Phantasia Forum - Recent Topics

Any way to download older versions?

Acklord — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 22:25:03 +0000

I've been interested in this project for a long time. I love the state it is in right now and it is obviously much more fleshed out and complex, however I still want to mess around with the gloops and thwogs I saw in those early videos.

They were just so silly and I was wondering if there is any way to download early versions of Grandroids, or if maybe I could contact the busy man Steve Grand himself and the likelihood he would send them to me, although I understand why not since it is gated behind a subscription now. Just mainly want to mess with a gloop like I wanted to 10+ years ago XD

I wish I was a kickstarter backer but I was a child back then, and as someone who is extremely interested in artificial life and emergent intelligence I just like seeing things even if from an outsiders perspective its goofy, to me its wildly interesting.

Current state of affairs fall 2026

FoggyGoofball — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 03:30:56 +0000

So, i've been away for a few months, and I've come back. I feel that new members might appreciate a current status update.

Prior to @steve experiencing some health troubles, the last I heard was that he was hard at work resolving menstruation and reproduction among the bollys. Since then I know that there has been significant work poured in to the third or fourth unity engine update since inception. I'm still planning on getting some screenshots of the various hairstyles available to us, but in the meantime we all will have to wait with bated breath.

I'm sure there will be something new and exciting in the not too distant future.

Experiences with GenAI

FoggyGoofball — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 18:33:24 +0000

So, to start out I'll be the first to admit that I used to be very cynical and dismissive of GenAI tools, but since i embarked on my learning adventure last year trying to make a digital avatar from a still image and voice sample my opinion has come around.

Sure, most people don't really utilize it for anything of value, but the technology has gotten so far in the last year. I've taken to vibe coding my own AI tools using open source models. the landscape moves so fast and the coding tools are working so well nowadays that they can achieve my goals much faster than i can learn the syntax and how to navigate all of the dependencies required.

I've been obsessively researching and working on my wasp biology project and i've been building a machine learning pipeline for characterizing the near infrared spectra of the various pheromones on the surface of the individual wasps.

in addition to that, i'm building my own offline coding environment that i can use to analyze and modify any code i need in order to understand it better. So far, i can get it to output good lua and C++, but i hope to make it programming language agnostic in the future. it can currently utilize ghidra to decompile and analyze all manner of things and i've even used it to reverse engineer a couple of save files for my son's video games.

I'm also working on a voice cloning and translation pipeline for my daughter's birthday. She is a big fan of anime and just wants to watch shows with an english dub. so far i've had pretty good success.

while the LLMs might be good at coding, they tend to lack understanding and they definitely require tight instructions and oversight in order to get what you want. I've even had ongoing arguments with them at times due to just a poor understanding of the actual software engineering and architecture. However, once you learn how to speak to them it is an incredible resource.

What has everyone else's experience been like? I hear a lot of doom and gloom, and a lot of frivolous and trivial uses, but has anyone out there actually put these thing to work in a meaningful way?

Update on the condition of the AI bot known as "Steve Grand"

Finnius — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 17:27:18 +0000

Just wanted to give a quick update on the condition of the AI bot known as “Steve Grand”.

As you know…”Steve” resides in the Hassayampa Ranch Buckeye Data Center in Buckeye, AZ. “Steve” was operating at capacity until around December of 2025 when the Data Center underwent redevelopment. We informed you back in February 2026 that there might be some ‘hiccups’ in the AI performance. In March 2026…the project was updated but unfortunately…some of the legacy AI had problems integrating with the new structuring.

We are still hard at work trying to reintegrate the orginal “Steve” program back into the main server hub. We understand your frustrations and are fully dedicated to restoring him to his original parameters. The loss of his stored data would set the project back decades…content that we cannot facsimile with complete confidence. Rest assured that our efforts and focus is on fully acclimating “Steve” to our current infastructure.

Thank you for your time and attention.

If you've seen the news about the mapped fruit fly brain, this guy made it drive a Minecraft bee.

SpaceShipRat — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 11:34:30 +0000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUkLWjcoBc0

Made a small organism to live on my website

danielmewes — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 18:11:17 +0000

I made a small artificial to roam around on my website dmewes.com while the browser is open.

His name is Hebbie, and he can roam around and eat the words on the page. Lower-case words reduce hunger, while capitalized words act as a mild poison.

He learns which actions to take through online Hebbian learning. In particular, he learns small world models about how different actions affect his drives in certain situations, and then uses those models to select the most advantageous action to take.

It's very simple of course, but enough to generate some mildly non-trivial behaviors and learn basic associations within a few minutes.

Screenshot-from-2026-09-04-11-05-46.png

Hi, I’m also a self-taught zoologist. I’d like to share some research on central pattern generators using SNNs.

antonatlasov — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 12:39:05 +0000

Hi, your work and games really inspire me. I'm digging around with VNC flies, and I ended up making my own viewer and engine for a spike neural network. You select edges, run them, and see the signal traces. I'm also studying how a brain cell understands where to grow from its genome.

PROMETHEUS

> "DNA is not firmware, but a generator that writes firmware.
> Half hardwired (innate), half through "run and let it learn."

Here is the **reference genome of Drosophila melanogaster** (Release 6, RefSeq
GCF_000001215.4) and the bridge from it to our fly connectome: gene →
neurotransmitter → connection symbol.

Files

| file | what is this |
|--- |------------------------------------------------------|
| `drosophila_genome.fna.gz` | full DNA, 144 MB A/C/G/T (44 MB compressed) |
| `drosophila_genes.gff.gz` | annotation of 17,537 genes |
| `dna_nt_map.py` | extracts NT genes + raw DNA, compiles a table |
| `dna_nt_map.csv` | result: gene → NT → connectit class → sign |

Why is this?

All day in the connectome, we've been fixing the **connection sign** (excitation/inhibition) – and it's not from the
EM scan, it's from the **DNA**. Each neuron makes its own neurotransmitter based on a gene,
and these genes are:

| gene | neurotransmitter | sign (in flies) | role |
|-------|--------------------|----------------|-----------------|
| ChAT | acetylcholine | **+ excit.** | ACh synthesis |
| VGlut | glutamate | **− inhibitor.| glutamate transporter |
| Gad1 | gaba | *− inhibitor.*| GABA synthesis |
| VGAT | gaba | **− inhibitor.** | GABA transporter |
| ple | dopamine | + | tyrosine hydroxylase |
| DAT | dopamine | + | DA transporter |
| Tdc2 / Tbh | octopamine | + | octopamine synthesis |
| SerT | serotonin | + | 5HT transporter |

Plus morphogens (dpp/wg/hh) and axon guidance (fra/comm)—the "developmental script"
by which the brain assembles itself.

## Key Idea

```
4 letters → protein → neurotransmitter → connection symbol (in .taas nt_types)
```

**There is no synapse strength in the genome.** There is `dpp` (where to grow), `fra` (where to extend
the axon), `Gad1` (what symbol)—but no "synapse #3 184 223 = 0.7". Therefore, we learn the weights (linker, R-STDP), and read the symbol from DNA.

Снимок-экрана-2026-08-21-212256.png

Im new

Shmoo — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 14:14:16 +0000

so currently im trying to figure out what im suppose to do, how to do it etc. im a little lost on what im looking for and where to go etc, is there any guides available that can help me catch my bearings and progress....

how to reset

Mabus — Wed, 13 May 2026 16:37:31 +0000

I forgot the key combination to reset my world and last time i spwaned way to many bollys and crashed my world permanently....

Joining the Conversation

Johnologue — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 07:49:53 +0000

Hey, long-time fan of Steve's work. I recently regained a years-dormant fixation on the subject of AI, despite the best efforts of contemporary examples (LLMs etc.) to make it unlikable and boring. I blame the funny turtle streamer.

So, I spent the last couple of months processing a lot of information. Reading up on the theory behind current LLM stuff, a lot of Wikipedia, whatever science papers I can find related to my own thoughts/observations, like non-linguistic forms of intelligence, the brain being a physical machine that changes structure, concepts like brainwaves applied to AI (LinOSS seems interesting).

And, of course, I've been reading blog posts and comments from Phantasia (and Steve's old WordPress, etc.).

Something I'm not fully clear on (and hoping it isn't rude to ask!) is whether some of the outside ideas/research address Steve's past criticisms about the shallowness of mainstream AI research, whether certain ideas overlap, etc.

Like "world models", for example. The premise of modeling and predicting the states of the physical world seems similar to the premise Phantasian brains, but I don't think they're the same.

I also figured it's time that I join some communities with people who actually know/talk about the subject of AI in some way, instead of burdening a couple Discord contacts with my entire stream of consciousness, random scientific papers, and excerpts from my cluttered notes.

Obligatory mention: I sometimes do YouTube. I've struggled to actually be productive for many reasons (I've rewritten this post several times) but I'd be happy to contribute on the "content creator" front if people have ideas.