1. Design: Basic design accomplishments, what is auto-evo supposed to do and how is it supposed to do it?
The auto-evo is a computational method that tweaks organism/species parameters to create diverse, random "evolutions" to help the species better survive its environment and add variety to the gameplay and user experience.
2. Implementation: Now we take our design, figure out how to implement it, and actually implement what we can.
Breaking down key phrases from the statement:
- tweaks: <how will we tweak it? anything more specific>
- Species parameters: what parameters do we need? What can we vary? <We can do this, start a discussion and come up with things like mass, organs, limbs, limb types, toxicity, poison resistance, etc>
- diverse, random "evolutions": <how can we ensure diversity and realism? obviously not everything is possible. Are there rules/goals that we should have? I.E. symmetric creatures?>
- better survive its environment: how do we relate the creature to its environment? what is the bare-bones requirements? I.E. food source, predator-prey interactions.>
- User experience: What goals are we trying to accomplish to improve the user experience? <We want the user to never get bored of the game, ever feel like the evolution is repetitive, or predictable, and show that there is a significant connection between the interactions of all the species and their environment>
At this point there should be a list of parameters to vary for the creature, goals for how diverse and random it should be, what rules the auto-evo should follow, a simple model of what is basically population dynamics for environmental influence, and goals for how this benefits the user experience.
3. Analysis: how well did the implementation work? What should we change? Are there more details we should add?
At this point you look at what you've done and start evaluating it based off of the goals and rules that you have also set up. Does the implementation follow the rules? Are all the parameters for the creatures work well? are some redundant? should their be more? You might say, well we have size and mass, but one can relate to the other. Maybe we need to add a way to categorize limb placement, etc.
1-2. Design: Now you iterate on your design and fill in more details
The auto-evo is a computational method that tweaks these organism/species parameters [list paramaters here] to create diverse, random "evolutions" that follow [list goals and rules] to help the species better survive its environment [by helping it utilize food sources, and favoring beneficial pred-prey interactions] and add variety to the gameplay and user experience with the goal(s) of [list goals].
2-2 Implementation: Same process as above, I'll focus on how to tweak the variables.
- Tweak: we will select a key parameter to vary within a limit and change it to a value that increases the total population of that species. <and then you could write a script that does something just like that>
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3-2. Analysis: how well did that implementation work? Are there some parameters that don't make sense to change? How did we select a key parameter? How well did that selection method work? Maybe try adding more environmental variables on the next design. I.E. multiple food sources, how do different organs affect population dynamics?
If you continue doing these cycles you can start adding in things like AI and behavioral parameters, social interactions, hunting/foraging behavior, organ growth and development, degree of randomness.
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