Spore and Evolution

So much excitement
I remember a few years back being so completely excited about a video game titled 'Spore'. I was sitting in my brother's room watching some videos he had downloaded from E3, when he showed me one from the creator of SimCity - Will Wright. He was demonstrating a project he was working on, which followed the same rough style of his other game, however radically different when it came to subject. In Sim City your playfield was a city, and you controlled it for a few hundred years. In The Sims your playfield was a household, and you controlled it for a few months. In Spore your playfield would be a galaxy, and you would control it throughout the evolution of a species.

What made it great?
The thing about Spore that filled my excitement meter so much was its huge scope and action creativity. The Sims was fun, but I would invariably end up in with a good job, nice house, lots of friends but always felt like something was missing. I guess the appeal of these games to me is the opportunity to be creative, and not just visually. That is why Spore looked so interesting, you could make unique looking creatures which also acted uniquely.

It finally came out
So after my first exposure to it I couldn't wait to play it. That was a problem though, because it was at least a couple of years down the track until it actually came out. I ended up losing a lot of interest by then, and didn't purchase it. I looked at the reviews which weren't amazing, looked at videos of the gameplay and wasn't too thrilled either. I eventually picked it up and gave it a go

Disappointment
The first stage of spore is by the most enjoyable. In the cell stage you create a single celled organism which is to compete in a 2d pool with other similar creations. Doesn't sound interesting huh, well it is the only stage in spore where physical appearance correlates well with ability. I learnt quickly that having a spike at the rear would prevent attack from behind, and that defensive weapons were not needed if you had speed, agility and a small body. I even experimented in not having eyes and just being covered with spikes, it worked a treat. However after you leave the 2d pool for the 3d world, the parts you choose just give you a standard ability. This was bitterly disappointing. Imagine 2 separate creatures - (1) a small slender creature with tiny little spikes on its feet and a cute little tusk on its nose. (2) A large creature with wings, thick legs, and a long tail flowing behind it. (1) has spikes and a tusk, and has thus been granted with attacking abilities and would beat (2) in a straight fight, but (2) would probably run away with its enhanced speed and agility. If Darwin existed in Spore, he would be a hack...his theory would not make sense.

Further disappointment
So I got through the creature stage and was on to the tribal stage and found even less options available to me. There are only about 8 basic actions available in the creature stage - Gather food, eat, give gift, attack, play music, capture wild creature, repair building, heal. I think that is it. The 'uniqueness' of the creature comes from the clothes that you wear which give you points to 4 different traits - social, combat, gathering and health. There are 9 tools available, 3 for attacking, 3 for socialising, 2 for gathering and 1 for healing. I imagined this stage would involve finding tools and then inventing further tools and uses until eventually you can build a building and vehicles and progress to the civilisation stage. In reality the timeline of Spore is:

• Cellular - begins adapting body parts to survive and evolve
• Creature - develops the use of limbs and body parts to attack or befriend other creatures
• Tribal - suddenly has a central building, and can use a variety of tools to attack, gather or impress
• Civilisation - suddenly becomes a civilisation with vehicles and can harvest spice. Learns sea faring and then flight. Also develops an 'economy' and 'religion'.
• Space - suddenly achieves space flight

The civilisation stage is similar in its limitations to the tribal stage. Only a few actions available, with different civilisations not being very unique. Space flight is kind of interesting, but you end up going around and seeing the same beings everywhere. Either someone who is warlike or someone who is friendly.

One final complaint about Spore
I am yet to mention one major detrimental point about this game, but here we go. As you evolve through a stage, you do not have to keep what was there before. You can start from scratch right at the end of the creature stage and go into the tribal stage with a completely different looking character. The only thing which caries on is some special moves which are attributed to you based on your actions (eg from cellular to creature stage a carnivore will get an ability to attack other creatures, whereas a herbivore might get an ability to befriend others). In essence though, I can't imagine the difference between going straight into civilisation stage at the start compared with going into the civilisation stage after playing from the cellular stage right through.


So...What from here?
After this disappointment I have wondered, what is it that I wanted to be in that game, and how would such a game be created. Here are some thoughts:


An evolution algorithm?
If I wished to make a game in which enemies you fought evolved as you played through the game, how would I do that? I could create a program which handled a list of creatures and made them compete with each other with consequences of that competition (eg the loser may die). I would need to specify a random factor in their individual attributes and in the encounters otherwise it would be the same result constantly. I would also need to have a decent population of each creature to be able to be able to determine what percentage of that population might survive. For example if I start with 100 of A, 100 of B, 100 of C and 100 of D; after x amount of time there are 90 A left, 75 B left, 20 C left and D has become extinct.

Reproduction
If I kept going with the previous algorithm, only the strong and hardy creatures would survive. There is a second point of evolution which comes into the equation, the ability to reproduce. No matter how protected endangered animals become, if they do not reproduce they will eventually become extinct. Some creatures ability to survive comes from their reproductive efforts, in that they can increase their numbers dramatically before they are killed by a predator. Thus in this algorithm reproduction would play a central role.

Resources
Resources are another important part of life, and the ability to have food on the table is important. Creatures who require little resources to survive or those who are good at obtaining their resources will do better than those who need a lot of resources and are not good at obtaining them.

Mutation
Essential to evolution, and really what evolution is all about. If mutation was not included, then it would just be the balancing of an ecosystem over time. If creatures are given the opportunity to change attributes or carry attributes through generations, they should evolve as a species. For this to work, all the previous parts of the algorithm would need to be functioning well in order to allow the best mutations to survive, and the bad ones to fall behind. This could be a major stumbling point...

Environment
This is where it gets dynamic. Working with that whole framework, but then putting the creatures in different environments with different resources available. Certain creatures should flourish in some environments but perish in others. This could be hooked in with magic as well, by simply adding magical element to the environment creatures who are associated with that magical element will flourish and those of an opposing element should die out. It would also shape the evolution of those species, in that they should adapt more to that environment as time goes on.

Attributes
So from all this, we have got several attributes we need to include, and others we can create in order to fill out the algorithm. There will need to be a logical weighting of attributes to keep a balanced system (eg can't have a strong creature who uses little resources and reproduces like crazy). From nature it is evident that attributes are balanced, a lion is big and strong, but its reproductive capabilities are not great and it needs a lot of resources to survive. But that tweaking is for further down the track, for now here are the attributes:

Fighting attributes

• Attack power
• Magic power
• Physical defense
• Magic defense
• Evasion
• Accuracy
• Speed
• Element
  

Other attributes

• Time to reproductive age
• Rate of reproduction
• Space needed
  
• Fragility
• Resource A requirement
• Resource A ability
• Resource B requirement
• Resource B ability

Environmental attributes

• Size
• Element
• Harshness
• Resource A availability
• Resource B availability

I have added a few points which I have not talked of yet - Fragility refers to how easily a creature might die off from disease, and harshness refers to how likely an environment is to cause disease. Size gives a limit of on the population able to be present in an area and space needed refers to the area needed for each creature. Resource availability would be the availability of one resource in that environment. Depending on the complexity wanted several resources could be used. Resource requirement would be the quantity needed for a creature, and resource ability would be the ability of a creature to get a resource.


So I guess the hype I had for spore and the subsequent disappointment led me to want to make think of something myself which would be base on evolution. Its not really related to the original idea of spore that I was so taken with, but it still excites me none the less.