, then it will have to meet its fate. If it has been fleeing a predator, then the cornered orgot will fight for its very life. If it was fire that the orgot was running away from, then it will have to wait where it is, and hope that its cell escapes the flames.

Foraging and Roaming

Deciding in which direction to move when roaming and when foraging have quite a bit in common. Both types of movement are controlled to a large degree by the behavior genes of an animal orgot. When not fleeing, an orgot will follow a trail if it can, or otherwise move in a straight line until it decides to turn. Let's hold off exploring trail-following for a moment, and consider how a roaming or foraging orgot decides to turn.

Part of an orgot's internal state is remembering what direction it's moving in. It keeps going in this direction until it bumps into something it can't get past, such as another orgot or the edge of the world, or perhaps water if it can't swim or fly. An orgot can also decide to turn without bumping into anything. The largest factor in an orgot's decision to turn is the Turning gene. A higher value for this gene means that the orgot is more likely to change direction when it moves to a new cell.

The direction in which an orgot will turn, if it's not blocked by something in the environment, depends on the Turn Type gene. If the Turn Type is Zig Zag, then the orgot will always turn in the opposite direction from the one it took the last time it changed direction. If Turn Type is set to Looping, then an orgot will always turn in the same direction, unless that direction is blocked. An orgot may be a left-turn looper or a right-turn looper, but whichever direction it selects, it keeps that direction for life. Unless, of course, you muck with its genome. If Random is selected for Turn Type, then the orgot will stagger around as if it were drunk.

The Turn Angle gene controls how much an orgot will turn when it decides to do so. A Low turn angle means that an orgot will make shallow turns, deviating less from a straight line than if it has the gene for a High turn angle. High turn angles cause an orgot to cross its own previous path frequently, keeping it within a small area. Low turn angles allow it to explore a much larger area, although the exploration is less thorough.

Different turning strategies are useful for different diets. If an orgot is a carnivore, then a zig-zag searching pattern with a low turn angle will help it to cover a wide area, looking for a trail. A looping pattern is more useful for a herbivore, nectarvore, or frugivore. This keeps the orgot near the last place it found food. Usually, if there's a plant of a given species in a nearby cell, then other cells close by are likely to have plants of the same species. If that plant species is a good food source, it makes sense to avoid straying too far away.

How often an orgot turns depends not only on its Turning gene, but also on its forage counter, which is part of its internal state, just like hunger or thirst. The forage counter for an orgot is visible in the Variables window. When an orgot eats and drinks, and is no longer hungry or thirsty, its forage counter falls to zero. Once the orgot becomes hungry or thirsty again, its forage counter is increased each tick until it again finds what it needs. What does this counter do, you ask? It modifies how often an orgot turns, we answer. The higher the forage count is, the less likely an orgot is to turn. This is useful because a high forage count means that an orgot hasn't found what it was looking for in quite a while. This probably means that the orgot is in the wrong place. However, it's not going to get out of this wrong place unless it starts heading off in more of a straight line. The recipe for heading in a straight line is not to turn! Thus, if an orgot is in a useless patch of land, it will become more likely to leave this patch as its forage counter increases and it starts walking in a straight line.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a simulation is worth a million, and rather than having us spend a million words describing the effects of different foraging patterns, why don't you play around with some "test cases" in SimLife? Create an orgot with a certain type of genetic description for foraging, and let the creature get hungry or thirsty (don't make it a filter feeder). Give your creature the lowest possible Stealth gene value, so that it will leave a trail. In the Map window, turn the Trail layer on, and watch the history of your orgot's movements. Increase its forage counter and see if you can detect any behavior changes.

If an orgot is neither hungry nor thirsty, the odds that it will move at all are determined by the Roaming gene. A higher value for this gene makes it more likely than an orgot will roam. If the slider for the roaming gene is all the way to the left, then the orgot will never move unless it's foraging or fleeing. If the roaming gene is all the way to the right, then the orgot will always be moving, unless it has nowhere to move or doesn't have the energy to move. Don't forget that pregnant orgots never roam.

Like all things in SimLife, roaming has advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that an orgot is more likely to encounter a mate if it, and its mate, roam around. A disadvantage is that an orgot may be more likely to come across a predator while roaming.

Recognizing Plants and Following Trails

The survival of the average orgot depends on its ability to follow trails and recognize plants. Recognizing certain plant species may help a nectar- or fruit-eating orgot to stay in a patch where it's likely to find food. Following trails is important to orgots that eat, or are eaten by, things that move. Trails are also important for sparsely populated species that must seek out mates. How do orgots navigate in their world?

In the bottom-left corner of the animal genome is a set of eight genes, called Prefer/Avoid/Ignore. Each of the eight genes has a button associated with it, which can be set to either 0, +, or -. If the button is set to +, the orgot with that gene will be attracted to whichever species, plant or animal, is pictured above the button. If the button is set to -, the orgot will try to avoid the species pictured above the button.

If the button is set to 0, the gene associated with the button is unused. An orgot can have an opinion on a maximum of eight species in its environment. It can care about fewer than eight, or even none, depending on how many of its Prefer/Avoid/Ignore genes are used. An orgot uses the information it gets from its Prefer/Avoid/Ignore genes to determine which direction to move in. We've included another wondrous flow chart below, which shows exactly how SimLife uses one of the Prefer/Avoid/Ignore genes to advise an orgot on what to do next.

As the flow chart shows, each of the Prefer/Avoid/Ignore genes suggests that the orgot do one of eight possible things, depending both on the value of the gene and on what is surrounding the orgot. The possibilities are:

Flee Animal. Move in a direction opposite to that of an animal (of a different species) in a neighboring cell. Continue moving in this direction for at least two ticks. If some type of physical obstruction prevents the orgot from moving in the desired direction, it will move in as close to the desired one as possible.

Avoid Animal. Move in a direction opposite to that of an animal (of the same species) in a neighboring cell.

Avoid Trail. Move in a direction away from a trail in a neighboring cell.

Avoid Plant. Move in a direction away from a plant in a neighboring cell.

Follow Animal. Move toward an animal in a neighboring cell. This may not be possible until that animal moves out of its cell, in which case the orgot that wants to follow should set its direction toward the neighboring animal, and move when the cell in that direction becomes free.

Follow Trail. Move to a neighboring trail cell. If there are several trail cells around, an orgot should move to the one closest to the direction in which it is facing.

Stay Nearby. If there is a plant that an orgot is attracted to in a neighboring cell, then the orgot should move into that cell if it is not physically blocked.

Next Gene. Don't let this gene influence behavior, because there is no nearby plant. animal, or trail of the species that this gene specifies.

Since there are a number of Prefer/Avoid/Ignore genes, it's possible for several genes to tell the orgot to do conflicting things. How does an orgot decide which genes to listen to? The possibilities in the list above are given in order from most important to least important. In other words, avoiding something is more important than following something, and fleeing an animal of a different species is more important than avoiding an animal of the same species. This is because an orgot will never be eaten by a member of its own species, but it may be eaten by a member of another species.

When more than one gene is telling the orgot to do the same thingsuch as Flee Animal but in different directionsthe order of the genes will determine which direction the orgot flees in. The rightmost Prefer/Avoid/Ignore gene, as the genes are displayed in the Genome window, overrides an equal priority instruction from any gene to its left. Thus, when designing an orgot's genome, put the most dreaded predator to be avoided on the right end of the Prefer/Avoid/Ignore gene list, and place less threatening predators to the left of it. Likewise, you should put things that the orgot prefers the most to the right of things that it prefers to a lesser degree.

There's one more gene that influences an orgot's behavior. This is the Persistence gene. Persistence determines how long an orgot will follow a trail before giving up. The higher the value of the Persistence gene, the longer an orgot will follow a trail. High persistence is usually useful for a carnivore that has to track scarce prey over long distances. However, being more determined about following a trail can be a disadvantage if an orgot is following a trail in the wrong direction. What's the best value for persistence? We have no idea.

Now that we've looked at all the things that can influence orgot behavior, we can summarize the three types of movement shown in the flow chart of the master plan:

Fleeing. This is quite straightforward. To flee a threat, an orgot simply does what its most important Avoid gene tells it to do, if any of them tells it to flee: move away from the species that is perceived by the gene to be a threat.

Foraging. This behavior is a bit more complex than fleeing, and occurs only if an orgot is not fleeing, and if it is also hungry or thirsty. If there's something to trigger any of the Prefer genes, the orgot will move in the direction the gene tells it to. This may mean following a trail, or moving toward a plant or animal. If there's nothing to trigger any Prefer genes, the orgot will move in a straight line unless its Turning gene and its forage counter tell it to turn. If it does turn, then its Turn Type gene tells it which direction to turn in, and its Turn Angle gene tells it how much to turn. The forage counter increases each tick as a hungry or thirsty orgot moves. As the forage counter increases, the orgot turns less, causing the orgot to move in straighter lines as it gets hungrier or thirstier, taking it farther away from the area in which its search is unsuccessful.

Roaming. An orgot will roam only if it's not fleeing or foraging. Roaming uses only those Prefer genes that tell an orgot to follow another orgot of the same species, or a trail of the same species. This helps guide an orgot to a mate when it's not foraging. However, if there are no trail cells or other orgots of the same species nearby, or if an orgot has no Prefer genes for its own species, then it will move as it does when foraging with nothing interesting nearby. It moves in a straight line, turning as its Turning, Turn Type, and Turn Angle genes tell it to. One difference is that the roaming orgot ignores the forage counter, since it's not foraging.

If you haven't skipped any of this vital and riveting description, then you now know the entire genome of orgot plants and animals! This is no small feat of understanding, and we commend you. If you have skipped parts, don't worry. When you need to know about a gene, you can look back through this chapter and find the gene you're interested in. Eventually you'll probably read about all of them, but taking the information in small doses may make it easier to remember the important points. The most important point that you should remember right now is to have fun! SimLife is a game, and should be an enjoyable pastime. We hope you learn interesting things by accident, or because you want to, not because you have to. Now that you know everything there is to know about designing a species, along with everything there is to know about designing environments for your species, you're ready for the really interesting, high-level stuff! How do species interact? What mix of species will make for a stable and thriving ecosystem? How can you recognize and make use of evolution? If these questions are on your mind, the next chapter is for you!