mutations

ok this is a very important topic we have not discussed or very lightly touched upon. this is very important in are game and i wanted to make a thread that talks about this. i was surfing the web and went on Darwin and we all know he is pretty much he father of evolution when i was read ding about him it started talking about mutation and i started thinking so i want to bring mutation up because many important thing on planet earth right now are the from mutation whether it being horrible for a creature growing a foot on its head. or a befit like maybe growing wings. this will have to be taken place during egg fertilization and cause a malformation to occur to be called a mutation. this is extremely complex to have in the game but it will add more realism and make a good evolutionary game in my opinion

We have actually talked about this quite a bit, but without firm results.

We are trying to avoid going into an editor every generation (Spore), that would be too unrealistic and we are aiming for as much realism as possible: All creatures should evolve in their habitat, not get selected from a database; The same for plants.

We can't do pure mutations (Pure, 100% Darwin) because that would involve simulating the entire planet at the same time, to see how organisms will evolve, and localised areas will mean as soon as you enter another area it would be rapidly simulated and would be like entering another planet, the species would have evolved in isolation from your area's organisms (like sticking our life and martian life next door). However, we could minimize the effect by having slightly more biased methods, listed below.

We can do a combination of both. We have several ideas for how this could work, one that seems popular is involves the player selecting which mutations to go with, and everything else evolves depending on its biome (rainforest, ocean, mountain, etc.; also includes other organisms in the biome); which uses artificial natural selection, or just artificial selection.

Another idea is we select good mutations, and we can only get those; I hereby dub this manual selection. This is the least darwinian option, so I'd prefer the first option.

But we do need a thread to finalise exactly what we're doing, at the moment we only have a vague idea. But that doesn't mean we haven't been discussing this, just not getting anywhere.

We definitely do need to iron this out.

i also like the first option,i just wanted to bring it up to remind people and think of it in the back of there mind for future thread and topics

I really like Pezz's idea that he posted over here. I think that's what you're talking about with that second point there, UTeen, right?

US_of_Alaska wrote:

I really like Pezz's idea that he posted over here. I think that's what you're talking about with that second point there, UTeen, right?

Ta

That post was back in the day of Lamarckian ideas so I've been thinking of how to incorporate that into the more current concepts.

The game will basically record your actions. Thats not my strong point but it will hopefully be recording many different things such as jumping, running, eating and being eaten.

When you advance to the next generation, the game will pull up many different mutation options. These will be determined by the beginning template organism you assumed at the start of Org mode and your actions in the most recent generation. There will also be general mutations.
Examples:
~If you jump a lot, you may receive an option to increase jumping ability. (Actions)
~If you are decended from an insect-like template org, you could apply different mutations than a reptilian-like template decendant. (Needs ironing too)
~General mutations will be things like increase epidermis thickness, increase brain mass.

This mutation tab is accompanied by a 3D model of your organism (Like in the OE). When you apply a mutation option, visual changes will overlay on to the model. IE if you increase your jumping ability you will see its muscle mass around the legs increase (If its legs were used to jump). You can also decline mutations, as you can only add a limited amount each generation. Players may accept a mutation and then decide they don't like the way it changed the visual appearance of their creature and then remove it.
They can not remove mutations from earlier generations that they applied unless it specifically appears on the mutation tab (IE reduce tail length = Less energy spent on growing a now redundant tail).

The amount of mutations you can apply depends on many factors. This area needs a lot of ironing as there are two opposing ways to look at it.
Population size:
High population = larger variation = Higher chance of mutation.
Low Population = larger genetic drift (changes in alelle frequency) = Higher chance of mutation affecting entire population.

When you have finished accepting or declining mutations, you can tweak certain visual features of your creature but only to a small degree. This is mainly for aesthetics and will not change any of your creatures stats.

Needs working but its getting there.

your template idea i like a lot it can the player the idea " hey do i want a bug type creature or a reptilian type creature" it can help new players

How about mutations speeded up by disasters? I mean for realistic and playing life evolves faster when theres disasters and it would be a bummer
to have to evolve normally in a disaster

kaosrain wrote:

How about mutations speeded up by disasters? I mean for realistic and playing life evolves faster when theres disasters and it would be a bummer
to have to evolve normally in a disaster

Mutations are just as common in disasters. It's the stricter conditions that speed up the evolution.

Population dynamics should handle it.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

I really like Pezz's idea that he posted over here. I think that's what you're talking about with that second point there, UTeen, right?

There is a problem with lamarckian that this doesn't fix. The game doesn't know what it needs to mutate to give you a better trait. For organs and internal things, Pezz's Idea works just fine, but for the outer appearance, I can only think of one way for evolution to work, and that's player-guided. The player understands their creature much better than the computer could, and therefore will bring about the best mutations for it.

~sciocont wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

I really like Pezz's idea that he posted over here. I think that's what you're talking about with that second point there, UTeen, right?

There is a problem with lamarckian that this doesn't fix. The game doesn't know what it needs to mutate to give you a better trait. For organs and internal things, Pezz's Idea works just fine, but for the outer appearance, I can only think of one way for evolution to work, and that's player-guided. The player understands their creature much better than the computer could, and therefore will bring about the best mutations for it.

But the computer can ask the player what they want to do, which is what made Pezz's concept so good. It's like a Lamarckian-Intelligent-Design-Evolution. If the game just keeps spitting out options for evolution based on things you do, for as many things as we can think up (if we go this way, we'll need to make a list of actions that can lead to beneficial mutations) as well as the general mutations and aesthetic mutations, then it should still end up that the player is the one deciding how their creature evolves.

I really think that since we don't have Darwin, we should just have selection of mutations.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

I really like Pezz's idea that he posted over here. I think that's what you're talking about with that second point there, UTeen, right?

There is a problem with lamarckian that this doesn't fix. The game doesn't know what it needs to mutate to give you a better trait. For organs and internal things, Pezz's Idea works just fine, but for the outer appearance, I can only think of one way for evolution to work, and that's player-guided. The player understands their creature much better than the computer could, and therefore will bring about the best mutations for it.

But the computer can ask the player what they want to do, which is what made Pezz's concept so good. It's like a Lamarckian-Intelligent-Design-Evolution. If the game just keeps spitting out options for evolution based on things you do, for as many things as we can think up (if we go this way, we'll need to make a list of actions that can lead to beneficial mutations) as well as the general mutations and aesthetic mutations, then it should still end up that the player is the one deciding how their creature evolves.

I really think that since we don't have Darwin, we should just have selection of
mutations.

i like your idea here we shud select mutations for our creature the way pezz has suggested ( pop ups) like normal evolution

Popping in to say that Pezz has the best of both worlds, here. All we'd need to do was to make an auto-accept button or something for when the player wanted to go full random.