RewardTracker (Version 1.0 - 14KB - 21/03/1999)
This program examines the brain of the currently selected norn and displays what concepts and perceptions are currently being reinforced due to the presence of punishment or reward chemicals.
It tracks the actual level of the brain chemicals in the concept and decision lobes rather than tracking the levels of the norn chemicals. In this way it gives a more accurate picture of what is actually happening inside the norn brain. It allows you to watch a norn perform an action and see if that action got rewarded or punished. It is also useful for seeing if too much reward or punishment chemical exists, resulting in inappropriate actions being rewarded.
It's a first cut at this type of monitoring and there is a lot of information that can be displayed. Currently I only display what the norn is looking at, what it has decided to do and whether that action results in reinforcement. I also display a quick note when the concept lobe and decision lobe becomes full and starts to atrophy. This can probe useful in monitoring the effects of adjusting number of dendrites and/or lobe sizes.
A detailed log of all perceptions that are reinforced when forming the concepts is also displayed. By looking at this you can get a fair idea of what the norn is actually learning. All this information appears very rapidly due to the fast pace of data going through the creatures brain so the log list can be useful when pausing the program and analysing the information.
I expect to improve on the presentation and type of information presented in a future version. Those who may find this program most useful are likely to be people who are modifying or creating norn brain structures, or adjusting the various emitters, receptors and reactions involving learning. It can also be quite fascinating just to sit and watch what is happening inside your favourite norns mind.
This is a Creatures 2 only program. It will not work with Creatures 1.
The right hand pane shows what the attention lobe is currently looking at, what decision is currently being made and whether this decision is being rewarded (Learning text box). This text box will show:
'decision is good for me' if it is processing reinforcing the decision as being a good decision to do (strengthening type 0 dendrites in the decision lobe).
'decision is bad for me' if it is processing reinforcing the decision as being a bad decision to do (strengthening type 1 dendrites in the decision lobe).
Note that this box uses the actual brain chemicals (chem0->chem3) not the reward, punishment or reinforcement norn chemicals for working out if things were reinforced. It's possible I may be displaying these messages if no reinforcement is occuring - this is because I can't get the value of 'susceptibility' and the svrule for strengthening dendrites uses it. I do try and work out the susceptibility value by calculating the susceptibility svrule myself so I don't think it is - but you should take the results as being approximate just in case.
The 'comments' text box will display messages if the concept lobe dendrites, or the decision lobe dendrites are atrophying due to being no loose dendrites available.
The log view on the left will display all this stuff in order down the list, as well as showing the levels of the perception cells that contributed to the decision reinforcement/punishment being made. So you might see that perception cells 'eat', 'food' and 'hunger' were high when the norn chose to 'eat' while looking at 'food' which causes reinforcement of a good decision.
Note that only the concept and decision lobes are monitored and it is assumed that they are relatively standard. It works on all norn brain variants I know about (including Canny, Nova Subterra and Adroit) but creatures with very radical brain structures (like no concept lobe) may not show correct information.
This program has been virus checked using the latest version of F-PROT that I have been able to get. I suggest that you virus scan it anyway using the scanners of your choice. Better to be safe than sorry!
You may need some additional files to run this program. These files are probably already installed on your PC but if not they can be downloaded from:
http://double.nz/creatures/programs/mfc.zip
If, when running RewardTracker, you get error messages concerning missing DLL's, missing dynalinks, or something similar you will need to unzip the files in mfc.zip into the same directory as RewardTracker or place them in your windows system directory.
RewardTracker is Copyright (c) 1999, Chris Double. All Rights Reserved.
Please do not post this program on other websites without first asking my permission.