Species: Artificial Life, Real Evolution

[MaxFF]

I tried this out last night and its pretty awesome.

[Quasar]

Species 0.4.1 is released! www.speciesgame.com

[zilch]

Looks good. When are you going to port it to Mac?

[Quasar]

Unfortunately, probably not for a while, at least not natively. Since the XNA framework I'm using is a Microsoft product, putting it on a Mac makes me crumble to dust it stop working.

I'd love to get it working on a Mac though, so if you own one or know someone who does, maybe try it with Wine? If it works I can try to integrate Wine with the game.

The only other alternative I'm aware of is MonoXNA, which sounds like a good option until I realise it's bound to be a lot of extra work each update. In both cases, though, I don't have a Mac to test it on and don't personally know anyone who does.

[zilch]

Thanks for the info, q-man. I checked out Wine, but to install it on my old pre-Intel mac looks pretty geeky. I think I'll just try it out on our (also old) PC at home, which can at least run Oblivion at playable resolution and framerates.

[IntellectualNinja]

Wow, a lot of work went into this! This is great! Just two things. It needs audio, and it needs an in-game tutorial to get players started. You're almost ready ready to launch this into beta.

[Quasar]

Wow, a lot of work went into this! This is great! Just two things. It needs audio, and it needs an in-game tutorial to get players started. You're almost ready ready to launch this into beta.

Thanks IN , but it's still got a long way to go before I get to beta.

I'm currently modelling temperature and ground fertility, and have plans to overhaul and improve pretty much every aspect of the simulation from physics to diet to AI to genetics, which should encourage more biodiversity and alternative survival strategies. (Also, Online Multiplayer)

The biggest thing it's missing is gameplay elements. (I'm not talking about wandering around hunting things and gathering XP: what I actually mean is artificial selection, genetic manipulation and uncovering the tree of life, as well as taking care of the ecosystem and encouraging biodiversity) I want Species to be a fun game on it's own merits: in addition to being an interesting and accurate simulation.

Heh, compared to where I want to take it, this barely even qualifies as an alpha release. It's really just a proof of concept.