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[Captain Mayday]

I'd like to throw in a suggestion here to check out Simlife's creature and plant aspects. Since evolution here is going to be procedural, and because Spore is basically a very low level combination of simlife and simearth with a few other things thrown in, it may pay to take a look at the original.

[Nonanonymous]

I don't recall any evolution in SimLife.  I just remember designing some creatures and plants.

[Captain Mayday]

I don't recall any evolution in SimLife.  I just remember designing some creatures and plants.

Actually, it did have evolution by means of mutations. After a while, species would diverge into other species, eventually coming to either success or dying off. It was an easy way to make a successful ecosystem, since any failures would wipe out the part having trouble.

[Nonanonymous]

I guess that would be explainable by my species never surviving long enough to see anything ever happen.

[Kagus]

SimLife didn't really have the capability to really simulate life.  Animals would just zoom around in circles until they found something, in which case they would either eat it or be eaten by it.  It was all random, no thought.

The mutations could provide some interesting effects at times, yes.  But it mutated the species as a whole, didn't it?  That could sometimes be troublesome when your camels suddenly became aquatic.  In the middle of the desert.

"Ooh."

Or when your bumble bees decided to eat nuts instead of nectar, thus decimating your flower population instead of boosting it.  Or when your whales spontaneously grew an extra eye (did that even do anything?). 

Or when your butterflies decided they were carnivorous.  The horror...

[Cthulhu]

I spent ten minutes trying to find a good image from the episode of SpongeBob with the killer butterfly, but gave up.  Please laugh at the idea.

[Areyar]

har har.

didn't it give you the choice of creating a new subspcies each time a population diverged?
I remember it had it's in-game pixel editor for the sprites, which is a great feature. (even if only used to create ASCII) ... or was that in SE?

[Fualkner]

Pygame? I'm out.

What's wrong with Pygame? It's a module for python, easy to learn. Just DL the instructions with it. Seriously, if you're going to run at the idea of a bit of extra work, perhaps you should just avoid the project.

[stummel]

OT: 1st time i saw a python source code. looks really easy to code with. maybe i'll get the chance to work with it. does anyone has experience with python on openBSD?

[Captain Mayday]

har har.

didn't it give you the choice of creating a new subspcies each time a population diverged?
I remember it had it's in-game pixel editor for the sprites, which is a great feature. (even if only used to create ASCII) ... or was that in SE?

Well, autospeciation does create new subspecies, and yeah, the sprite editor is great. SimEarth did not have this feature.

[CptFastbreak]

CptFastbreak screams: I must have C++ ... ! Ruby ... Yes ...

[Zemat]

CptFastbreak screams: I must have C++ ... ! Ruby ... Yes ...

Hehehe. Make your case in the RogueLife forums. You can either make a prototype proposal (following the instructions on proposals in the discussion forum) or go ahead and make a C++/Ruby prototype similar to the one I requested to be made in Python. Then post it in the code forum and explain how your code works and how it's better than using Python.

The reason the project seems to be focusing on Python right now is not because is the better language (I don't agree with that) but because we already have more people willing to work in Python than any other option. We need a lot of people because very few of them have enough time to work on this and some contributors might drop from the project eventually. So we need extra hands willing to take on the same code.

By the way, I concentrated all poll options than mentioned C/C++ in a single voting option instead of separating it in options by scripting language. If you want to program with C/C++ and other scripting language vote for that option. And if that option wins, in a later poll the scripting language will be chosen.

The reason Python stays separated in the poll options even if it's a scripting language is because Python works better as a base language than as an extension language. Everything that I have read about extending C++ with Python amounts to pure horror stories and everyone seems to recommend doing things the other way around. Writing Python modules in C or C++ is easier than extending C/C++ with Python. Also, Python has the necessary modules (written in other languages) already so there's almost no need to mix other languages with it.

[CptFastbreak]

No, I wasn't flamebaiting, if it must be Python then so be it. I was also not implying that I will try to kill you with furniture unless the project uses C++, I was just aiming for a cheap pun. OTOH, with Ruby, we could say that the game menaces with spikes of ruby.

[Zemat]

No, I wasn't flamebaiting, if it must be Python then so be it. I was also not implying that I will try to kill you with furniture unless the project uses C++, I was just aiming for a cheap pun. OTOH, with Ruby, we could say that the game menaces with spikes of ruby.

I didn't take your comment as flammebait, otherwise I would have never responded to it. In fact I found it very funny.

I just took the opportunity to clarify to everyone why the project is choosing Python for the moment.

[Asheron]

This is a bump.