i am doing a life sim and i am looking for examples and ideas to get me moving. i am going to create several predators/prey and have them living in a very basic environment. anyone know where i can find some info on the internet? i have a couple of books on order at the library but i want to get going on it ASAP. thanks ~~~~blakey~~~~

Well, first of all.. in life, you have a wolrd that is almost unlimited, or close enough to it that you couldn''t see it all in your life time.

You should have a *big* map, something that would take hours to get across depending on the speed you are traveling at.

But, you cannot have an infinite map, and if you coud... it would be a pretty difficult task, so you need to make each person personality limit them by using fear, or other elements of the personality. Such as... someone who loved hot weather would not want to go to antartica. Someone who was afraid of earthquakes would not go to Cali..

Make the world seem infinite, or close to it, but don''t allow that statement to be proven in your game.

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You should definately allow each person to have a occupation. Different people like different things. I, personally, would like to be an archeoligest ( excuse the spelling? Programming flaw.. ). So, you would need to have some things I could discover. Make sure you have tons of different jobs.

It would be really cool if you could have a small training part of the game, where you train for your upcoming occupation.

Like school.

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Make a driving mode That would be cool.

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There should be real life situations, like your pockets are too big and your wallot falls out, or, you need to get a haircut.. etc. Things everyone has to worry about.

Hunger, bathroom time , some fun stuff, thier personal skills, etc etc etc.

Good Luck.

You could use Perlin noise or some kind of fractal to generate an infinite map.

Drizzt : You have a bad habit of replying without reading the question first. It''s not a human sim, it''s a predator/prey sim, probably with him trying to find a balance in the food chain so that extinction does not become inevitable.

As for Links :

http://tpga.virtualave.net/game-links.htm
http://alife.ccp14.ac.uk/zooland/zooland/
http://www.necrobones.com/alife/

http://tqd.advanced.org/3703/pages/predprey.html
http://www.pa.uky.edu/~sorokin/stuff/cs685S/Prey.html
http://www.uni-koblenz.de/~gb/projects/ale/studienarbeit_html/node21.html#3536

And if they don''t get you started, look up the ALife Repository (it''s an online searchable database). That should keep you busy for a fair while.


"NPCs will be inherited from the basic Entity class. They will be fully independent, and carry out their own lives oblivious to the world around them ... that is, until you set them on fire ..." -- Merrick