Couple quick ideas

The sum of the total muscle mass floats?

It would NOT take into account where they are positioned.

Bashinerox wrote:

I dont know why i keep making it posssible to dodge the quetsion, so i'll be short and sweet this time.

Please complete the following:

Code:

fitness =

I really hope this doesnt count as dodging the question...
But what kind of fitness?
It really depends on the creature itself, and what sort of environment it lives in...

The game records the most common actions performed by your species.
Common Actions that are essential to survival (Possibly marked with certain notations in programming)
ie. escaping from a common predator (Lets say in this instance, up a tree), locating and eating food, locating and successfully mating, etc

The game must also somehow analyse your structural fitness to suit these essential actions. I will go over this later.

The essential survival actions which are most commonly repeated in each generation are the ones that determine fitness.

I only have time to cover one particular area right now, Im not sure if its on the right Track... But here.

Digestive Fitness.
Heres a small vague concept to determine digestive fitness... Or more or less Metabolic/Chemical/Enzyme fitness.

Spoiler:

So in that case,
Digestive Fitness= % of Energy Gained from food.
Digestive Fitness=(DigestiveEnzymeEfficiency).(AnyOtherVariablesNotYetCovered)

A creature with a higher % is more digestively fit than one with a lower %.

As for a master fitness code, relating to my previous concept on repeated Essential Survival Actions.
In this case ActionTwo For example could be the DigestiveFitness value, as most species would need to eat. or attain some means of energy to survive. For species without digestive systems it could be PhotosyntheticFitness etc.
The other actions are commonly repeated and essential survival behaviours. There should probably be more than 5.
Some others for example which I havent covered could be:
PredationResistanceFitness (Factors: Evasion, defense, awareness, etc)


SO
Fitness= (ActionOne).(ActionTwo).(ActionThree).(ActionFour).(ActionFive).(CommonEnvironment)

As these Action Values will be a %, when multiplied together you should get a final % Value.

This value determines the overall fitness of the creature.
A Creature with a Fitness of 76% will be better at surviving than a creature with a fitness of 65%.

If a random mutation allows for an increase in total fitness % then your creature is more fit.

Hope this helps in anyway possible

Just gonna dig up a concept I had a while back...

Its a counter theory to evolution, to explain why many mammals share homologous organs.
But the theory is total rubbish its the idea that was inspiring.

Spoiler:

Stuff in bold = Basically I have no Idea if this useful whatsoever thus it is bound to be full of holes

But this is the major kicker to this "concept":
These meshes/templates could be readily, directly or randomly modified during the evolution to create vastly different variations of the original template.
(Think say the difference between a seal, human, giraffe and a bat, they all share the same basic structure but are all very different species).

Example Pic:

Spoiler:

Thanks for reading anyway :]

It's Definitely a Good Idea in concept, but it may end up just a little too Earth based. After all, pretty much all land vertebrates evolved from the same Fish, and so body plans would be similar. On another planet if Oxygen was high and gravity low, something similar to Crabs may show up as the dominant land Organism.

Okay while I'm explianing this please remember I'm an idiot.

Fitness is not the only key to survival. Therefore I'm not going to bold, a much better word is.... um.... Survival..ah...Keys...
Survival Keys
Or better yet survival variables (this is not on a one way train to lamarkian, bear with me). Every object would have variables, these would be put into the program and interact with other varibles and this would give you the animals chance for survival. Thats the simple explantion here is the in depth version:

Variables will be code in every object that has an effect on another object (within reason). But these need to be broken down into variable groups as such:

Organic variables will depend ont he parts on the creatures, such as muscle mass, and organs, but also skin and eyes. So, say the legs muscle mass (represented by a nunmerical variable) isn't enough to support the mass (also represented by a numerical variable) of the creature, it would be crippled imdeatley. But also if the muscle mas was so great that the energy it needed to survive (represented by a variable) is more than the capacity of the stomach (also a variable) it would also die.
I'll explian more on how thes variables interact with the surrounding later.

Planetary variables will be such things as oxogen content, gravity, and atmosphiric things in general. These variables will act as a sort of physics engine that can tell wither a creature can exist or not. Example: The gravity is X but the creatures muscle can only support Y, the creature dies. These principles would be the same for flora.

Climate variables control the temperature, weather, and will greatly shape the ecosystems of the planets. Example: the temperature in this area X-Y, but your creature can't stand temps above W, so it dies. Or the plant that you survive on can't survive in this area, but I'll get more on that in......

The ecosystem is very very importent, it has variables such as flora, and predetors. The thing about your ecosystem variables is that they are directley related to all the other variable, and the auto evo-system (patcience, all will be explianed, hopefully). I'll give an example of the ecosystem variable in effect. Your little ingsignifican't creature can't handle even the lowest predators (this variable is found by seperating the different variables of the preadators that are close together in numerical order and averaging up these different groups into classe of predators. This would be done with all animals to form a food chain), and also can't reproduce fast enough (variable) to keep up with the predators. You then start to notice that you see your specieces less and less, and you are dying more and more until your species is extinct.

Now these variables all sound a little lamarkian, but ere is the part you've been waiting for:

Auto-Evo will be a program that randomly changes certian variables on a creature. It would also sometimes change the phsical apperance of the animal, which cause a problem. Like Bashi said math sucks at art, but thats why the body lay out of all animals will be relativle the same, but you will shoose this layout.

Excellent post. that's pretty much how I think we could work it.

@Lukas: Brilliant

I would assume that each creature in the ecosystem would be given a bunch of variables depending on its total survival chance, its diet, its ability and size etc and from this its place in the ecosystem would be determined?

I would imagine that this kind of calculations shouldn't be too hard for your average processor. It sound very feasible too

Great work

For refrence I meant that this was not on a one way train to lamarckian..

I tried my best to read as many of the posts Bashi wrote and replied to as I could (He's in charge of all the coding, right?), but there are six pages of wall posts. PLEASE excuse me if I repeat something someone else said, etc.

I think that a Darwinian Evolution is pretty much impossible, and quite literally much the same as Lamarckian in the long run. On top of that, I would think Lamarckian is twenty times easier to code.

All programs need variables to determine... everything. I am highly suspicious a computer cannot make them on it's own, so just having a shizload of variables that are all called on at staggered time intervals would be the most efficient form of Lamarckian. Just have a list of them so massive that everything can be unique, but they would have to be equally balanced so as to not have one sided evolution all the time.

EDIT: Sorry, it's late, I'm working last minute on some school projects, and I've had too much caffeine.
Let's say you have a cell. It has variables - wall length, wall thickness, wall bendiness, and a zillion others. Maybe the computer could further define how these would affect the cell BEFOREHAND, almost like creating a library packed with the game.

Some of these variables could be base stats, like speed, health, etc. wall thickness will, for instance, raise health, and lower speed. Remember, this is all very general. There should be more stats, like resistance to disease and such. If any of this needs clarifying, I will try.

I'm going to think about this, expand more on this later, and read any replies for people saying or "OFF TOPIC" or "ALREADY DONE A-HOLE"