BIOGENESIS(1)							    Biogenesis							     BIOGENESIS(1)

NAME

       biogenesis - Biogenesis, an artificial life program focused on evolution

SYNOPSIS

       biogenesis [RANDOM_SEED]

DESCRIPTION

       This program imitates the evolutionary processes that happens on unicellular organism populations in nature. It has been tried to create an
       example of the elemental bacterial processes, simplifying them a lot and presenting them in a visual and comprehensible manner. Although it
       is  not	scientifically	exact,	regular mechanisms on bacterial evolution and life can be observed and it can be interesting as a didactic
       approximation to concepts like mutation, evolution or photosynthesis. It is also a good entertainment.

       The organisms that will populate this world are not representations of natural unicellular organisms, but an abstraction has been  used	to
       be  able to look more clearly at their virtual life. These organisms are formed by segments of different colors and lengths. The organism's
       segments color and length establish its properties, so that we can know what can an organism do only by looking at it on the screen.  More-
       over,  these segments' configuration is a representation in the world of its genetic code, which its descendants will inherit in an identi-
       cal form, with the exception of random mutations that can happen in each generation.

       Organisms that obtain beneficial mutations will be the most successful ones, on the reproductive point of view, and  will  create  a  large
       number  of  descendants	that  will  propagate its genes and its mutation in the future. However, those that suffer from a less appropriate
       mutation will not take a long time to die without being able to extend their species' lives longer than their own lives.

OPTIONS

       RANDOM_SEED
	      This number determines the sequence of the random numbers that will be generated. This way it is possible to recreate several  times
	      the same scenario if the same number is introduced.

PERFORMANCE

       This program has a high CPU consumption. You need to set a few parameters in order to adapt it to your hardware.

       These are the parameters that you should configure. Remember that you can do this by selecting the Parameters option under the World menu.

	*  OpenGL: The use of the OpenGL libraries greatly increases program's speed. This option is deselected by default because it doesn't work
       on all hardware and drivers combinations. You should try to enable it and restart the program. If it crashes or doesn't work,  OpenGL  will
       be disabled next time you run it.

	* Disable fbobject: Due to a bug in some graphic drivers, it may be necessary to activate this option for the OpenGL to work. If the first
       time that you try to activate them they don't work, try to activate them with this option.

	* Time per frame: This parameter controls the speed that the program will try to reach. If it is consuming a lot of CPU you  should  raise
       it, and if it is not and you want the process to execute faster, you should lower it.

	*  Initial  carbon  dioxide:  The CO2 is the limiting factor to life expansion. More CO2 means more organisms will populate the world, and
       more CPU needed to calculate their moves and draw them. If you change this parameter, it may be a  good	idea  to  change  the  world  size
       accordingly to keep the same CO2 concentration.

AUTHOR

       Written by Joan Queralt Molina <joanq.biogenesis@gmail.com>.
       This manual page was originally written by Miriam Ruiz <little_miry@yahoo.es> and Joan Queralt.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 2006-2011 Joan Queralt Molina <joanq.biogenesis@gmail.com>
       This  is  Free Software; this software is licensed under the GPL version 2, as published by the Free Software Foundation.  There is NO war-
       ranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

SEE ALSO

       You can find more information about Biogenesis and a full user manual on its homepage: http://biogenesis.sourceforge.net/

								 Fri, 18 Feb 2011						     BIOGENESIS(1)