herculoids wrote:

4ferrets wrote: I don't think evolution never stops, But there are times
when i wonder if it's going backwards. ha ha!!
Anyway it could be for exp packs later on too.

On of the most common evolution myths...

"Evolution has a direction, where things get progressively more complex."

This is not true, evolution is direction less. Things don't go back or forwards. For example, dophins started out as a finned sea animal, which became a 4 limbed land animal which is now a finned sea animal. What direction was that?

I meant that as a joke, Evolution and Life go hand in hand. Adapt, Evolve or Die "Life will find a way"

herculoids wrote:

4ferrets wrote: I don't think evolution never stops, But there are times
when i wonder if it's going backwards. ha ha!!
Anyway it could be for exp packs later on too.

On of the most common evolution myths...

"Evolution has a direction, where things get progressively more complex."

This is not true, evolution is direction less. Things don't go back or forwards. For example, dophins started out as a finned sea animal, which became a 4 limbed land animal which is now a finned sea animal. What direction was that?

Funward!

sagittary wrote:
To make a true to life evolution game would probably be very boring as you'd probably at most be changing one or two thing a generation and have to be churning out generations like nobody's business. It might be fun for evolutionary biologists doing some research, but from a gameplay standpoint, there'd have to be a heck of a lot more to make it have interesting gameplay.

Oh SWEET I just unlocked a Hox gene mutation achievement and grew another body segment with extra pectoral fins! All I need now is for skin able to survive dessication and I'm heading to land baby!

This gave me an idea. I've already been purposefully slowly mutating my creations to simulate evolution... perhaps I should take it a step further.

From the microbe, slowly to the dominating land-beast, and then slowly back down to a fat pudgy stupid looking creature. Unfortunately Tribal stage and Civ lack the ability to use simplified evolution (de-evolution if you will) where my creations gradually lose their fighting ability and degenerate into morons guzzling a gallon of alcoholic Jemeshi-plant juice while watching SFL Sporeball. Then in space phase they could have a ship that constantly has parts falling off, and they need to go find them, while simultaneously they get fatter.

Eventually they go extinct because they do not even put forth the effort to mate - and that game cycle is complete.

If I had that kind of freedom, I would be the king of Devo.

Are we not Spore?

Kingmaker010 wrote: So what? Are you honestly saying you wish the game designers had given you less freedom?

Actually, yes.

This is why:

What is the value of something, if anyone can do it, and the material costs are minimal?

That chinese made die-cast evil kinevil motorcycle at toys-R-us? It's $.99. And when your friends see you playing with it, well... they'll make sure you know just what the value of that toy is.

Now.. that remote control stunt copter that you need to spend weeks learning how to fly, and months before you can do your first inverted torque-spin... now THAT's something everyone can appreciate!

Now apply this to the game. The creature creator is a $10 piece of software that is extremely cool as a toy and a creative outlet. The creatures you make with it have value based on their detail and aesthetics (or whackiness).

The creature creator in the main Spore gameplay also gives you massive control, with the only limitation being DNA points from having dance-offs, and the parts coming from dinosaur skeletons. In other words, you don't have to do much work to make whatever you want out of your creature. There are no rules about your evolved creature being derived from your previous creature. There's no competition over food, population growth, etc. that you need to consider in your development. It's all open and up to you. A rabbit with its mouth on its butt is just as effective as a perfectly designed siberian tiger, so long as your hard-found skeleton prizes are stuck on them somewhere.

Now... how do you take pride in your hard work, when there are very few rules or limitations, very little skill required to turn your puddle jumper into velociraptor Xtreme? Wouldn't your 'death bunny' be something you could appreciate more, if you actually had to 'roleplay' it to it's ultimate evolution? The fact that you can take that bunny, and turn it into a skateboarding tortoise in one visit to the creator, completely drops the value of both creations. It also makes the game feel hollow and pointless.

Games are about reaching goals by overcoming challenges, even if your goals are self-determined. Even in a sandbox game, the creations don't have much value if you didn't have to do anything special or meaningful to make them.

tanelorn wrote:
The creature creator in the main Spore gameplay also gives you massive control, with the only limitation being DNA points from having dance-offs, and the parts coming from dinosaur skeletons. In other words, you don't have to do much work to make whatever you want out of your creature. There are no rules about your evolved creature being derived from your previous creature. There's no competition over food, population growth, etc. that you need to consider in your development. It's all open and up to you. A rabbit with its mouth on its butt is just as effective as a perfectly designed siberian tiger, so long as your hard-found skeleton prizes are stuck on them somewhere.

Now... how do you take pride in your hard work, when there are very few rules or limitations, very little skill required to turn your puddle jumper into velociraptor Xtreme? Wouldn't your 'death bunny' be something you could appreciate more, if you actually had to 'roleplay' it to it's ultimate evolution? The fact that you can take that bunny, and turn it into a skateboarding tortoise in one visit to the creator, completely drops the value of both creations. It also makes the game feel hollow and pointless.

I was actually quite impressed with how well the DNA points seemed to limit the evolution of a creature. Of course, I have been thinking about my creature evolving rather than taking it apart and reconstructing it differently, but all of my creatures have had a relatively smooth evolutionary build and I haven't noticed many significant jumps.

I think that part of the idea of the ban feature is to be able to eliminate creatures from the game that you don't think are valid, are vulgar, or that you just don't like.

I would like to see an option to just eliminate a creature from your game though. Just because I don't want a creature in my game doesn't mean I want to ban it and send a message to the devs or make it less likely to appear others games.

You can delete the creature from your Sporepedia.

herculoids wrote:

rocketgirl wrote:I was able to go from this:


...to this:


...in a single generation. That ain't evolution!

Well since we have no idea how long the time frame is, yes it is.

First my credentials, I'm an evolutionary biologist. You can go from a proto-hippo to a great blue whale in about 50 million years. You can go from a treeshrew like animal to a human.

So that part is not unbelievable.

What I do wish is they had more generations so the change could be more gradual. The problem is that the game at that stage is just 'fast'. I find myself enjoying the creature stage the best on hard, but its so quickly over that while it really represents about 300 million years or so of time, it feels far shorter.

Its not so much that its not possible by evolution, its just that it is intelligent design. This was admitted by Will, and is unavoidable. I'd love to see a true 'evolution' game where what you do helps shape it, but thats most likely VERY deep but not very fun for anyone who's not an evolutionary biologist.

I agree the game simulates evolution but since the player is making the choices of the design it is intelligent design. If the enviornment dictated what survived it would be evolutionary. It would be a boring game though because it would be like a screen saver where you are watching it the whole time and can never interact. As soon as you intervene you change the enviornment.

It does teach some things about mutations and survival. If you are constantly being attacked by big creatures and eaten you can survive better by being better at fighting, forming groups, being faster or stealthier. You basically learn that survival requires a change and that if you remain as you were it is likely your creatures would go extinct. Basically those creatures most fit for the enviornment have the easiest ability to survive.

Evolution is basically reproductive fitness. Spore has nothing to do with reproductive fitness (you can die 12 times in a row and I'm am not sure if you lose anything too significant). Roaches sure aren't buff or "social" but they make lots of babies and are hard to kill so they can make more babies. But I guess they really wouldn't get to sentience (I am not sure if any one KNOWS scientifically why we humans got to it).

Selection factor: You evolve more based on killing, socializing, and eating eggs. I get the eating eggs part, some animals evolve around eating eggs. I might understand the killing part, but killing is not a selection factor in the game (ex does not really give you a benefit, besides getting "dna" and attaining sentience, and they sure aren't preying on you or affecting your reproduction OR competing with you). Socializing could be a selection factor but for the same reason above, not in this case.

Because the role of sentience is filled.

Lets take a nuclear holocaust. Roaches are left.

Give them 100 million years and no opposition for sentience except the kinds that force thinking, and you will have Roaches in Space.

I believe roaches existed for 100 million years before we human ever came around.

Jackuul wrote:Because the role of sentience is filled.

Lets take a nuclear holocaust. Roaches are left.

Give them 100 million years and no opposition for sentience except the kinds that force thinking, and you will have Roaches in Space.

Some basic limitations to their biology would most likely prevent this. It would require a LOT of evolutionary change to do this. Most likely some small rodent or lizard would become the next Noah species.

Not if they couldn't survive the radiation. It took humans 15 million. So I added an extra 85 for the bugs.

tanelorn wrote:
Now... how do you take pride in your hard work, when there are very few rules or limitations, very little skill required to turn your puddle jumper into velociraptor Xtreme? Wouldn't your 'death bunny' be something you could appreciate more, if you actually had to 'roleplay' it to it's ultimate evolution? The fact that you can take that bunny, and turn it into a skateboarding tortoise in one visit to the creator, completely drops the value of both creations. It also makes the game feel hollow and pointless.

Games are about reaching goals by overcoming challenges, even if your goals are self-determined. Even in a sandbox game, the creations don't have much value if you didn't have to do anything special or meaningful to make them.

In a true game perhaps so, but Spore is primarily a software toy. Applying this argument to Spore would be similar (not exactly the same, but similar) to saying that there's no value in a painting because you didn't have to evolve it from a blob of paint in the middle of the canvas. The true value of Spore's editors doesn't lie in how they influence the "game". The true value lies in being able to create something dynamic and inventive, and then watch it interact with its environment. Its not art in the truest sense, but it's not a game in the truest sense either.

jackuul wrote:Because the role of sentience is filled.

Lets take a nuclear holocaust. Roaches are left.

Give them 100 million years and no opposition for sentience except the kinds that force thinking, and you will have Roaches in Space.

That myth has been busted.

Roaches would not survive a nuclear holocaust.

It was something like fruit flies that would survive but with high mortality rates.

It was some really small insect I might be mistaken in which one but it wasn't roaches.