hahahaha I made this game many years ago, and I still enjoy getting comments on it! ^^
Maybe it was badly explained on the game (I don't remember now) but second and third sensor don't make it learn faster, otherwise it makes they learn slower, but able to learn more and better (in machine learning terms, they have bigger layers).
Sometimes learning process gets stuck on a "local minimum" and it is very hard to get out of that. The only advise I can give you is to made they to "unlearn" a lot to get away of that "local minimum", and then start again the learning process. To do that, get back to old maps for some generations, or change the configurations by A LOT.
The green bike is there to allow you to see if each generation is evolving or they are stuck on a local minimum and getting away from it: if the green bike is always doing the same, they are not learning, neither "unlearning".
Another hard option you have is to retire early, you won't get the bonuses from completing all races, but you will start again with the same amount of sensor to try again learning from 0...
I made this game "for fun" 5 years ago, and you are right, it is abandoned and it have bugs and things that can be improved, but I am not a game dev and I have other job. I just keep the game here because it makes me happy to find nice comments time to time from people that discovered the game and enjoyed it.
I understand and agree with your feed back, but I would like to say: try to be more constructive with the next feedbacks you gave to other real game dev, specially the ones that are starting.
A good constructive feedback would be something like "I think that if you change this, the game would be less random" instead of "this game is too random".
In this case, it is ok to me since I am not working on game dev. But reading harsh comments instead of constructive ones, can make junior Devs to give up instead to improve their skills.
I like the game and how simple it is, but it has no feedback to the player, I don't know if I killed the monster or if he killed me, or when I get gems, how much gold / exp I am winning, etc.
I think that if you add just some pop-up icons like a "+1 {gem_icon}" or a Skull when a monster kills you, the game will improve a lot.
To try to change a deep learned behavior, is good to go back a level and change a little the skills configuration. This will make they to fail the level in the first turns, but the longer you keep relearning the previous track, more they will lose of this bad behavior and get a better change to learn to do that turn.
As reference, when the green one is better than the other bikes, your IA is not getting smarter. When other bikes does better than the green one, they are learning.
Well, maybe is the translation to English, but I was thinking more in a "Blow up" than a "fire explosion", so when a tree explodes, it didn't hurt enough other things to making then explode too.
At first, I didn't think on "chain explosion", but you give me the idea that this world could have some items designed to hurt your enemies when it blows up, like a spike maze that throw spikes when explodes, spike shields, etc
1º - EVERYTHING have 1HP, and I mean every single thing in the game: orcs, dragons, Swords, trees, stones...
2º - EVERYTHING that loses its hit points...explodes.
To hurt anything, you have to overcome a confrontational roll of force against resistance: a success the objective explodes, a failure nothing happens, a critical failure and it is your weapon that explodes (a critical failure punching a stone and it could be you who explodes ...)
Weapon skill will be very important, as it will allow you to deflect the hit to your weapon or your shield, although in that case they could explode and you will be in danger.
The fighting will become extremely dangerous, forcing you to look for other less risky strategies and your weapons, armor or shields may blow up in the middle of the fight, forcing you to retire.
On the other hand, new ways of dealing with puzzles and dungeons are created, since everything is destructible: doors, walls, chests, tables, chairs, horses...
