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[Eagleon]

It would be a lot simpler and perhaps more interesting at the beginning to start with player control first ala normal Spore and move on to simulating evolution later, if we want to go that route. I think that's one thing Spore did do right; the content creation tools are incredible. I had no problem with the directed evolution, in fact I like the idea of designing a creature from the beginning and thinking of ways to adapt to what's going on around you. We might do something like Pandemic 2, where you actually have to pay DNA points to remove a trait and you can gain a few traits at random that might be undesirable.

I think where Spore really flopped in creatures was the simplicity of the parts. Most of them were useless after a while; in the real world, every part is in reality the best or close to the best at its function. Evolution never really stops, and to say that one mouth type is "better" than another is ignoring the stuff that could make terraforming in the space phase both challenging and much more rewarding. An anteater, while technically a predator, isn't going to do anything to keep gazelle in check, but they still serve a useful role. Obviously they aren't in any way inferior at eating ants, which is what matters for their survival.

[CptFastbreak]

If it should be a scripting language, I guess I can't get anyone here excited about Ruby?

I've heard nice things about it but I haven't had an opportunity to look into it yet. How does it compare to the competition?

It has its own thread implementation which purportedly work in a similar fashion to stackless python's microthreads, though OS threads won't work in Ruby. It's much more object-oriented than Python, so if you, for example, want to implement a singleton, you can just subclass a predefined singleton object, and things are generally done by member functions rather than by globally defined functions. It has blocks which are somewhat in between an iterator loop, and a for-each loop, they're very convenient. Other than that, I find it really elegant and fun to code with, but that's probably a matter of taste.

[Keiseth]

*blinks* A LOT of posts. Infact, I think this topic is more active than the Spore topic.

As for the game, I would also suggest no stages. We would risk turning the game into a series of minigames, which I think we should avoid.

That's a brilliant idea. I have a minor suggestion to go along with it; playability is key. You can't hammer in features before the game is playable, so the "no stage" idea works perfectly.

Start out controlling a single creature, and have the ability eventually to gather others with you (and lead over them) or even follow another one (if you're really bored with normal AI *grin*). Once your group gets somewhat big, you could also control them RTS style, if that's the way you want to go with the game. It'd be really neat if you could go back to controlling one, too, and watch your group from afar.

It feels more natural this way, rather than having direct stages. Isn't 'natural' the concept? Hehe.

But as Zemat said, some focus should probably be maintained on progressive stages. How do you start? How will the game play in its simplest form? What should the first 'playable' demo be like? Those are interesting questions to ask yourself.

I'd consider supporting multi-tile creatures. On the other hand, moving a tribe of them would me a horrible exercise in logistics, and it wouldn't feel right. So you could make everything else smaller while your creature still takes up one space? That doesn't sound right either, because you can't go smaller than one tile.

I had no problem with the directed evolution, in fact I like the idea of designing a creature from the beginning and thinking of ways to adapt to what's going on around you. We might do something like Pandemic 2, where you actually have to pay DNA points to remove a trait and you can gain a few traits at random that might be undesirable.

Hm, so the paths here are A) Directed evolution with random mutations or B) Uncontrolled evolution. Might I propose a compromise if this decision splits the community?

C) Your first creature has uncontrolled evolution. If it reaches the space age, your next creatures have directed evolution (optionally) as your space-age race could be said to be controlling their progression.

Just an interesting meta-gaming thing. It also has a DF-inspired concept of past decisions affecting future outcomes. Ah, well; food for thought.

(Edit) Stackless Python is fascinating. That's how threads should be done, I think.

[wallish]

Hey, I dislike Python too but since we have more possible contributors with Python skills it would be unwise not to use it. Nevertheless Python accepts modules done in C and C++ so we could use your skills to speed up and optimize slow game modules by rewriting them into C++.

The other way could work as well: C and/or C++ for the heavy stuff and Python for scripts and GUI.

I don't like the idea of players having the ability to choose the traits and body parts for their creature. I want a more "natural" approach were random mutations along with the environment chose which parts the creature ends up with. The game would be for the player to manipulate their creatures behavior in order to favor some mutations over the others by making creatures with desirable traits survive and those with undesirable traits die.

Nevertheless, I'll put a poll on the possible evolution mechanics (player manipulation vs random mutation) so that people can choose what they want to see in the game.

Now a more direct question: Would you prefer if a put the poll in another thread or do you want to choose in this thread? I don't want to fill up the "other games" forums with Spogue related posts but it's quite difficult to handle several polls in a single thread.

I think the idea of the game should be like that of DF: you're not controlling the world, it's more like you're just interacting with it.  Let's say you have your creature(s?) and are watching them swim around or whatever.  Now, you want these creatures to end up as quick and smart, so you click a little waypoint near the nest of a larger, slower nearby creature.  Some of your creatures will react to this waypoint (if they're not distracted by other things) and head in to get the eggs.

Well, your creatures are not uniform.  Some are slightly faster and others are stronger; some are smarter while others are more camouflaged.  So what happens?  A group of your creatures (let's say between 5 and 10?) head towards the nest to get the eggs.  The key here is that only the ones with traits suited for surviving this situation will get out alive.  The faster ones will be able to outrun the slow guys and get the eggs, thus allowing for their survival and therefore the opportunity to pass on their "fast" traits to offspring.  The smart ones will run or head towards the more unguarded eggs (I guess we'd need some sort of adaptive AI for this...), thus securing their place in the future.  The slow, dumb ones will get killed and help clean up your species gene pool.

End result?  The player is able to interact with the game and lead their species towards the direction they want it to go without overriding/interfering with the evolutionary aspect of the game.  Throw in random mutations from environment as well for that tasty wildcard.

There's all kinds of awesome scenarios a game like this could allow: influencing your creatures towards consuming a mildly poisonous plant could allow only the once with tolerance to live, eventually maybe allow for venom.  Leading them to prey on the smaller and faster creatures from above makes only the ones with hunting traits (eyesight, smell, hearing) live. Etc, etc, etc.

[Keiseth]

Wow, Wallish. That's brilliant. Some really, really clever AI is needed, though, but that's pretty much the ideal way to do it, I think. The AI will have you decide what you mean by the waypoint, though. Do you want them to just walk over there, or do you want them to steal eggs? Or maybe that decision isn't yours at all? Maybe telling your hopelessly socialized creatures to get the eggs will result in them trying to communicate with the slower creatures, and probably fail?

Bonus: Half the social creatures get horribly devoured, and this upsets them to the point where they start to head toward combat and aggression? Then the aggressive race starts to get beaten by their stronger enemies, so they start trying to be smarter?

[wallish]

Wow, Wallish. That's brilliant. Some really, really clever AI is needed, though, but that's pretty much the ideal way to do it, I think. The AI will have you decide what you mean by the waypoint, though. Do you want them to just walk over there, or do you want them to steal eggs? Or maybe that decision isn't yours at all? Maybe telling your hopelessly socialized creatures to get the eggs will result in them trying to communicate with the slower creatures, and probably fail?

I was thinking about that.  Maybe when you click on something, it waypoints the general "area" but makes the object you wanted "glow" for your benefit (so it's just a UI thing), but they won't know exactly where they are, just the area.  Repeatedly getting them to go to the same area for the same thing (a spring, food like fruit and plants, and other things that tend to be relatively localized and stationary) will cause them to catch on.  If I send them to the spring the first four times they get thirsty they'll know the fifth time to not waste time searching elsewhere and just use the spring. Once again, simple->complex adaptive AI, they're not just growing physically but mentally as well.

Again, it's all about guiding them, not telling them what to do.

Context of the goal comes from the current issues for your group.  Lots o' infants and not enough food?  They'll go to the waypoint to grocery shop.  Lots of food but no shelter?  Look for new territory.  Not enough of them babies to keep going?  Look for a mates?  All three a problem?  Look for another group of the same (or similar - mild crossbreeding!) to take on...

[Drakale]

The important thing is to start small, many ambitious project never see the light of day because the interest die out before any real progress is made.

If it is playable, even in a limited way, at least interest will be maintained and developpement will continue(hopefully). It's always fun to talk about the most interesting aspects like AI and stuff, but the initial goals should be very simple.

This is my opinion at least...

[Eagleon]

That's sort of what I was getting at with my idea for the cell stage. Instead of controlling a single cell you'd control a group, eventually turning into a more controllable form.

I like the idea of taking it further. You could even make solitary creatures that way, but you'd have to be clever about it in game - attacking larger food sources would lead to pack behavior, while going after much smaller ones would make the creatures more inclined to forage on its own, eventually developing territorial behavior if resources are limited.

Extending the idea further, other stages could be done in the same way. I think at the very least in the space stage you should be able to mess with planets in the traditional way, but you should still be directing an empire. Perhaps you serve as a scout/diplomat to the actual efforts of your civilization, dropping markers where resources are found and in your off-time tinkering with biochemistry. I also wish Spore had included a way to go back stages; you could make all kinds of artifacts to provide creatures with advantages, and that might be one way of fitting in exotic biochemistries. You could even drop some of your own race on a planet with no resources, forcing them back to having no technology of their own and allowing you to develop a new civilization with different values.

As for starting small, I agree, but I think for a project of this scope it's also important to look at what we want it to do in the future. We don't want to get bogged down with an old inflexible codebase, and if we're going to be doing stuff like NN for species we need to make sure we don't start relying on structures we can't optimize for that purpose.

Plus it's fun

[Drakale]

Don't get me wrong im not against discussing future stuff at all, i just think it would be best to define the initial goals that are to be implemented so we are all pulling in the same direction and we can get something out fairly fast.

We don't want to get bogged down with an old inflexible codebase

If it is inflexible, then it is badly designed 

[Soulwynd]

I could easily program prototypes for the data structure and game play. But meh, seems like I got completely ignored.

[Mephansteras]

AI recommendation to start out. Make some simple group AI behavior. One for predators: Alpha picks target, pack concentrates on that one, etc. One for herbivores: Everyone follows the first one in the group to move, either towards food or away from enemies. Doesn't have to be too sophisticated, and it should give you a lot of what you're looking for without a lot of effort.

That way, you only have to worry about a few easy AI decisions and the group just sort of follows along. Also makes it easy to have the group follow you if you're controlling a character. You're just sort of automatically Alpha. (Although I guess you could turn that off)

[Zemat]

I could easily program prototypes for the data structure and game play. But meh, seems like I got completely ignored.

Hey not at all. Your ideas are quite interesting but a little bit complicated. But if you can come up with a working prototype showing your ideas working we would appreciate it.

This goes for everyone. I'm reading all posts carefully but I cannot respond to all of them so it my appear some go unheard. If you want to prove something don't wait for anyone to ask you for it. Do it in whatever language you like and and at least I will take a look at it. Remember, ideas are a dime a dozen, but a demo is better at showing what you want to do.

[McDoomhammer]

Something like that?

That works.    Except "Sporgue", so it sounds like Spork.

That's about it from me, I'm afraid.

[Cthulhu]

You should call it Sporehack, that's my contribution to the discussion.

[Keiseth]

If NetHack is derived from Hack, made by the people from usenet, then it would make sense to call this like... BaySpogue? Spogue12? I guess it doesn't work with everything.