It's been a while since I posted an update here, as I've been busy launching an API to the game called Derk's Gym. You can find more information about it here: https://gym.derkgame.com Meanwhile, I have had a bit of time to add some features and polish to the game as well. Most recently, I added an ELO based ranking system, which means you now have a chance to meet anyone in the game on the battlefield! Though the likelihood to battle someone is less for teams that are much stronger or weaker than your team. Here's the full changelog for the past couple of weeks: $$ 0.26.0 2020-10-07 ELO based ranking & matchmaking - Each player now has an associated ELO rating, which is updated when you battle someone. - There are five fixed divisions; Diamond, Ruby, Gold, Silver and Copper. Your rating determines your division. - Matchmaking is based on ELO ratings. The selection is weighted to favour teams you're likely to have an even matchup with (not too hard, not too easy), but you always have a chance to fight any active team. - You need to play a minimum of five matches to show up in the rankings. $$ 0.25.24 2020-09-15 Python Reinforcement Learning Environment I'm happy to announce that there is now an OpenAI reinforcement learning environment based on the game available called [Derk's Gym website](https://gym.derkgame.com)! $$ 0.25.23 2020-08-16 Load Derkling brain from another Derkling $$ 0.25.22 2020-08-14 Limit number of runs when using scheduling $$ 0.25.21 2020-08-10 Add item stats to item tooltips Such as damage, cast time, cooldown etc. $$ 0.25.20 2020-08-10 Kill, victory and loss bounties added When a unit is "pushed" (e.g. Magnum), their fall damage is attributed to the one that pushed them. $$ 0.25.19 2020-08-07 Move bounties to Derklings The bounties are now associated with the Derklings themselves, rather than with the training setup. There is also a "presets" feature where you can save and load bounty configurations. This also made it possible to do "dual" training again (train both sides at the same time), which has been re-enabled.

The past week a bunch of improvements and upgrades landed in the game, thanks to tons of player feedback! Here's a summary of the biggest ones: $$ 0.25.18 2020-08-06 Bug fix: "Statue takes damage" bounty $$ 0.25.17 2020-08-05 Edit bounties in main menu $$ 0.25.16 2020-08-05 Deterministic focus Focus was previously determined by CDF sampling the decision outputs from the Derkling. This meant that a Derkling couldn't precisly determine which enemy to focus on, but could only give them higher likelyhood to be choosen. This has now been replaced with a simple argmax. The reason for sampling was originally to give battles variation; I wanted each battle to be unique, and sampling outputs was an easy way to do so. But as the game has evolved there are now other factors that ensure that each battle is unique, reducing the need for this. $$ 0.25.15 2020-08-05 Bug fix: attachment slots wrong order when creature is "away". $$ 0.25.14 2020-08-04 Nerf Cleaver: Casting is aborted when the target goes out of range. This tweak applies to all abilities; a target must remain in range for an ability to "hit", and channeling abilities (Heal, Vampire gland) will stop channeling if the target goes out of range. To be considered "in range", the target must also be in front of the caster. $$ 0.25.13 2020-08-04 Tweak matchmaking Matchinmaking is reworked in this version. Instead of each opponent in the same group having an equal chance to be choosen, they are now weighted by the "points opportunity". For each opponent in your group, you have a maximum of 10 potential points since they are a best of five, and a victory counts as two points. So if you for instance have one victory and one tie against a particular opponent, then you'll have 3p (this is how it worked before this patch as well). Since the maximum is 10p, you have a 7p "opportunity", which is also the weight for the chance of choosing this opponent. There's also an indicator added next to each opponent, which will tell you what your current "best of five" state is. $$ 0.25.12 2020-08-03 Derkling tags It's now possible to "tag" your Derklings, to easier arrange them into groups! $$ 0.25.11 2020-08-03 Nerf helium bubble: Remove "is on ground" requirement for casting abilities Abilities can now be cast when the Derkling is in the air. This means that they can cast abilities while being in a helium bubble. $$ 0.25.10 2020-08-03 Save/Load/Reset brains $$ 0.25.9 2020-08-03 Manual gold bonus If you see a behaviour you'd like to reward a bit extra, you can now do that with the "manual gold bonus" button! The reward can be configured in "Misc bounties". Enjoy!

- Thank you everone who's contributing suggestions, ideas and bug reports! This first patch since the launch is an implementation for the current top suggestion: "Bounty sets". - In this patch the bounty system has been rework to be both simpler and more flexible. Instead of assigning bounties to things, you now configure bounties for each of your trainee Derklings. This opens up for lots of fun things to explore, for instance you can configure one of them to focus on healing a specific teammate, or create defensive Derklings that prefer to stay at home. - You can now have multiple training configurations, and they each have their own set of bounties associated with them. - And finally, you can now schedule training of these configurations to make it even easier to train your Derklings exactly as you want them!

Join us on discord to chat about upcoming AI powered Battle Arena "Derk" on Friday, June 12! The developer will be there to answer any and all questions you may have about this title. Derk is a MOBA-style game where the characters are controlled by deep neural networks rather than humans! Your task is to manage a team of AI creatures, train them, and battle them against other players.

Come discuss the AI powered Battle Arena "Derk" with the developer on Saturday, June 13! Derk is a MOBA-style game where the characters are controlled by deep neural networks rather than humans! Your task is to manage a team of AI creatures, train them, and battle them against other players.

Join us on discord to chat about upcoming AI powered Battle Arena "Derk" on Friday, June 12! The developer will be there to answer any and all questions you may have about this title. Derk is a MOBA-style game where the characters are controlled by deep neural networks rather than humans! Your task is to manage a team of AI creatures, train them, and battle them against other players.

Come discuss the AI powered Battle Arena "Derk" with the developer on Saturday, June 13! Derk is a MOBA-style game where the characters are controlled by deep neural networks rather than humans! Your task is to manage a team of AI creatures, train them, and battle them against other players.

Pixling World has gone through many phases, from the initial neural network playground (that me and MPJ from FunFunFunction chatted about over a year ago), to an ecosystem/evolution sandbox simulator and now in its final version, a "bioengineering battleground". In this latest version of Pixling World, you bioengineer the bodies of your Pixlings, and then use evolution and breeding to optimize their behaviors. You then battle your team of Pixlings against other players teams, to reach the global #1 spot! Since this concept is so different from the original concept, we've decided to change the name to "Dr. Derk's Mutant Battlegrounds". Dr. Derk's full name is Cork Derk, descendant of Cark Derwin, the great biologist that invented the mutant battlegrounds!

- New brains: A more standard RNN, trimmed down to optimize both running speed and evolution speed. - New focus "search" system for Pixlings, which enables them to find things like "nearby enemy with the lowest hp". - Stamina: Moving drains stamina, but they can rest to regain stamina. - Removed: Entity memories, pheromones, buckets, speaking and old attention mechanism. - Fortify buff: Stacks up to 10 times and add one armor per instance. Damage = baseDamage / armor. - Mushrooms: Health/mana/stamina/fortify mushrooms that the Pixlings can eat to restore some of their corresponding value. These also give Pixlings more of a reason to roam the world. - Heal ability. - Stun ability renamed to Boomerang. - Three-slot system: Eyes, arms and legs now each have a list of abilities to choose from. For instance you can have Eyes: Laser, Arms: Boomerang and Legs: Stomp. The selected abilities evolve over time. - Auto-pause game on extinction events. - Removed drowning and made Pixlings that enter water teleport to some other part of the island instead. This is to encourage exploration (vs. just going in circles).

I've found a way to optimize the code to allow a lot bigger worlds. The large world is now 16 times larger than before, and the medium world is the same size as large was before. You can also control what you want the maximum population density to be. There are still a number of outstanding issues, such as spawning not working correctly, and the "ground minerals" and grass environments have been disabled since they won't work with the new system.

- New "Egg" module: This introduces an "egg" state for the Pixlings before they become adults, with a configurable duration. Eggs can be eaten whole, and are completely defenseless. - The "Minerals mode" in the reproduction module has been replaced with just a "requires mineral" setting. This means that 1 mineral is now always 1 Pixling (as long as that switch is on). - Feature mutation tweaked to favor "feature off". Each time a feature mutates, it's 4 times more likely to turn off than on. This means that features that aren't used will have a natural baseline occurrence rate of around 20% (though this can only be observed over many simulations). - New "Appendix" feature that doesn't have any function, which can be used to get a better idea of the "baseline occurrence rate". - A Pixling can at most hold 100 minerals - The Neural networks UI now visualizes activations - A number of bug fixes

The minerals tool will now try to be a bit "smarter". When increasing minerals, it will only add minerals to the ground, and when decreasing it will first take minerals from the ground, then from grass and finally from Pixlings, to reach the target minerals / cell.

The mouth module has been split into two modules; Carnivore mouths and Herbivore mouths. This makes it possible to have simulations where Pixlings specialize in either of them, or where they become omnivores by having both features simultaneously.