Original Post
Hope I caught your attention. Currently, me and my good friend Sven Littkowski are the only ones working on this massive project. It is not even in alpha phase-we are trying to collect a team of develepors to get this working. I know a bit about coding, hopefully I will learn as we go along, but I won't do any scripting myself. I'll mostly be in charge of suggestions and organizing the whole thing. Below is the Project Overview, you don't have to read it all, a Table of Contents should lead you to the most important parts. EVOLUTIONS! Project Overview TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1 The History 2 The Concept 3 The Project So Far 4 Official Template (includes what jobs we need) The History Evolutions! was a video game concept by Sven Littkowski, with the Spore online alias ‘Hirnsausen’. The idea was largely inspired by another game called ‘Spore’, made by Will Wright. Spore began advertising somewhere around the year 2000, appearing in multiple video game showcases. The game was, at the time, a revolutionary use of Darwins theory of evolution in a game, employing the idea that the player would play as an alien life form, starting at the cellular scale, evolving as a multi-cellular organism to survive, and adapting sapience, forming a civilization, and taking over the galaxy, a scale of billions of years. When the game came out in 2008, it was considered a flop by many as it lacked gameplay, instead focusing around the games admittedly robust creators, where one could create various creatures, vehicles, structures, etcetera and then see them animated. Ever since then, fans who had followed the games development over the years were upset and complained about the lack of gameplay on the Spore Forums. Sven decided to take matters into his own hands by imagining a game that he called ‘Evolutions!’ which would be an open source game, and an overall large competitor to Spore. He posted about this on the Spore Forums and telling everyone that this was not simply a thought, but something true. Sven posted information about gameplay, about the creators, and even posted screenshots of the game-the screenshots in fact being skill full picture editing. The intentions behind this was so that Maxis (the creators of Spore) would fear competition of their product and work on making Spore a better game. However, after a large amount of evidence contradicting the existence of Evolutions! was found, the Spore players finally decided not to believe it until better evidence was given. At this point, Sven admitted that Evolutions! at that point of time was not real yet and revealed his true intentions - to convince Maxis that they had competition so that they would make Spore a better game. One of the Spore players, under the alias ‘ParadoxJuice’ figured that Svens attempts had, in the end, failed, as Maxis had no threat of competition. He decided that it might be worth a try to actually attempt to develop Evolutions! and contacted Sven about the idea. Now, based on Sven's ideas and the initiative of ParadoxJuice, the game is going under development. The Concept The basic concept behind Evolutions! is that one controls an alien life form (or several) as it adapts to its environment. Starting out as a cellular life form is possible, but not necessary. The main point discussed was the idea of multi-cellular life, with skipping the entire single-cellular level altogether as an available option. This is what Sven wrote: about the beginning of multi-cellular life. At points of this, Sven will treat Evolutions! as if it already exists, please refer to the History section as to why. [quote=Hirnsausen] http://spore.jamaica-focus.com/v/Deco/SmartDeepSeaWorm_20090207 Screen Shot: Underwater creature, grown close to the stage where it can leave the water for a short time. About the game (I know many of you are hungry for more information): In many important ways it is NOT like our current Spore. Especially the evolution takes a way the player don't need (but can) to influence much, in opposition to Spore. I could select at which point I wanted to start the evolutionary point. I decided not to start as a cell, but I told the game to start with a worm which lives at the bottom of the ocean, deep sea area, and just two inches long. I was able to design that worm with one of the sophisticated editors. I also told the game that I intend to get the evolution towards the land animals, but I always can change these long-term goals. There are thousands of possible environmental changes in this game, and inside each ecological sphere. Based on how you react, and also based on the things you let your creature do, it might or might not develop the one or another possible joints for further extremities. An example: as a worm, I had no fins. But often i decided to move fast forward, and even to jump. The result was often a gliding. Doing this often, somewhen your creature (my worm) develops areas which become to fins. Depending on the kind of movements, like manovering or just gliding straight, your creature develops side fins as well, or not at all. In my case, I got a tail fin at first. since I turned round during the gliding, my worm developed here and there some side fins. Sometimes I turned round at the front, sometimes I curved the body more to the end, so my worm developed three side fins at the rear, and even four side fins at the front. That took me two hours of game play, to come to that stage. You don't know, where you end up with your creature. I still wanted to develop towards land animals. To reach that aim, I got my deep sea worm, now more a fish, getting used for the water areas above deep sea level. Two times my worm died, because I was too fast. But when i got him used in a slower way, after some generations he could survive above deep sea level. Still, for mating i had to go down again, into deep sea level, but for hunting my worm was already capable to leave the deep sea. It still has that fluorescent light organ on its head. Finally I was able to had him living in shallow waters, and my worm fish, once only two inches long, measures proud three feet! During dry summers, these shallow waters became mud pits or even dried out. My worm fish still dies when the pit dries out, but he survives in mud. I made him moving with his front fins, and eventually they became stronger and thicker. That's the stage where I am now. I believe, if I continue my worm fish will develop not only four but eight extremities at the front part of his body. The side fins at the rear, by the way, started to become smaller. They were been much bigger before. I will continue to play, to see where the evolution leads me to. I hope I can raise my little cute worm fish to an intelligent stage. The Game Play: Unlike Spore, which is made for children, Evolutions! is made for the age group of 15 and older. That shows. The controls are still intuitive and easy to learn and use, but there are plenty, plenty of possible controls. If these controls are not used, they are in a default stage. You can even set psychological values ("Behavior"). That, too, influences how your critter develops, to which destination and how fast. The behavior shows during hunting/eating, mating, socializing, and confrontations. The more complex your creature becomes, the more space you get to add curiosity points, if you want. Or the game adds them automatically, maybe (and maybe not). You don't have missions. But you discover the world around you, and do many things like hunting or eating, socializing, mating, aggressing, and such. And you react to environmental challenges. By the way, your interaction which other species also changes them the one or another way, during their own evolution. You can interrupt your evolution, and set a new long-term target, or even change your creature rapidly like in Spore. Still, i enjoy much more to let the game carry me to a destination i just don't know. There are still many faults in this game, it is somewhere between alpha and beta stage, hard to say. However, creature movement, evolution and textures look great already! The sound of each creature is very unique, and don't depends on the mouth alone, but also on what you make your creature doing, and on the environment. Size of body parts matters! With bigger eyes, my creature can see more under water. I made the experience, with smaller eyes I lose rapidly sight under water, especially in dark areas. Larger tail fins make me faster, but larger side fins slow me down, but make it easier to change direction or to stop. Loud warning colors keep some enemies away, and if you make your creature having the same color as the environment, less enemies can find your creature. But also, less challenges delay your growth of intelligence, unfortunately. It is supposed to be possible to develop intelligence under water, not just on land. Underwater technologies are very different from land technologies, even the psychology of water creatures is different to land animals. There are flying life forms, too. I am hearing, to build anything your creature must have developed the related skills. An example: to build a house your creature must have discovered that pushing something into something else makes a usable connection of two things. You need to make your creature discovering this (and many other things which I don't know yet) during the early stages of intelligence or late stages of being an animal. At least, this is what I am being told. I have not yet reached that stage, so i cannot say yet. Also, the more arms your creature got, the more things it can carry at the same time, but that requires a more complex brain, which makes your creature somehow more sensitive to environmental changes or so. Not sure. Another thing they are working on, right now, is that the chemical make-up of stellar clouds (which made our galaxy) can also be player-edited. There's a list of all existing natural elements, and as the player, you can distribute percentages (or fractions of percents) to each element, that's supposed to influence the type of planets and suns later in that galaxy which the cloud becomes to. And that's supposed to influence the life conditions on the planets of that galaxy. But this feature is not yet there. The Game: The game is not yet publically downloadable, only the registered developers share the various versions. It started as an IT project for students (make physics visual on a PC), but got an own dynamic, especially after Spore was launched. Since then, the students continue and make it to a game, and have around 200 additional developers in the various groups. The game will become open source and will be freeware, after it has reached a stage where it don't crashes anymore. In my case, i had no crash yet. [/quote] The above suggests that the game keeps a record of what actions you are performing the most so that evolution can happen automatically based on these actions. The most basic form of this is the creatures fins - the more the player turns left and right, the more and the larger the fins on their creatures side gets, allowing better turning but slower speed. The more they go straight, the more that the creatures tail fins grow, allowing faster speed but slower turning. And this all stands also in relation to the gravity of that planet. In this case though, there is one question - if one is turning a lot, will one grow larger side fins or simply more side fins? The picture provided suggests that both will be evolved at once (the creature has multiple side fins which appear to be growing). Another thing suggested in this article is that there will be a menu where one can change their long term goals, in this case by choosing to evolve onto land eventually, and this effects evolution. This menu, deemed the Goals Menu, could largely be the basis of Evolutions! gameplay. No other options that could be on the menu have been suggested, but there are literally thousands of options, unlike to Spore. Ideas have been suggested for this This is Svens later posting, about his creature, the WormFish, now evolved to survive on land. At points of this, Sven will treat Evolutions! as if it already exists, please refer to the History section as to why. [quote=Hirnsausen]Ooooppps! Soory for my looong absence! I can see here (yes, I was ready each posting!) how much that affect you all. But besides playing a lot as (inofficial) tester for my friend, I have a real life. In fact, I am the managing director of my own IT company, here in Jamaica (still, I am a German). Alright, I am sure you all are eager to find out, what happened with my little cute worm fish creature. This I will tell you now. It was a hard work, to ground it. Means, several times my creature died when i tried to get it used to survive in drying out mud holes. Finally, after some generations, I succeeded! Now my worm fish has started its land-based evolution. http://spore.jamaica-focus.com/v/Deco/SmartDeepSeaWorm_20090209 The shape of the mouth area is very unusual. I think, that comes because I made my creature getting used to dig in the sand for small insects, larvae and worms. With this mouth, it works a little bit like a fork, and it can pull that stiff lower lip through the sand. I was right, the four strong fins became legs. The texture changed and starts to get plates (or whatever that's called in English) beginning at the legs. The light organ on the top of the head disappears quite a lot. Still, for mating my worm fish has to go back into water. For now, I decide to use the nights for land excursions. I cannot go too far, because I dry out and/or there are some bad insects which bore into my skin and leave eggs there. Those kill my creature after some hours. During the very early stages, I saw some very strange things in the distance: lights on the land area. But too far away to find out, what they were. Now I don't see them anymore. They looked like some signs of a civilization, but I might be wrong. I also saw from the distance, and also in early stages, some being (a life form) not too far away from my location, kinda studying plants and animals. But the game has some wicked "fear overlay": if the distance gets too short between an unknown creature and my worm fish, the real shape of that creature or being alters and becomes something what looks dangerous, and my creature puts distance between that being and itself. So I wasn't able to check out that being. Now I don't see it (them?) anymore, since many generations. My hypothesis is, that there was another intelligent species on my planet or something came from somewhere. But they have disappeared after some thousands of years, again, and slowly. Just a theory. Now I can watch the landscape, and enjoy it. The days are very, very bright, i hardly can see then, everything is in bright colors and the shadows are very dark. Too much contrast. Like in a desert. I also believe, that I am on a high-G planet. I think, that planet has maybe four times the gravity as our planet has. Whenever I see fruits falling down from the trees, they smash totally, only juiced flesh remains. And they fall fast. Also, my legs are very thick, and I got four of them. Even in the water, there were signs of that this is a high-G world: jumping was difficult, and my fins were really big. The funny thick bump behind my head is, where the brain and the ears are. My brain is pretty small (I mean the brain of my creature!!!), not bigger than a two or three grapes, measured by the size of my body length. The length is now four feet. The three tail fin pairs have nearly disappeared, and the ending tail fin is thick and fleshy now, and smaller. I still can swim, but it takes more power (food) now. Did I mention the sexual behavior? No? Then let me do it now. It requires three (!) sex partners to create offspring! One regular male (me), something in between to add additional chromosomes to the offspring, and finally a female which receives the egg from the middle-sex partner and has the eggs growing in her body. The eggs are buried in the sand at the beach, after mating ceremonies in the sea. I did configure it that way ("Behaviour" and "Systems") coz I wanted something unusual. There is blood in the game. It looks pretty realistic. Also, blood is not necessary red, my own blood I saw coming out as very dark pink, nearly black (despite of the inner mouth color, a thinking error of the developers?). Might be, the chemical make-up of my body (the chemical elements of that planet) make it that way, not sure. I still had not even one crash, I am happy about it. I am hearing, that the game would not lose too much of the progress when it crashes, I think it is auto-saving. [/quote] This posting realizes the sophistication of the automatic evolution system. The mouth of WormFish changed shape and density based on which actions where performed the most-in this case, digging and eating. The Project So Far TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1 - The Automatic Evolution System (1) 2 - The Creators (Empty) 3 - Gameplay (Empty) 1 THE AUTOMATIC EVOLUTION SYSTEM (1) By ParadoxJuice CPP+1=+1 defense on collision point. MU+1=+1 muscle on MU point. MSTeam Name Evolutions! Team Project Name Evolutions! Brief Description A game about evolving an alien life form. Includes an automatic evolution system, being able to influence what you're long term goals are, and realistic yet alien adaptations of other creatures that act as predator, prey, parasite, or symbiote. Other creatures will also evolve, not just you-the Goal Menu may also be able to change this. The environment will also change, and the time you play as one specimen before mating and evolving is large, allowing you to experience various seasons. There may also be continental drift, which could be the simplest way to prompt you to evolve to survive on land-if all of the plants move up land, all the herbivores will to, meaning that the carnivores will have to follow their prey. Target Aim Non profit, free to download. Compensation You'll have to ask Sven. For now, there is no money involved, but Sven has mentioned advertising and getting it featured in various gaming magazines. Your name will be mentioned in the credits. Technology Currently, nothing specific. Only a small, simple algorithm has been suggested thus far, nothing in terms of actual coding. Sven has suggested POV-Ray be used, but that only really solves the graphics issue. Talent Needed We need people to work on building the ideas-excactly how will the Auto-Evolution system be possible, what code will it use, etcetera. The following is a list of jobs, a description of each one, and who is assigned on the jobs. -Auto-Evolution Designer. A programmer for the Auto-Evolution system. This will be one of the harder yet most improtant jobs, we will need several of them. -Someone to work out the controls. Controls will be customizable, we need people to work on the default controls. :Matthew Lauderdale -AI programmers. AI, just like everything else in the game, will be customizable and effected by the Evolution system, but we still need code to be put forth. Keep in mind that there will be several AI, more then just 'attack this' or 'protect that', but AI will also pertain to mating habits, migration, etcetera. -Environment Object Design. You'll be programming the environment objects which will be distributed across each planet. This includes programming water to swim in and drink, plants to climb and hide in (plants may also be customizable), land (and all the hills and bumps within it), sand, etcetera. Be sure to apply 'tags' to each of these, meaning to program if it is desert environment object (sand dunes), swamp environment object (murky swamp water), etcetera. -General Environment Design. You'll use the objects designed and program how they will be arranged-for example, program that rivers must always be connected to lakes/oceans, the changing of seasons, get where I'm going here? This job may be similar to Environment Object Design, the difference is that the EOB makes the objects, and you work out how they interact. The two might get merged into one later on. -Creature Design. Yes, creatures will be mostly customizable, but someone needs to work out how they'll interact with the environment. For example, programming what a creature will need to be able to scale on object, what a creature needs to swim, etcetera. This may also be merged with the all imporant Auto-Evolution system design. -Sound Design. You'll be working on designing the games sound effects, as long as the sounds and calls of the creatures. :Rommel Molina -Sapient Gameplay Design. It has been suggested that creatures eventually be able to become sapient, but how this will function is not exactly thought out yet. This is where you come in, you'll basically have to work out how gameplay as a sapient being will function. :Matthew Lauderdale -Menu Design. This one is very basic. You'll have to design the games menus, including the main menu, Goal Menu, etcetera. -Creator Design. You'll be focusing on the games creators, most notably how everything comes together. The player should have many options in the creators, choosing the size and shape of everything they put down. You'll focus on the way things work, while Animation and Creature design will worry about other things. Expect to interact with those two a lot. Team Structure ParadoxJuice.........Ideas, Organization Sven Littkowski......Ideas Rommel Molina........Sound Matthew Lauderdale...Controls, Sapient Gameplay Dorian C.............Programming (to be specified) Glen Verrecas........Programming (to be specified) Contacts ParadoxJuice paradoxjuice@Yahoo.com Sven Littkowski jamaica_sven@Yahoo.com Previous Work By Team ParadoxJuice: Some programming for Flash, and studying various programs (C++, Flash, etcetera) while trying to get into game design. Sven Littkowski: Proffesional picture editing, and advertising. Rommel Molina Sound editing. Additional Info http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=528637 Other thread related to Evolutions! http://z8.invisionfree.com/EvolutionsBoards/index.php?showtopic=2 A collection of all of the original posts about Evolutions! by Hirnsausen, all in one post. Pictures there are not broken like they are here, please look. [Edited by - ParadoxJuice on March 30, 2009 4:58:02 PM]