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Species ALRE - A Realistic Emergent Evolution Game (PC, Windows only for now)
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Registered User admin
Registered User admin
in Indie Games
Hello all. I'm Quasar, lead developer and coder, and I'd like to introduce you to
Species: Artificial Life, Real Evolution.
Formal Description: Species ALRE is a scientifically-founded artificial life game wrapped around a complex, first-principles simulation of evolution by natural selection.
Non-formal Description: Species aims to be approximately what you'd get if you genespliced Dwarf Fortress and Spore, the resulting abomination was carried to maturity by Yog Sothoth, and David Attenborough and GLaDOS co-narrated the birth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW1zTwf3zS8
It's currently only on it's third public alpha release (0.6.0, available for free download from the site), so the much of the graphics, AI and physics are still placeholder, and it can be unstable over the course of extended play (crashes somewhat mitigated by frequent autosaves).
The fundamental game mechanics are working, however: the in-game creatures are actually living entities by some definitions of life. Based on the random mutation and emergent selection pressures, expect to see speciation, punctuated equilibrium, convergent evolution and all that other wonderful ultrasciency nerdy stuff. (And if that bores you, there are also drivable rovers with ridiculous physics, climate controls and oh just watch the video)
Oh, and the randomly generated creatures tend to straddle the line between nightmarishly horrific and hilariously absurd, so there's that too.
Cheers!
Qu
Species: Artificial Life, Real Evolution.
Formal Description: Species ALRE is a scientifically-founded artificial life game wrapped around a complex, first-principles simulation of evolution by natural selection.
Non-formal Description: Species aims to be approximately what you'd get if you genespliced Dwarf Fortress and Spore, the resulting abomination was carried to maturity by Yog Sothoth, and David Attenborough and GLaDOS co-narrated the birth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW1zTwf3zS8It's currently only on it's third public alpha release (0.6.0, available for free download from the site), so the much of the graphics, AI and physics are still placeholder, and it can be unstable over the course of extended play (crashes somewhat mitigated by frequent autosaves).
The fundamental game mechanics are working, however: the in-game creatures are actually living entities by some definitions of life. Based on the random mutation and emergent selection pressures, expect to see speciation, punctuated equilibrium, convergent evolution and all that other wonderful ultrasciency nerdy stuff. (And if that bores you, there are also drivable rovers with ridiculous physics, climate controls and oh just watch the video)
Oh, and the randomly generated creatures tend to straddle the line between nightmarishly horrific and hilariously absurd, so there's that too.
Cheers!
Qu
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Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
In case the dev is reading this: The video showed a pretty diverse ecology developing. I saw that you can vary the climate globally, but do local environmental factors affect speciation? In worlds that have been running for a while, do you see species variation develop according to biome?
Yep.
Of course, since it's a first-principles simulator, all of these things are emergent from the simpler mechanics of evolution, so it can be hard to identify when they're occuring, especially with the tiny biome sizes.
The best way to see it is to generate a lake or ocean with two distinct, seperate islands. Genetic drift then occurs and you usually end up with two very different lineages on each island, providing you can keep both of them alive and they don't develop enough speed to swim the gap.
EDIT: Aaaaannnd of course my awesome giraffe monsters go extinct as soon as I post. At least my jungle island still has these neat, kind of dinosaur-looking things that walk on clawed forelimbs.
EDIT 2: Something about the environment of my south island seems to encourage long necks. A group of lucky giant headed lizard things that managed to acclimate to the cold of the south island during one of my mass migrations has started spreading out over a now empty frozen wasteland, growing long, pencil thin necks in the process.