Couple quick ideas

Okay, while i take a break from stripping off cegui and integrating libagar, I'll talk aobut auto-evo.

Okay. Evolution.

This is thoughts of how to actually implement it, as i am the programmer I'm thinking in terms of what i can actually produce, not what i want to be able to.

Darwinian (the currently accepted "true") evolution is the slow changing of dna due to certain traits of an organism causing it be more likely to survive, over other members of the same species. Such as the giraffe, originally they had shorter necks, but one girraffe had a lil longer neck, so it got all the leaves from the tree, and so survived long enough to pass its genes on. This continued over time until the giraffes became what they are today blah blah blah.

Now, implementing this system, is just not fun. You can't control your creatures directly, as you would have to look over the spiecies as a whole, and kill off the members of your species that dont quite have the traits you want, and only let the ones that start to look more like yours live.... etc etc etc

Instead, we could take the other option, and that is base it on a theory that had been thought up before darwinian evolution. Basically, using the giraffe as an example again, reaching for the taller leaves caused the giraffes to stretch their necks. This somehow causes some sort of memory effect and so its offspring were born with longer necks. they in turn streched their necks further, as the previous generations were taking the slightly lower leaves, and necks got longer and longer.

So, I'm thinking something along the lines of....

1) theres a few hack n' slash video games where the actions you take determine your stat increases.
so for instance, slashing with a sword lots increases your health stat, taking lots of hits increases your defence stat, and so on.

(a)certain repeated actions affect internal "stats" which are then used to alter the creatures internals and exernals
This looks very hard to actually implement, as you have to figure out just what constitutes point changes, and how it should affect a creature model WITHOUT ending with something looking really F'd up. (thats the important part here, a procedural auto-evo system always has the chance to produce something that looks messed in the head. Maths sucks at art.)

ooor

(b) certain repeated actions affect something similar to stats, but more like points.
So, you get different types of points which you can then spend on parts in the editor.
For instance, adding a new spine bone would cost a certain amount of "agility points"
and moving bits around would cost "general points" which would build up over time.
This way, unlike spore, you can't, for instance, add wings if you dont do lots of jumping or something similar.

I was going to write a 2), but i forgot what the other concept was supposed to be :/


P.S. What's the auto-evo supposed to be like? so i can get my head around how to program it

Auto evo has been under a lot of debate. We know we want all organisms to follow one type of auto evo, and technology to follow another.

Our last thought was something called share codes. Basically, every creature is described by a code that describes its body, behavior, etc (basically its file) our idea was that in each new organism, we would have a system that found a few sections of information in the share code and replaced them, thus mimicking random mutation. We figured that because the behavior of animals in the game would be so complex, environments and NPCs would create a realistic form of natural selection, thus mimicking Darwin's theory.

I think we have already decided on Darwinian. Killing off creatures with traits you don't want will mean your creature wont evolve properly - through natural selection.

In this game we want to use darwinian evolution because it produces the most variety of creatures, more than what we would have with the other option you suggested.

We have, too, decided how to implement it - we have a genetic code which changes through random mutations (addition of code, removal of code, alteration of code).

EDIT: genetic codes = share codes.

EDIT 2: NPCs are supposed to vaguely copy the players action, so you can decide what your organism does and threfore what traits benefit it.

Can I also point out it is possible to become a plant.

The Uteen wrote:

I think we have already decided on Darwinian. Killing off creatures with traits you don't want will mean your creature wont evolve properly - through natural selection.

Yes, and Bash says that he can't really code that. Hey Bash, how difficult would it be to change things to Darwinian?

The share codes method would be easy it would think, relative to a system of lamarckian evolution. All you'd really need to program for it would be the system of changing the files.

I'm back!!! And you can have avatars! Sorry i've been away.
Option 'B' is a bad idea. We don't want editors until god mode and as it has been pointed out, this is darwinism. As far as I'm concerend, no editors or no game.

Agrestrife wrote:

I'm back!!! And you can have avatars! Sorry i've been away.
Option 'B' is a bad idea. We don't want editors until god mode and as it has been pointed out, this is darwinism. As far as I'm concerend, no editors or no game.

Many people have different ideas in implementation of editors. Perhaps you should open up a thread for discussion.

Yes, Darwinian has already been selected and the other members of your species, in your area, mimic your actions to a degree over time.

The behaviour that matches the mutations will survive best, providing a challenge, and the mutations will to some degrees be more successful for the behaviour, providing player control.

What happened to the Direction Editor? I can't remember.

Niether do I. I think we just forgot about it.

Bashi, may i ask what is so hard about coding Darwinian Evolution? I would have thought that from a coder's perspective Darwinian was easier. Anyways, if you're more worried about the gameplay aspect, here's my example of how the player can influence Darwinian Evolution:

My species of creature is a small, rodent like creature. They keep getting killed by aerial predators. As the player, i tell my controlled creature to dig into the ground to hide from them. The rest of my species notice this behaviour and mimic it. Over time mutations that help with digging will be passed on through successful creatures (through the ShareCodes). So after a while my species may have evolved to have curved claws to help dig, or large shoulder muscles, or something i couldn't even think of, but through the evolution and the physics turned out to be a useful digging trait. With Lamarkian, digging would always result in something that the programmers have foreseen. Darwinian will exploit all the possibilities and give us something much closer to the beauty of life.

Persuaded yet?

well for there to be gameplay, it has to be user guided to some degree.otherwise
its just a real world simulator. Basically your idea is to give your species a hint on
what to do I'm guessing.

EDIT: My point being that this is an area where one needs to sacrifice accuracy for the sake of gameplay.
I hope to not sacrafice it to the extent spore was

PaperGrape wrote:

well for there to be gameplay, it has to be user guided to some degree.otherwise
its just a real world simulator. Basically your idea is to give your species a hint on
what to do I'm guessing.

EDIT: My point being that this is an area where one needs to sacrifice accuracy for the sake of gameplay.
I hope to not sacrafice it to the extent spore was

I outlined how the player's actions influenced evolution. Not directly, but it does.

PLAYER ACTION -> SPECIE'S BEHAVIOUR -> NATURAL SELECTION -> EVOLUTION

sorry I was only making sure I understand.I was more of making it clear to other people who might not consider that this is what one might call a god game though not in the same sense of an all powerful god at least until later.I mean in the same sense you're playing as a god in simcity.I didn't mean to sound like I was dissing your idea


EDIT: I don't know why, but for some reason my grammer really seems to be done the crapper

PaperGrape wrote:

sorry I was only making sure I understand.I was more of making it clear to other people who might not consider that this is what one might call a god game though not in the same sense of an all powerful god at least until later.I mean in the same sense you're playing as a god in simcity.I didn't mean to sound like I was dissing your idea

I understand that it might not have been clear the first time. Thought i best simplify it. And you're allowed to diss ideas here. Constructive criticism is necessary for this game t come into being.

Okay, I didn't say procedural mutations were difficult to code, proderual work is easy. It's just math. What i was saying was, is that its hard to get it to look good. Completely random evolution by mutation a genetic code produces what is most efficient. NOT what is the most interesting, or what looks the best, etc. Also, the more realistic we make evolution, the more involved the process of natural selection comes into play. I would say that at some point, we need to draw the line and have Software assistance. I was thinking along the lines of what someone else said, and that is to modify the creature's genome based on actions, akin to Lamarkian evolution, but have still work as a darwinian concept. So basically the next generation will mutate based on a the actions of the player, as if the actions of the player were the most successfuly actions of a set of generations. Remember, real evolution takes place over millions of years, spanning hundreds of thousands of generations, with changes as small as a millimetre of difference between generations with a magnified importance due to more stringent survival requirements. Oviously, any evolution system would be countless times magnified in order to actually get some results in a short enough time to capture, and keep, the player's attention. And having said that, the bigger the mutations in a genetic algorithm, the less effective it is. Even the early beta "simulation" spore put the design of the creature in the hands of the player. And the likely initial idea that went through the think-tanks producing the game was "How viable is a genetic algorithm to completely procedurally simulate evolution, AND make it fun?" The answer, of course, was "Not very." Viability is the key word here. However, having said all of this, evolution concepts will come up MUCH later in development. The base code is there, the BEATengine allows for patches, or "share codes" to a base creature in order to mutate it (The BEAT engine is actually being coded for another game wil similar requirements).

I'll try to explain what i meant by "the difficulty in making a mutaion 'look good' "
The creature model can be quite easily morphed. That is no problem. New limbs can be grown using only simple functions in the game's code:

a basic function to add a limb part onto a point in the spine:
addnewlimb(int spine_segment, int hash_of_limb_part);


used as follows:
BEATspline *new_limb = addNewLimb(5, 0x9E107D9D375F76826EE81C354264A976);
newlimb->scale(2.0f,2.0f,2.0f);

will add a limb part that matches the hash (which i hardcoded for the sake of showing what i mean by hash_of_limb_part) and double it's original size. (every patch will be hashed when it is modified and save, and used to uniquely identify it amongst the thousands of possible user-made parts. This assures that, between games, if for instance someone gets a creature for their game that contains parts with the same name as ones existing in their game already, that the system is still able to differentiate between them and select the corect patches for the correct creatures.)

So coding the mutations is the easy part, and the code will be in the prototype, before any actual gamplay is even thought about being coded. The matter of WHERE to place mutations, and what will look good to the player, and capture his attention, however, is another matter entirely, and is basically a direct tradeoff between asthetics and realism.

You could produce mutation code that is coupled with a real physics engine, and fitness algorithms to produce extremely efficient creatures. But they would NOT look how you would expect.

This is output of a program called framsticks:
http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=SFhomE0fU08
The creature you see, evolved from basically nothing. limbs were added by the algorithms, as was behaviour, manually controlling nuerons in an artificial network, evreything is generated.
Now, you may be thinking "That is AMAZING!" But thats about as far as a fitness algorithm would get you. That creature is fit, and so will not evolve much further than that. It doesn't need to. And not everyone wants to play with a worm that looks like its having seizures throughout their whole game. Getting true simulated evolution to look "organic" is excruciatingly very difficult.

On the other hand, if you sacrifice a certain amount of reality to produce aesthetics, such as not having creatures move based on nueral networks in realworld physics, and instead procedurally animate them with the intent of looking good and mutating how the creature looks based on some basic attrributes, such as


condition: This creature digs alot

responses (over time):
start mutating a horn onto its head and pull claws from its limbs
increase the digrate variable

which in turn, lets say speeds up the digging animation, and of course makes digging faster
and possibly changes the way that the diggin animation looks when the digrate hits the next threshold value, or something similar.

Is MUCH easier to produce somthing that looks absolutely fantastic, and still real enoug hto consider it evolution.

TL;DR:

There needs to be a tradeoff between being realistic, and aesthetics.
And i dont mean aesthetics as in spore is aesthetic but loks cartoony, i mean aesthetics as in looking convincingly real.
The aim of course is to still produce something that looks and moves like the smartdeepseaworm (sp) concept, (and i mean moves how it looks like it is moving in the concept :P)
and the only way to do that is to fudge (sic) the realism to some degree.


thanks for reading all the way through (assuming you did :P)

I just realised i mentioned physics.

Of course, i'm not saying remove physics and look completely arcady, but 99.99% of games meld acrade physics with real physics to some degree. Think... Halo.

Of course there isn't physics that would make a soldier in halo fall over if he didnt step and shuffle his feet properly all the time, hes basically a cube moving around on the landscape, howver, when interacting with other objects (such as a bullet) real collision detection comes into play, and when killed, he falls over realistically.

Also, quite a few current games use a form of blending between the model animations, and IK targets.
You may have noticed that some games make character's feet move properly up steps.
This is a bledning of a basic walk animation, with and IK rig with targets for the feet at the base of each step.

I am thinking of a system similar to this to use for animation.

Basically, the game loads the creature file, produces the polygon model, rigs it (using the original bone location as rig points) generates animations based on a bunch of other attributes conditions, and then blends between the generated animations and IK targets (such as pointing the creature in anew direction will turn its head and bend teh body slightly as it goes through the walk/swim/whatever animation.)

Spore uses a greatly tuned down version of this (in fact, they had what looked like a pretty good system going, and then stripped it for the final version.

Poisson wrote:

Yes, and Bash says that he can't really code that. Hey Bash, how difficult would it be to change things to Darwinian?

Theres no "changing" at this point. The creature engine I am writing, would support both systems, as it is a gameplay aspect, not a part of the creature engine itself. This is all still speculative at this point.

Bashinerox wrote:

-Long post about Darwinian vs Lamarkian-

The main thing i'm worried about with Lamarkian is that possibilities will be limited. I think i touched on it in my example, but the amount of ways that a game developer can see something evolving would be minute compare to the number of ways that nature (or mimicked nature) could come up with. I want to see the strange ways the creatures solve problems.

And i get that the physics will never be 100% realistic.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Bashinerox wrote:

-Long post about Darwinian vs Lamarkian-

The main thing i'm worried about with Lamarkian is that possibilities will be limited. I think i touched on it in my example, but the amount of ways that a game developer can see something evolving would be minute compare to the number of ways that nature (or mimicked nature) could come up with. I want to see the strange ways the creatures solve problems.

And i get that the physics will never be 100% realistic.

Check out Dwarf fortress.

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
Dwarf fortress simulates EVERYTHING O_O It's quite spectacular. And they guy basically hardcodes everything.

If we do go for some sort of scripted mutation route, it will be just that. scripted.

Write a new script, bang new mutation event.
Anyone and their dog could write a condition and resolution for mutation, and we could have a team of people picking certain events, testing them, and distributing them as part of the official package.
This also brings to mind mutation mods. You could write a mod to change the way certain mutations work, if you dont like what is already there, and distribute it as a mod pack.

When it gets to coding gameplay, one of the first things i will implement is Lua.
Especially exposing functions for mutating the creature.

From a coding perspective, I really do prefer something similar to this route. Of course, as my sig says, I'm here to be the realistic expectation in a sense, If everyone really wants complete darwinian evolution a la Framsticks, i will do my best to produce it. However, if i cannot, then i simply cannot

Bash, I understand your viewpoint completely.

And I support it. Having a mix of lamarckian and Darwinian evolution is certainly a good way to keep the game interesting. Of course, the way i was thinking of in Darwinian took into account these same "rules" you are describing. The framsticks program is good for simulating evolution through mutation to reach a goal of movement. However, such programs are basically a total blank sheet. Mutations can do whatever they want. However, in the real world, joints can only move so far, certain skin types have only so much traction, etc. I think we'll have to try out A few different systems of Auto-evo when we get a game working, to see what actually works, because right now, we just simply don't know.

PaperGrape wrote:

EDIT: I don't know why, but for some reason my grammer really seems to be done the crapper

Same :/ My spellling and grammar is terrible sometimes.

Hmmmm, I always wondered about Auto-Evo. My onlr real concern is that creatures are able to actually have different traits and not similar ones. (Like Lamarkian (spl?))

Why don't have have a Lamarkian way that mimmics Darwinian?

For instance, my creature needs to avoid bird predators.
It avoids can avoid it in many ways by: (digging, hiding, developing armour....)

Each way has a set of appearnce changing mutations that can take place.
Which would cause it to survive better and thus passing on genes.

While this might be good for people who want let's say shovel like claws or an armour plated shell.
It will be bad for the players that actually want challenge, eg: the random mutation I got made me develop whiter fur. I should move to a place where the enviornment will help me, like an arctic snow place.

I think we're gonna have to pick between the two.... *.*

YourBreakfast wrote:

For instance, my creature needs to avoid bird predators.
It avoids can avoid it in many ways by: (digging, hiding, developing armour....)

Each way has a set of appearnce changing mutations that can take place.
Which would cause it to survive better and thus passing on genes.

While this might be good for people who want let's say shovel like claws or an armour plated shell.
It will be bad for the players that actually want challenge, eg: the random mutation I got made me develop whiter fur. I should move to a place where the enviornment will help me, like an arctic snow place.

I think we're gonna have to pick between the two.... *.*

I agree. Maybe we could toggle the Lamarkian in Org. Mode?


Anyway, I support the thought of mixing Lamarkian and Darwanian for gameplay's sake. So long as Darwanian evoluion's main framework and traits stay in place- to keep evolution beleivable.

InvaderZim wrote:

YourBreakfast wrote:

For instance, my creature needs to avoid bird predators.
It avoids can avoid it in many ways by: (digging, hiding, developing armour....)

Each way has a set of appearnce changing mutations that can take place.
Which would cause it to survive better and thus passing on genes.

While this might be good for people who want let's say shovel like claws or an armour plated shell.
It will be bad for the players that actually want challenge, eg: the random mutation I got made me develop whiter fur. I should move to a place where the enviornment will help me, like an arctic snow place.

I think we're gonna have to pick between the two.... *.*

I agree. Maybe we could toggle the Lamarkian in Org. Mode?


Anyway, I support the thought of mixing Lamarkian and Darwanian for gameplay's sake. So long as Darwanian evoluion's main framework and traits stay in place- to keep evolution beleivable.

seems like the best solution. i agree completely.

I think I posted this in another thread but its basically his idea maybe less maybe more. Now I would say that the mutations occur when you press a specific button saying something like Evolve. Pressing that button looks at all the action you took throughout the lifespan(s) and runs some math. The math will calculate what the next creature will look like. by adding, subtracting, rescaling. Things according to your action in the game. That way we have the Lamarkian style thing disguised as a Darwinian. This is because the behaviors of your creature dictates which creature will live and die and will basically be Darwinian.