Post by Lanky Giraffe on Nov 20, 2016 15:31:30 GMT
I'm sure it's come across many people's minds: What will Revolutionary Studios do once Thrive is "done"?. Obviously they will make more games (because Thrive will do very well because reasons) so I thought of an interesting (but probably very difficult to make) game that either Rev. Studios or any other game makers out there could try to create in the future.
The General Concept
The name itself is a pretty big hint to what the game is about. If you don't know who Jean Lamarck was, he was a French scientist around the time of Darwin when people were thinking of theories for evolution. He believed that animals changed during their lifetime, and those traits they acquired were passed down to the offspring. (Please note that this theory has been disproved, I believed this would be a fun concept to come up with)
Lamarckians takes place on a planet were the goal of organisms is not to replicate themselves, but to stay alive as long as possible, so every organism on the planet is unique.
The game will start with a procedural generated planet roughly the same size that Thrive's will be (less work for Rev. Studios as they can use Thrive's formula thingy) with a certain number (depends on the planet size, probably between 10,000 and 1 million) of ping pong ball sized blobs with a small hole in it's "face" floating in the sea. The player controls one of these many blobs. The main mechanic of Lamarckians is that by attempting to do a task will slowly grow a feature adapted for that task. So when the game starts, if a player tries to move forward (movement will be WASD) a small nub at the other end will begin to grow and start wiggling, continuous movement will grow a simple tail (this would take 10-20 seconds). If a player moves their mouse to look around the ocean, a basic form of visual sensing will start to appear. Since it is only "animals" on the planet, all the blobs will start as carnivores, so if a player tries to move against another blob (while Hunting, a feature explained below) to get food from it, perhaps it's hole will become more mouth-like, with repeated knocking movements forming maybe a spike or quick attacking feature, and slow, engulfing-like movements forming maybe a large mouth.
Another feature in the game is Hunting, the player and AIs must select (with the mouse) another organism to enable Hunting. It's during Hunt mode that features like the above-mentioned mouths or spikes will grow. If and organism is Hunting another, it may develop another sense such as smell or hearing if the organism it is hunting is unable to be seen. Likewise, if an organism if being Hunted, different actions will determine different features. Attempting to escape will increase the effectiveness of it's movement feature(s), staying still may improve camouflage and counter-attacking may improve armour.
Some Gameplay Scenarios
The above concepts were fairly vague, so I've thought up some different scenarios in the game that may take place to better explain how the game and other smaller features might work.
1: One player's animal has left the sea and is crawling around on a beach. It moves like slug at first but begins developing simple legs. It is the size of a cat and oval shaped, has a long, powerful tail, three large eye-like features on a round head. Its colour changes to yellow to match the sand, and the player looks for any other animals on the beach to Hunt. Before it can spend long looking around, a large lobster like creature bursts from the ocean, its AI has selected the triclops tadpole thing to hunt. It already has legs from living on the sea floor, but is heavy and slow. It looks like it is about to catch the player but the player is gradually accelerating as its legs improve. it reaches a rocky cliff and the player tries to move up it. His/her creature weekly reaches at it at first, but it begins to develop grasping features to climb. The lobster thing is too heavy and it would take many minutes of struggling to develop strong enough climbing limbs, and gives up after the player's creature disappears over the top.
2: About 3 mins later, the player needs to return to the beach to find food, but is unable to climb back down. He/she is lucky this time because they have long front limbs from the climbing. He/she gets desperate and jumps off, attempting to land in the soft sand. While in the air, the creature automatically spreads its arms (an instinctive behaviour feature for all the animals to do if they jump from a certain height) and a layer of skin begins to join the arms and body, slowing the fall. If a creature is travelling slow enough in a free space (like air or water) they may attempt to "jump" to propel themselves more (a player will press Spacebar to do this). The player does this and the gliding creature flaps its forming wings, increasing the arm muscle size and increasing the area of the flap of skin. (If this was an AI, it may or may not do this), the player presses Spacebar a few more times and it forms wings. Once landing, the player needs to quickly take off again as the giant lobster thing has returned. Instead of trying to climb the cliff again, he/she tries to take off from the ground. It doesn't work at first but the back limbs begin to gain more muscle and they can take off.
3: (This scenario is just one way venom spit may evolve through player or AI actions) After a while, the player now resembles a pterodactyl-like creature with it's tail now adapted for air manoeuvrability (the player has repeatedly turned their creature in the air) and powerful legs that are beginning to develop membranes of their own (this player appears to have a goal to create a flying creature). Many more Lamarkians have now began to explore the land in search of more prey. The arms race has lead to some creatures developing strong armour that is quite hard to eat. As such, the players creature (let's call it the Tridactyl for now) has required to develop stronger acidic fluids to help break down the food. Until now, the Tridactyl has mainly been a scavenger, but now it needs to actively attack it's armoured prey, so some of its "stomach" acid is now being produced in the mouth. The player takes advantage of this discovery and begin to fly over and use its attack (LMB, will originally cause a Lamarkian to "bite") to dribble acid on to its opponent. Eventually, this develops into a basic spit, where it can attack enemies from above. It is possible that any of the armoured creatures could develop some sort of defence system if the Tridactyl were to attack it multiple times.
More scenarios coming soon. They will probably be more interesting and will explore how "special" features (like spitting or echolocation) might evolve.
I'm sorry if any readers found this confusing (reading back through it doesn't look very clear). I'm no coder but I know this game would be very difficult to make. If any developers are reading this, perhaps you could suggest different ways of how a game like this may work. And anyone else reading this feel free to give ideas or your thoughts on is a game like this were to be made. In my head I'm working on ideas for how things like multiplayer, prevention of all the other animals going extinct and other advanced features might work as my current concept (which you just read) is very bare-bones and probably needs a lot of work.
Thank you for taking the time to read this
The General Concept
The name itself is a pretty big hint to what the game is about. If you don't know who Jean Lamarck was, he was a French scientist around the time of Darwin when people were thinking of theories for evolution. He believed that animals changed during their lifetime, and those traits they acquired were passed down to the offspring. (Please note that this theory has been disproved, I believed this would be a fun concept to come up with)
Lamarckians takes place on a planet were the goal of organisms is not to replicate themselves, but to stay alive as long as possible, so every organism on the planet is unique.
The game will start with a procedural generated planet roughly the same size that Thrive's will be (less work for Rev. Studios as they can use Thrive's formula thingy) with a certain number (depends on the planet size, probably between 10,000 and 1 million) of ping pong ball sized blobs with a small hole in it's "face" floating in the sea. The player controls one of these many blobs. The main mechanic of Lamarckians is that by attempting to do a task will slowly grow a feature adapted for that task. So when the game starts, if a player tries to move forward (movement will be WASD) a small nub at the other end will begin to grow and start wiggling, continuous movement will grow a simple tail (this would take 10-20 seconds). If a player moves their mouse to look around the ocean, a basic form of visual sensing will start to appear. Since it is only "animals" on the planet, all the blobs will start as carnivores, so if a player tries to move against another blob (while Hunting, a feature explained below) to get food from it, perhaps it's hole will become more mouth-like, with repeated knocking movements forming maybe a spike or quick attacking feature, and slow, engulfing-like movements forming maybe a large mouth.
Another feature in the game is Hunting, the player and AIs must select (with the mouse) another organism to enable Hunting. It's during Hunt mode that features like the above-mentioned mouths or spikes will grow. If and organism is Hunting another, it may develop another sense such as smell or hearing if the organism it is hunting is unable to be seen. Likewise, if an organism if being Hunted, different actions will determine different features. Attempting to escape will increase the effectiveness of it's movement feature(s), staying still may improve camouflage and counter-attacking may improve armour.
Some Gameplay Scenarios
The above concepts were fairly vague, so I've thought up some different scenarios in the game that may take place to better explain how the game and other smaller features might work.
1: One player's animal has left the sea and is crawling around on a beach. It moves like slug at first but begins developing simple legs. It is the size of a cat and oval shaped, has a long, powerful tail, three large eye-like features on a round head. Its colour changes to yellow to match the sand, and the player looks for any other animals on the beach to Hunt. Before it can spend long looking around, a large lobster like creature bursts from the ocean, its AI has selected the triclops tadpole thing to hunt. It already has legs from living on the sea floor, but is heavy and slow. It looks like it is about to catch the player but the player is gradually accelerating as its legs improve. it reaches a rocky cliff and the player tries to move up it. His/her creature weekly reaches at it at first, but it begins to develop grasping features to climb. The lobster thing is too heavy and it would take many minutes of struggling to develop strong enough climbing limbs, and gives up after the player's creature disappears over the top.
2: About 3 mins later, the player needs to return to the beach to find food, but is unable to climb back down. He/she is lucky this time because they have long front limbs from the climbing. He/she gets desperate and jumps off, attempting to land in the soft sand. While in the air, the creature automatically spreads its arms (an instinctive behaviour feature for all the animals to do if they jump from a certain height) and a layer of skin begins to join the arms and body, slowing the fall. If a creature is travelling slow enough in a free space (like air or water) they may attempt to "jump" to propel themselves more (a player will press Spacebar to do this). The player does this and the gliding creature flaps its forming wings, increasing the arm muscle size and increasing the area of the flap of skin. (If this was an AI, it may or may not do this), the player presses Spacebar a few more times and it forms wings. Once landing, the player needs to quickly take off again as the giant lobster thing has returned. Instead of trying to climb the cliff again, he/she tries to take off from the ground. It doesn't work at first but the back limbs begin to gain more muscle and they can take off.
3: (This scenario is just one way venom spit may evolve through player or AI actions) After a while, the player now resembles a pterodactyl-like creature with it's tail now adapted for air manoeuvrability (the player has repeatedly turned their creature in the air) and powerful legs that are beginning to develop membranes of their own (this player appears to have a goal to create a flying creature). Many more Lamarkians have now began to explore the land in search of more prey. The arms race has lead to some creatures developing strong armour that is quite hard to eat. As such, the players creature (let's call it the Tridactyl for now) has required to develop stronger acidic fluids to help break down the food. Until now, the Tridactyl has mainly been a scavenger, but now it needs to actively attack it's armoured prey, so some of its "stomach" acid is now being produced in the mouth. The player takes advantage of this discovery and begin to fly over and use its attack (LMB, will originally cause a Lamarkian to "bite") to dribble acid on to its opponent. Eventually, this develops into a basic spit, where it can attack enemies from above. It is possible that any of the armoured creatures could develop some sort of defence system if the Tridactyl were to attack it multiple times.
More scenarios coming soon. They will probably be more interesting and will explore how "special" features (like spitting or echolocation) might evolve.
I'm sorry if any readers found this confusing (reading back through it doesn't look very clear). I'm no coder but I know this game would be very difficult to make. If any developers are reading this, perhaps you could suggest different ways of how a game like this may work. And anyone else reading this feel free to give ideas or your thoughts on is a game like this were to be made. In my head I'm working on ideas for how things like multiplayer, prevention of all the other animals going extinct and other advanced features might work as my current concept (which you just read) is very bare-bones and probably needs a lot of work.
Thank you for taking the time to read this
