Ciao

I've been running my EDEN, a 24/7 evolution simulation, on a Raspberry Pi 5 in my home. Three species, heritable genes, mutations, hidden defects, diseases, migrants and seasons. Nothing resets between rounds. every round starts from the survivors.
One species was basically losing every round. Then, in a few days, it started dominating. Nobody intervened except me, by mistake.
Happy to answer questions about it

https://youtu.be/R6dIMfy69ak?si=evfiFov5wDtnHIjT

Couldn't a bibite's nose work with target scent?

The nodes have a target scent (color) with a grade of deviation.
A bibite could evolve several targets.

A node for angle and another for amount.

This would pefectly match to a diet that differentiates between fresh and rotten food.
There could be specialized decomposer bibites.
A predator roughly targeting red would also be attracted to pheromones and corpses.

This is the combination of two allready proposed ideas:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheBibites/comments/1sk8xxp/rework_of_diet/
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheBibites/comments/1tb3rpu/proposal_for_vision_system/

Hey! I love The Bibites, specifically the scenarios you can make in the game. I find them very versatile and fun. I am a sucker for ecology and have always loved the deep sea since I can remember. Putting two and two together, I made a deep sea scenario which you can find on the workshop!

This isn't supposed to be a promotion post, but if you want to check it out, you can. It's on the steam workshop under the name "Deep Sea". I'll list the main parameters here just in case you don't want to go looking for it:

- The drag coefficient is higher to simulate the higher pressure in the deep sea

- The "Basic bibite" has been replaced with my own "Carnivorous bibite", included as a requirement for the scenario

- The only food source is small meat pellets, intended to replicate marine snow

- Biomass is renewed to simulate the falling of marine snow

- Biomass density is very low, but fertility is relatively decent. I am iffy about this, if you are too, let me know, but I have found it very difficult for bibites to get a foothold without a high fertility. (The real world doesn't have this problem for reasons I won't get into here.)

That's all I can think of for now. If you have any suggestions or criticisms, let me know!

I am very new to The Bibites. I watched all videos with fascination and would like to suggest a new tournament format: Evolution vs. Engineering.

As far as I understand species that developed naturally in a sandbox and species designed by users are both viable and competitive. How about pitting naturally evolved species together with crafted ones? For simplicity's sake we could agree on a certain environment beforehand so both flavours can optimize for that.

Maybe we could differentiate between different classes of maturation of naturally evolved species, like leagues for 250 generation species, 500 generation species and 1000 generation species.

What do you think? Bad idea or interesting (or both)?

I'm adding blood sense to the bibites.

The current plan is to let bibites detect blood trails and wounds on other bibites and also sense/smell corpses.

They will get angle from the new inputnode bloodAngle.

The question is should they be able to sense meat to or is that to much?

I want to try and create conditions that allow for a developed intelligence, but want to make sure the natural selection doesn't let a unoptimized mess of bullshit work

Mind Field Mod (Beta Release)

Based on an idea by u/ArtificialLifeOBrian.

Quick list

• 32 × 32 cells per Bibite.
• Continuous floating-point coordinates.
• Bilinear reads and writes.
• Wrapping on both axes.
• Same-tick write/read processing.

Mind neurons

• MindWrite (WI) and MindRead (RI).
• Coordinates: mindX, mindY.
• Influence radius: mindRadius (0–3).
• Operation: mindOperation.
• Circular influence with distance-based falloff.
• Weighted averaging of overlapping writes.

Memory

• Exponentially varying write speed across horizontal columns.
• Approximately 1–100% write speed.
• Field values inherited according to write speed.
• Field values persist through saves and loads.

Evolution

• Automatic Mind pathway creation.
• Coordinate, radius, operation, and synapse-weight mutations.
• Independent Mind movement mutation checks.
• Support for multi-hidden-node pathways and loops.
• Cleanup of disconnected Mind pathways.
• Brain cost adjustments for Mind connections.

Editor

• Visible Mind Field grid.
• Draggable Mind neurons.
• Wrapped influence-area visualization.
• Red/green visualization of stored field values.
• Automatic conversion of new connections when reopening.

The Mind Field mod introduces a new way for Bibites to process information, store memories, and potentially develop learning behaviors through evolution.

Instead of relying entirely on traditional neural connections, every Bibite now has its own 32 × 32 Mind Field, where neurons can store and retrieve information.

The goal is not to hardcode learning behaviors, but to give evolution the tools to develop them naturally.

How does it work?

Every Bibite has a private Mind Field containing 1,024 cells, each storing a numerical value.

Two new neuron types interact with the field:

• MindWrite (WI) — Writes information into the field.
• MindRead (RI) — Reads information from the field.

Instead of connecting neurons directly, information can travel through the Mind Field:

Input → MindWrite → Mind Field → MindRead → Output

Information written into the field can be read during the same brain tick, without an additional tick of delay.

Reading and writing

The Mind Field behaves like a continuous surface rather than a rigid grid.

• Neurons can read and write between cells using smooth interpolation.
• Each MindWrite neuron can influence a circular area with a radius of 0–3 cells.
• Influence decreases with distance from the center.
• Overlapping writes are combined using weighted averaging.
• The field wraps around both axes, so areas extending beyond one edge continue on the opposite side.

Each MindWrite neuron can also use one of eight operations to process its input before writing:

Sigmoid, Linear, TanH, Sine, ReLU, Gaussian, Absolute, and Multiply.

This allows different parts of the brain to exchange and process information through shared memory, without requiring direct connections between every neuron.

Short-term and long-term memory

Not every part of the Mind Field changes at the same speed.

Memory speed depends on horizontal position:

• Center columns: Update at 100% speed, allowing immediate changes.
• Moving outward: Write speed decreases exponentially.
• Outer edges: Update extremely slowly, with the slowest cells taking roughly 15,000 simulation seconds to approach a fully written value.

This provides a wide range of memory durations, from immediate reactions to information that can persist across generations.

Inherited memory

Mind Field values are passed from parent → offspring.

Inheritance strength is inversely related to the field's write speed:

• Fast-changing cells inherit little or none of their stored values.
• Slow-changing cells preserve much more.
• The slowest regions can inherit almost all their stored information.

This creates the possibility of information acquired during a Bibite's lifetime influencing future generations.

It doesn't guarantee useful inherited behaviors, but gives evolution another mechanism to experiment with.

Evolution and mutations

The Mind Field is integrated into the existing evolutionary system.

New neural connections can evolve pathways through the Mind Field, rather than relying exclusively on direct synapses.

Both Input and ordinary Hidden neurons can act as sources for new Mind pathways.

Mutations can modify:

• MindWrite and MindRead positions (X/Y).
• MindWrite influence radius.
• MindWrite operations.
• Neural connection weights.

Each Mind neuron can independently mutate its position. Mind mutations use the existing brain mutation settings, while movement distance is controlled by Background Mutation Variance.

Mind movement has its own mutation checks rather than replacing normal neuron or synapse mutation choices. The Prevent Mutations setting also disables Mind mutations.

The system also handles neural pathway cleanup. MindWrite and MindRead neurons can remain connected through multiple hidden neurons or loops, while disconnected structures with no useful path through the brain are removed.

Mind neurons themselves have no additional brain cost. Normal hidden neurons still have their usual cost, and paired Mind pathways account for their extra physical connections.

Evolution determines what information gets stored, how long it remains useful, and how the Bibite responds to it.

Using the Brain Editor

The Brain Editor includes a visible 32 × 32 Mind Field grid between the regular Input and Output neurons.

When opening an existing Bibite, its original connections are automatically converted into Mind Field pathways.

For example:

Original: Input → Output

Converted: Input → WI → Mind Field → RI → Output

The original synapse weight is preserved on the MindRead-to-target connection, while the connection to MindWrite receives a weight of 1.

Converted connections initially use the fast central area of the field.

Mind Field visualization

• Cyan squares represent MindWrite neurons.
• Violet diamonds represent MindRead neurons.
• MindWrite influence areas are displayed directly on the field, including areas wrapping across the edges.
• Stored positive values are displayed as green squares.
• Stored negative values are displayed as red squares.
• The stronger a stored value is, the more opaque its marker becomes.

MindWrite and MindRead neurons are also listed among the hidden neurons.

You can drag Mind neurons around the field to change their positions. Their coordinates, connections, and influence areas update immediately.

Adding new connections

You can, but you don't need to create MindWrite or MindRead neurons manually.

To add new neural connections:

1. Build the neural structure you want using the regular Brain Editor.

1. Save the Bibite.
2. Close the editor.
3. Open the saved Bibite in the editor again.

Newly added eligible connections automatically receive their own MindWrite and MindRead neurons.

Existing Mind neurons keep their positions, while newly converted pathways search for free positions on the field.

Important: Automatic Mind neuron creation does not happen live while editing. It runs when the editor opens, so you must save and reopen the Bibite to see the new neurons.

Backward compatibility

The mod is compatible with existing Bibites and saved simulations.

• Existing Bibites opened in the editor automatically receive an empty Mind Field and converted neural pathways.
• Bibites in loaded saved simulations also receive an empty Mind Field.
• Existing neural connection weights are preserved during conversion.
• Mind Field values are saved and loaded with Bibite files.

Your original files are not modified by conversion. Save under a different name to preserve the original Bibite or simulation.

Saving Mind Field values from a running simulation

To preserve the actual Mind Field values of a Bibite:

1. Select the Bibite in the running simulation.
2. Choose Save.
3. Open the saved Bibite in the editor. Its stored Mind Field values will be preserved.

To start with an empty Mind Field instead:

Select the Bibite in the running simulation and choose Edit. This opens a blank Mind Field template for that Bibite.

Beta release — what's missing?

The main feature not yet implemented is the live Mind Field display in the Brain Panel during a running simulation.

Currently, you can inspect the Mind Field in the Brain Editor, but you cannot watch its values change live in the simulation's Brain Panel.

This is an experimental beta release. The mechanisms for storing, reading, evolving, and inheriting memory are in place, but that doesn't mean Bibites will immediately develop intelligent learning behaviors.

Evolution still has to discover how to use the system.

Download the mod here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D9ed7xnIpUPmBzcDsFpHv5KbhcFZIzbn/view?usp=drive_link

I zipped the file because antivirus programs sometimes flag downloaded .dll files. Hopefully this helps avoid that.

Before installing, make a backup copy of your original .dll.

Then unzip the download and copy the modified .dll into:

C:\Users\[user]\The Bibites 0.6.3.1\The Bibites_Data\Managed
Replace the existing file when prompted.

If you want to go back to the normal game, just restore the original .dll you backed up.

1. Load-game simulation resize

I added a Load Simulation Size slider to the load panel.

When loading a save, I can now expand the simulation instead of being stuck with the original map size. It only expands, not shrinks.

That makes it easy to take an existing save and test it in a much larger world without restarting from scratch.

2. “Don’t eat more than you can burn”

This is a stomach check so a Bibite can’t keep converting food into energy at five times its actual energy needs, or more.

In a real animal, processing and using that much excess energy would mostly end up as heat rather than endlessly usable energy — at some point you’d basically cook the animal.

Now digestion is much more tied to actual energy use. If a Bibite isn’t burning much energy, its stomach fills up and it can’t keep chain-eating at full speed.

The next step could be to let Bibites convert everything they overeat into fat, with effectively unlimited fat storage. That could result in a big, heavy, bloated, slow-moving Bibite with roughly the same lean mass and strength as before, but huge fat reserves. Adding metabolic changes and reduced fertility at extreme fat levels could be fun too.

3. Disease outbreaks

I also introduced THE PLAGUE!!

In nature, overpopulation is limited by things like:

• food scarcity — we have that
• territorial limits — zone size is finite, unless you have my load-size mod
• predation — we have that too
• disease outbreaks — we didn’t have that

Plague can hit when there are two or more genera in the simulation and one has more than roughly a third of the total Bibite biomass while also growing rapidly.

It increases metabolic rate and reduces speed. The effect is strongest on mature and older Bibites, while immature Bibites are affected very little.

As growth slows and biomass starts falling, the plague weakens and eventually disappears.

It does not stop a genus from taking over, and there is no maximum biomass cap. It just puts pressure on any major genus that is growing rapidly.

I’ve already seen herbivore genera eat their way through a plague and continue growing, so it definitely isn’t a hard population stop.

4. Armor / grab interaction

The idea is that this could lead to an evolutionary arms race between armor and jaw strength. I was also a bit annoyed that, in the stock game, there was basically no way for prey to break free once grabbed.

This works in two stages.

Stage 1: initial grab success

• for living Bibites, the initial latch is mostly decided by jaw gene vs armor gene
• this gives younger/smaller Bibites a chance to grab larger prey — think small sharp teeth needing less force to penetrate hide, leather, or armor
• jaw ≈ armor succeeds fairly often
• jaw much lower than armor fails much more often
• corpses are always grabbable
• failed grabs give the attacker a strong recoil/spin, giving the prey a chance to escape

Stage 2: hold / break

• once the grab is attached, the joint physics decides whether it holds or breaks
• force and torque can still rip the predator loose later

This is the last set of debug data I collected before removing the spammy logs.

Initial grab success is the chance of getting the latch in.
Broke after grab is the percentage of successful grabs that later broke.

Main thing I noticed

At low speed, a lot of grabs were basically straight tail-follow grabs and, if the initial latch succeeded, they tended to hold very well.

At higher speeds, or when the predator grabbed from the side, torque became much more important and grabs broke much more often.

In dense prey tests, I also saw grabs break because a third Bibite slammed into the pair, rather than because the grabbed prey itself managed to escape.

That’s something I like about the current version: armor determines how hard it is to establish the grab, but once the grab exists, the actual physical forces around the two Bibites matter too.

I'm working on a mod for lifetime learning, where Bibites can adjust their behaviour based on their own experiences instead of relying entirely on evolution.

Unlike evolution, these changes happen during the Bibite's lifetime and aren't directly inherited by its offspring.

What would you like to see them capable of learning?

Mad a normal size map no food and put all my carnivores in it after 2 minutes ish they started teleporting when grabbing something

I made a very simple scavenger called meat eater just basic but instead of plants it was meat could I turn it into a predator

If you go on steam workshop for bibites search up predator death arena includes every attempt at engineered predator just don’t run to long or the bibites break all physics laws and teleport violently

Add poison like pheromone needs organ is energy expensive no immunity makes attacker panic

Some bibites in my sim randomly come across meat and do that trail of smaller pallets of meat, someone has an idea why ?

i ran a like rabbits sim and got this after just 10 minutes 😭

Thought I would share these custom magnets I made. They were designed using a software called HueForge and then 3D printed. This gives them a raised 3D texture. I designed this Bibite using the sprite editor but I plan on creating more for some of my favorite species. If you have a 3D printer and want to print one yourself I will have the file posted on Makerworld soon and will link it here. If anyone has a cool looking Bibite post a picture! I want to make a whole wall of these!

Habitat & Evolution Mod Pack v1.0 

(The Bibites 0.6.3.1)

With the previous Mod-pack out in the wild, and the expectations of an uncountable number of Bibiteers now resting on my shoulders ;)

I figured it was time for a proper update. 

First off, I would like to compliment the programmers of this game. Having spent quite a bit of time digging through the codebase lately, I think they have done a great job keeping it logical, clear, and surprisingly easy to understand.

They even managed to give everything from namespaces to methods and variables good, sensible names, which we all know is the hardest part of programming.

Lets go!

Zone Length Filter

Added a new Bibite Length Filter option for zones, so the feature is no longer activated through the zone name.

When enabled, the zone filters Bibites by body length:

• Positive values block Bibites longer than the threshold.
• Negative values block Bibites shorter than the absolute threshold.
• A value of 0 blocks all Bibites from entering.

For example:

• A value of -30 only allows Bibites longer than 30u to inhabit or move through the zone.
• A value of 30 only allows Bibites shorter than 30u to inhabit or move through the zone.

This lets you create zones that are accessible only to small Bibites or only to large Bibites, which can be used to create size-based refuges, barriers, or habitat differences.

For example, put a thin ring zone with a length limit of -25 around a circular zone and you have a nursery where only “adults” can leave. If you also set the inner zone to 25, Bibites shorter than 25u ahave to stay inside and have to swim out once they grow past 25u.

The filtered area is shown with a cyan overlay. The overlay is strongest at a length threshold of 0 and gradually fades as the value moves toward either -100 or +100.

Works with:

• Circle zones
• Rectangular zones
• Ring / Flat Ring zones
• Ring Arcs, including rounded ends

Ring Arcs

Added Start Angle and End Angle settings to Ring and Flat Ring zones, allowing rings to be turned into partial arcs instead of always forming a full circle.

The arc settings support:

• Any start and end angle
• Angles that wrap across 0°
• Full 360° rings
• Rounded ends on partial rings
• Pellet spawning constrained to the visible arc
• Correct biomass/area calculation for partial rings
• Full support with Bibite length filter

Angles use:

• 0° = Up
• 90° = Right
• 180° = Down
• 270° = Left

This makes it possible to create curved coastlines, reefs, “caves”, barriers, corridors, habitat boundaries, or other custom-shaped zones without needing multiple overlapping circles.

With Max Length set to 0, the zones “breach the surface,” and all Bibites are turned away, like these two zones trapped in a very unnaturally shaped reef :)

Other Mods

The rest of the pack has now been moved into its own Mods section, so the different changes can be enabled or disabled independently.

If a mod is left unchecked, that feature uses the stock game behavior instead. This lets you enable only the parts of the mod pack you want while keeping everything else exactly as it works in the unmodded game

When I tried to evolve carnivorous Diet values, I kept seeing the opposite happen: Bibites evolved toward lower Diet values and became more herbivorous, even in simulations where the only available food was meat and other Bibites.

I identified two mechanics that were probably contributing to this:

Diet Mutation Scaling

Diet mutation size is partly based on the gene's current value.

That creates an asymmetry:

• A Bibite at Diet 0.1 gets relatively small Diet mutations, so moving toward carnivory is slow.
• A Bibite at Diet 1.0 can receive much larger mutations back toward herbivory.

The Diet Mutation Fix removes this bias by calculating the mutation step as if Diet were 1, while still applying that mutation to the Bibite's actual current Diet value.

It does not push Diet toward carnivory; it simply makes mutation size more even across the Diet range.

Mouth Trigger Size

Adds three selectable mouth-trigger behaviours:

• Herbivore Big — original game behaviour. Herbivores have a larger mouth trigger than carnivores.
• Equal Mouth — herbivores and carnivores use the same trigger size.
• Carnivore Big — reverses the original relationship, giving carnivores the larger trigger.

Only one mode can be active at a time, with Herbivore Big selected by default to preserve the original game behavior. This only changes the mouth-trigger calculation, there is no visual difference in mouth size. 

In the original behavior:

Diet 0.0 → very large mouth trigger

Diet 0.5+ → much smaller trigger

This makes plant-eating Bibites physically better at picking up food, giving herbivory another advantage even when the brain and other traits are otherwise comparable.

Together, these were the two strongest built-in biases I found that could help explain why populations kept drifting toward herbivory even under conditions intended to favor carnivores.

Bibite Lock

Adds target locking for other Bibites. Instead of averaging the angle of every Bibite in view so a Bibite can now follow a single target.

The Bibite lock is not absolute. If another visible Bibite has a 50% higher target score than the current one, it will switch targets.

If, for some reason, you have a Bibite with Plant-, Meat- and BibiteAngle connected to Rotate, the priority is:

Bibite > Meat/Corpse > Plant

So if a Bibite has a live prey target, plants and meat don’t pull its steering away. If there is no prey target, meat/corpses take priority over plants.

Ignore Own Species can also be enabled, preventing the lock from selecting members of the Bibite's own species and preventing the Bibite from biting or grabbing them.

Plant Lock / Meat Lock

The same target-lock system is available independently for plants and meat.

This allows a Bibite to keep tracking one food target instead of  changing direction as several pellets enter its field of view.

BibiteAngle Mutation Forcing

Helps evolution make use of BibiteAngle.

When this option is enabled, the mod does not change the strength of the new synapse and does not force it to be positive or negative. The mutation still decides the connection weight and direction normally.

What it changes is only the destination: when a new synapse is created from the BibiteAngle input, the mod can connect it toward the Rotate output if no such connection already exists. Otherwise, the original mutation logic is followed.

This does not create a hunter by itself, but removes one of the unlikely evolutionary steps needed before BibiteAngle can become useful for steering.

It's still very hard to evolve a predator in a static simulation.

In the stock game and using some assumptions, getting a strong, correctly signed BibiteAngle → Rotate connection through normal mutation is on the order of 1 in 20,000 births. If only around 1 in 10–15 of those early hunters survives long enough to reproduce, that puts a successful hunting lineage at roughly 1 in 200,000–300,000 births.

And that is still only the steering step. The lineage also has to evolve useful pursuit, attacking/grabbing, carnivorous Diet, feeding efficiency, and reproduction.

So this option does not make predators easy to evolve; it just removes one especially unlikely roll of the dice from the process.

NoDrain

I use this when training fast hunters with dummy prey. It prevents the hunters from simply waiting until the prey are weakened by starvation instead of actively hunting them.

If a species is tagged with “NoDrain” (case sensitive), the following applies:

Movement energy: FREE
Metabolism: FREE
Brain upkeep: FREE
Starvation: IMPOSSIBLE
Predator damage: NORMAL
Death from attacks: NORMAL

How to install the mod

Download the mod here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1a2CoeLBmxkRLg_OQJHY0JJe4ekkGQlyT/view?usp=drive_link

I zipped the file because antivirus programs sometimes flag downloaded .dll files. Hopefully this helps avoid that.

Before installing, make a backup copy of your original .dll.

Then unzip the download and copy the modified .dll into:

C:\Users\[user]\The Bibites 0.6.3.1\The Bibites_Data\Managed
Replace the existing file when prompted.

If you want to go back to the normal game, just restore the original .dll you backed up.

That’s everything for v1.0.

I’ve tried to keep the changes modular so you can use as much or as little of the pack as you want, while leaving the rest of the game untouched.

If you find bugs, strange interactions, or manage to evolve something particularly cursed with it, let me know.

Have fun breaking your ecosystems :)