On Jun 11, 2004, at 2:24 PM, Joseph J. Strout wrote:
Here's an idea for a different sort of game, though you will recognize
inspiration in SimLife and other similar artificial life apps...
The basic idea is this: You, as a player, design a species of
creature, by setting a large number of parameters (both physical and
behavioral). Your creature may be anything from a tiny plant to a
Godzilla-like behemoth. You then toss, say, a few dozen members of
your species into a jungle rich with other creatures, and see how long
they (and their progeny) last.
So far this is sounding pretty much like SimLife, though I think with
today's computers you could reasonably make a much larger and more
interesting artificial world, as well as more complex creatures. But
wait, we haven't gotten to the really interesting bit:
The jungle being simulated on your computer is just one among many; at
the borders, your jungle is linked to the jungles of other players on
the internet. Organisms can walk (or flap or swim or be blown or
whatever) across this border, which means that you'll be running into
creatures created by other players, and if you've done a good job,
other players will be seeing some of yours. You get global statistics
on how your creatures are doing -- how many of them there are, what
they're mostly eating, what they're mostly getting killed by, etc.
So the goal is to make a creature strong enough and fit enough to
spread throughout the whole network of players of this game. Of
course if you really do make such a successful species, its success
will probably be short-lived, because somebody will make a new species
tailored to successfully feed on yours. (Or, if your species is one
that needs to eat a lot, it may simply exhaust the food supply and
suffer a natural population crash.) Such is life in the jungle.
Notes: If your "species" does - in fact - have a horrific consumption
rate, then it may very well extinct all it's prey species and then
starve itself. Usually, however, this will enter a chaotic cycle as
they die off and allow the prey species to re-populate the area. This
will then start the next phase as your species takes off now that there
are more prey to eat.
IIRC, this is described by the logistic equation* - x(t+1) =
lambda*x(t)*(1-x(t)) - which mathematically describes this, and
similar, phenomena.
One option would be for your species to take a hint from army ants;
they feed in a particular area, then move on in a mass migration to a
new area so they don't totally depopulate their prey species. (I think
they were army ants; they might have been the driver ants, or perhaps
the Ciafu ants of Africa...) This was on a recent show on the Discovery
channel (on cable TV).
* This was taken from the book, "Exploring Chaos: A Guide to the New
Science of Disorder" by Nina Hall. pp. 82-83.
Like with most of my project ideas, I'd love to do this one myself,
but simply haven't the time, so I'm hoping someone else will run with
it and do a good job so I no longer feel the urge. :) But feel free
to discuss it some more here or off-list even if you want to just
explore the idea a bit further.
Best,
- Joe
--
,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout REAL Software, Inc. |
| joe at realsoftware dot com http://www.realsoftware.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'
_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode:
<http://support.realsoftware.com/listmanager/>
Search the archives of this list here:
<http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
William H Squires Jr
wsquires at satx dot rr dot com dot nospam <- remove the .nospam
_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode:
<http://support.realsoftware.com/listmanager/>
Search the archives of this list here:
<http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
|