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[Framais]

I have just started working on a new prototype, Protozoa, a life simulation for mono-cellular micro-organisms. Small digital beings compete for nutrients in an evolutionary struggle for survival. Below you can see a digital being feeding on digital food (red squares), it gains mass by eating, and loses mass when moving.

[bombjack]

Very early prototype
I like the idea of loosing mass when moving.
The opposition with gaining mass while eating seems interesting as a gameplay standpoint.

Looks like my overweight life

[Savick]

What's the goal? Not to get eaten by others? Who do you control? It could be kind of like a indirect action where you place food for some, but see others die?

[Framais]

Very early prototype
I like the idea of loosing mass when moving.
The opposition with gaining mass while eating seems interesting as a gameplay standpoint.

Yes it is at a very early stage
Various actions in the game will determine the accumulation or loss of mass/energy. When mass/energy is below a certain level the digital being will die. For example, if the food is scarce and the distance between two meals is too large.

What's the goal? Not to get eaten by others? Who do you control? It could be kind of like a indirect action where you place food for some, but see others die?

Broadly speaking, the goal will be to keep the beings of your colony alive. There will be predators. And yes,  indirect action is the kind of input that I am envisioning from the player: dispensing food (from a limited stock), anti-biotics (to kill or fend-off predators), and mutagens (radioactive particles, for example) to promote the creation of different beings by means of mutations (digital being will be able to replicate if they have reached a certain level of mass/energy).

Here's a slightly more advanced example, where 4 beings are competing for 40 pieces of food (red squares)

[Framais]

Implementing cannibalism: creatures (WHITE) use energy to move and get energy by eating food (RED). If the next meal is too far away a creature can die of starvation (BLUE) and it will be devoured by its peers.

[ndke]

Interesting...
I've got some questions for you
Will we be able to play in an environment?
Can we also eat atoms which give us extra powers or harm us (eg. eating Cl harms us, eating H gives us a power)?
I must say that I really like this, keep it up!

[Framais]

Interesting...
I've got some questions for you
Will we be able to play in an environment?
Can we also eat atoms which give us extra powers or harm us (eg. eating Cl harms us, eating H gives us a power)?
I must say that I really like this, keep it up!

Thank you
Yes this will be an interactive simulation where, as the player you will be able (among other things) to drop different kind of items (nutrients, anti-biotics, etc.) in the environment to affect the colony behaviour.

I am still experimenting with the AI and today I have added:

• the ability for the creatures to wander if there is no food available
• the ability for the player to drop food
• a 'front and back' to the creatures that are now symbolized by triangles instead of squares

Also the creatures can now only detect food within a certain radius from them (before they could detect food anywhere in the environment).

[ndke]

Can we also be a parasite, I mean that you can attach yourself to another creature?

[Framais]

Can we also be a parasite, I mean that you can attach yourself to another creature?

Thanks for the feedback,I really like the parasite idea! It could also be one of the "enemies".

In the meantime I have been busy adding a few new features:

- Organisms now have a front and a back (they're simbolized by triangles.
- They change color depending on their behaviour (seeking food, wandering, eating etc.)
- If they have accumulated enough energy they will reproduce, via mitosis (offspring has the same dna as parents)

Here's another animated GIF showing the improvements. Food is now represented by yellow squares, that I am manually placing in the environment (they seem to pop-up randomly, but I am actually clicking on the screen to create them - it's just that the GIF animation app that I am using doesn't capture the mouse pointer).

Also notice how now if an organism is not close enough to the food it won't 'smell' the food and won't pursue it.

Some organism run out of energy and die, generating an orange square (food) that is promptly eaten by their peers.

At some point I drop a lot of food in the colony, that is to promote reproduction. There are a few organisms reproducing (they flash white and duplicate) but because they are in the middle of a crowd it's not easily noticeable.

What is visible instead is that once the school of organisms disperse, you can notice they have grown in number.

I hope this gives an idea...

[The Translocator]

Really interesting.

Are the organisms going to die after a certain time as well or only when they stop eating? (Aging process)

[ndke]

Will there be organisms that can only survive in air (aerobic organisms) and organisms that don't need air?
Would be cool to see

[Framais]

Really interesting.

Are the organisms going to die after a certain time as well or only when they stop eating? (Aging process)

Thanks, at the moment organisms die when their energy level is too low. If they move around too long without eating, for example. At the moment there isn't an ageing process in place. Generally speaking I am selecting real-life analogues of the micro-organism metaphor as long as they provide an interesting and entertaining gameplay potential.

Will there be organisms that can only survive in air (aerobic organisms) and organisms that don't need air?
Would be cool to see

Currently there is no distinction between aerobic and anaerobic organisms. This makes me think though that organisms could have different favourite types of food. One species might like photosynthetic organisms (algae) whereas another might feed exclusively on organisms of a different species.

[Framais]

The experiment with digital life forms goes on, in this shaky video you can see the birth of predators (the big "M" shaped creatures) and how they feed on their unsuspecting, grazing preys. Also when they have accumulated enough energy, they reproduce.





(Sorry for the low-quality video, I promise I'll find better ways to make video capture in the future.)

P.S. I am pretty new to TIGSource, but there seem to be no way to embed a YouTube video in a forum thread, right?

[ndke]

It's really looking great!
And no, it's not possible to embed youtube videos in a forum thread here, however you can use GIFs .

[Framais]

Too bad it's not possible to embed YouTube videos, unfortunately animated GIFs at this point would just be too big (even for my computer to handle).

Anyhow, here's a video update with a new experiment.





In this experiment I used two different populations of herbivore creatures (red and blue) and one predator (the white-greenish big one) in order to find out which population will survive the longest.

The main differences between the different populations are:

REDS:
Stronger constitution, slower, higher awareness of predator, not very good at finding food.

BLUES
Weaker, faster, bad awareness of predator (especially if they are feeding), pretty good at finding food.

As usual, creatures use energy when moving and gain energy by feeding. If a creature goes too long without feeding, it will eventually die of starvation. In this particular video no creature dies of starvation as they get eventually eaten by the predator.

N.B. Some food is initially present in the environment and some extra food is manually dispensed later on in the experiment.

I am starting to implement body parts (phenotype) that are representative of the genetic characteristics (genotype) of the creature. For example, a longer tail indicates a faster individual.

I hope you enjoy it.

[Framais]

I am working on the micro-organisms look, I chose an old-school vector-graphics look for the time being (think Asteroids). I managed to take a decent enough animated GIF (below) where you can see two powerful green predators  quickly devouring 2 different populations of 'herbivores' that were quietly feeding on their yellow pellets.