Realistic Evolutionary Sim Concept

WorldPlanter · 2007-01-23T13:07:40

Hey everyone, I’ve been reading a lot of astrobiology books lately such as Rare Earth and The Privileged Planet and in the process have been inspired to design a game built upon the concept of controlling the destiny of a habitable planet in a Sim/RTS game. I already know that Spore plans on doing something similar. However, instead of only concentrating on the evolutionary development of a single species at a micromanagement level I thought it’d be interesting to direct the growth of an entire biosphere and its inhabitants on a macro level. Additionally, I’m thinking of a game that is more scientifically accurate than previous god-mode games. So far I’ve envisioned the game to be divided into two primary roles or phases of gameplay. At first I want the player to focus on the requirements for making their planet inhabitable and building up their biosphere, but as soon as an intelligent species arises on their planet I want gameplay to begin focusing on the civilization growth of the intelligent species(s) occupying the planet. I’m not quite sure how this transition can be made yet at this point, so I was wondering if the collective creative minds here might have some ideas. The other inherent problem with this transition is the passage of time. In the beginning of the game the player is going to be acting on geological timescales, such that a single second of gameplay might represent a hundred or a thousand years, whereas when the player takes control over their intelligent specie(s) the time scale is going to need to change drastically so that a second of gameplay might represent a month or a week instead. I think that if the first transition can be figured out that coming up with a solution for the timescale difference shouldn’t be too difficult. I'll try to provide some examples of player decisions in a future post. This is already long enough as it is and I don't want to deter readers.

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by WorldPlanter January 21, 2007 02:00 PM

10 comments, last by WorldPlanter 18 years, 1 month ago

WorldPlanter

Author

266

January 23, 2007 12:09 PM

Quote:
Original post by polyfrag
You might be interested in this 3d artificial life and evolution simulation: http://www.frams.alife.pl/

Yeah, I'm actually familiar with it. Thanks for the link though.

WorldPlanter

Author

266

January 23, 2007 01:07 PM

I was just thinking that I could divide the game into epochs, which dictate the passage of time.

Epochs

Molecular Cloud Collapse
1 second = 100 years

Accretion/Protostar
1 second = 10000 years

Planetesimal/Geological
1 second = 1000000 years

Simple Life
1 second = 100000 years

Complex Life
1 second = 10000 years

Intelligent Life
1 second = 100 years

Technological Life
1 second = 1 month

I'm still debating whether or not the player should be able to deviate from these times scales.

Realistic Evolutionary Sim Concept

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Realistic Evolutionary Sim Concept

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