My Virtual Creatures Evolve Defenses: "Where Beasts Were Born" DevLog 2

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In my game "Where Beasts Were Born", creatures will evolve to become better at the game.
They do this via a genetic algorithm. In this DevLog, I run three experiments which test the creatures survival fitness and forces them to evolve defensive strategies over multiple generations.

[@Zuzelo]

All these complex simulations and algorithms are cool and all, but once you've added the barrels I understood how serious this project actually is!

[@Germanunkol]

I knew adding the barrels was 17 minutes of time-well-spent!! Thanks for confirming!

[@tiredboy7262]

PLEASE dont become one of those dev channels that have some videos uploaded and then disappear for the next decade, this project is genuinely so interesting to me, dont ever worry about channel statistics, what the comments say, other stuff in life, just do what you love and succeed in it

[@Tom_Quixote]

Well we all know that's exactly what will happen.

[@user-cz9oe3py3r]

Can you guys tell me examples of disappeared devs who had promising projects? I'm genuinely curious

[@Mulakulu]

"usually, a prerequisite for reproducing is actually being alive". Quote of the year

[@Germanunkol]

Always happy when someone appreciates the horrible jokes I make :D

[@JPshoe.]

You have no idea how happy I was to see another devlog of this amazing concept, keep it up! also I will have nightmares about some of those beasts

[@Germanunkol]

Thanks a lot. And sorry about the nightmares. I can share some more behind-the-scenes visualizations of the animation process at some point, I feel this tends to make them less nighrmare-ish. :D

[@zeldaandTwink]

So glad to see he's still going

[@alexh.4644]

To be honest, this is the best devlog I've seen so far.

[@Germanunkol]

Aaaw, thanks! This might be the best comment I've received so far! 😁

[@nazihboudaakkar8117]

i second this

[@MrMyers758]

I think a very important part of this should be creature food. We saw in the first experiment that the evolutionary line went towards having excess volume, and so introducing a system where that requires more food, and with an interplay between predator and prey beasts would result in a situation where different areas of the cave which have different species in will evolve differently. In an area with a lot of very fast reproducing prey, you might see creatures that can afford to be larger and who consume prey in large swathes like baleen whales, whereas in areas with larger, fewer prey, you may see smaller, faster predators which learn to stay within a certain distance of others in it's species to essentially hunt as a pack, because those who vere off to far are unable to kill prey and so their more isolationist traits aren't passed on. If that kind of thing can be pre-generated randomly before a game starts, the introduction of the player will cause massive disruption to the ecosystem and you can see how the ecology tries to cope with this new threat.

[@Germanunkol]

I really like these ideas and would love to try to incorporate pieces of it. But I'll also have to think of the scope - I don't want this game to become a large simulation for evolution, there are other games out there which already do this quite well. What sets my game apart is the player's influence, so I really want to focus on that...

[@MrMyers758]

@@Germanunkol Ah that makes perfect sense. Now I realise how easy feature creep can set in xD

[@perniciousthought9173]

Even if your ideas might not excactly fit the ideas of Germanunkol I sitll love them. Bigger creatures needing more food is such a good concept

[@FirstLast-qh8it]

I can’t wait to see how behaviors evolve and species develop more complex relationships

[@kylecanfield1405]

The work looks amazing so far. I think a good next step would be to make other body functions functional. Such as ways to cause harm (teeth, claws, horns, sprays, etc), different forms of sensory input like sound and sight, or like pheromones like ants? But over all, I'm super excited to see further development.

[@Germanunkol]

Thanks! You're spot-on in describing my next steps. I want to give the creatures methods to interact with the players (or the turrets), avoid them, attack them etc. For this I need to code some new animations, sensory input and then small brains to "link" the sensory input to the actions.

[@riisezz0]

Seeing the results of the evolutions actually made my skin crawl... So you're definitely doing something right, my friend. Keep up the great work!

[@Brosquini]

Firstly, I absolutely love this game! One of my favorite concepts I have seen in a long time! some advice though, add organs to the creatures, you could control for example the number of eyes, so a creature with 4 eyes could detect and avoid projectiles more efficiently than a creature with one. This could also apply to the heart and lungs, giving a creature a larger heart would give it faster bursts of energy, but would give it's heart a larger hitbox making it easier to hit, this leads on to my second point. You should edit the mesh during the battle to make the battle feel more realistic. You could make it so armor takes more hits to destroy then it exposes the flesh. You could also add in rib cages and bones that would also be more robust than flesh. for example the rib cage would protect the heart from being a one hit kill. This would end up looking like the dead space remake body destruction system. In addition I would give the enemies more health and make them larger. Mixed with some blood effects this would drastically improve the game and I think it would be an awesome addition

[@Germanunkol]

Thanks a lot! 😃 Those are some cool ideas! The creatures already have (a variable number) of eyes and antennae. So far, they're not functional, but the eyes can be extended (placed on "stalks") and antennae can morph into horns. All of this should have an effect later in the game, similar to how you're suggesting, yes! Your thoughts on internal organs are very interesting, I haven't started going down that route at all yet. I can probably remove pieces (tails, leg, antennae), but I'll have to think about the internal organs. I really like the idea, but I'll have to consider if it's worth spending too much time on it since the creatures will be seen from relatively far away and the caves will be pretty dark. I might end up spending months on implementing something that the player won't end up seeing :D But I'll definitely note down the idea, maybe it will work out somehow!

[@Brosquini]

@@Germanunkol All right! It was an incredibly ambitious suggestion, good luck and keep up the awesome work!

[@intergalacticGM]

The idea is good. And you don't need to make visible organs, just change behaviour. Something I came here to say is about that, behaviour is important to evolution. For example aggressiveness: run or attack. Nightsight: better navigation in darkness, less tolerance to light. Big hearts: run fast longer or more endurance to loss of limbs. Also, one type of damage and enemy is limiting, you can maybe focus more on that first, or make them fight between them.

[@alejolab]

What a great surprise, a new devlog of "where beasts go to die". I liked the experiments a lot. When I saw the pit setup I expected the experiment was to see which creature was able to get closer to the center, as if they where attacking something being protected in the middle.

[@Germanunkol]

Thanks, and very fitting spin on the name :D That's a very good idea for the next test - as soon as I have some attack moves programmed!

[@MegaDizzle123]

I could see this ending up as a cool rogue like or tower defense where the monsters just keep getting stronger and stronger until you are overcame, but then you can unlock upgrades to be able to fight the monsters for longer.

[@Germanunkol]

That's pretty much the game idea, yes! :)

[@The_Zeevina]

Hope your project still is active! Love this and I would love to see this develop into a fully playable game some day. Looks very interesting and I love playing with genetics and stuff like that! This would certainly fulfill that desire without actually harming any animals (sort of, except in a digital world). If I was able to I would support you right away but right now I am currently in a bad position econimically so that is not possible. I can at least try to share and hopefully this will help you

[@honzo1078]

Great project! I don't know how you envision the game play aspect, but in terms of creature evolution, it seems to me that having some kind of food chain would be a very powerful evolutionary tool. For instance, if the barrels were a food source, the creatures would have competing drives- get into the center and eat- get away (I know, can't be done currently) and breed. This would introduce contingency: For two individuals to breed, they not only need to feed, but they also need to escape to the same hiding spot. Terrain modifications could then influence where creatures with certain traits are most likely to go. Let the key to reproduction be reproducing, not longevity.

[@harrasika]

You should definitely add more weapons and combat styles. That way the creatures have to evolve differently for each weapon.

[@av3stube480]

The reason why the covolution wasn't very prominent was most likely because the only way the species can interact was competing in how long they would survive in an enclosed space against automatic, homing turrets. Still, this is really interesting! I'd love to see more content. Also, just an idea - I assume the turret projectiles are homing because the fast creatures are still hit quite often, but I'd imagine that if the projectiles were slowed and maintained their trajectory, the creatures would evolve to be speedy and avoid the bullets instead of tanking them. Also, to add some complexity to the entire model, maybe have sufficiently high defence outright negate a portion of the damage? So the final damage would be (incoming damage) * (1 - reduction percent) - (flat damage reduction). This way, there would be more than one way to survive potentially infinitely - either get so fast the bullets miss, or get so tank they don't even scratch you.

[@foxredjb781]

I want to go about 2 years in the future to see more videos, this is so good

[@unusualfabrication9937]

this is such an incredible concept! Keep going as I love where this is going

[@JwalinBhatt]

The cave, the creatures and the lighting look really awesome. Reminds me of the cave from the move "Tumbadd" :) Also, really create work on evolution. How about also having creature brains evolve?

[@an9l1c1sm6]

I always watch dev log stuff - But you are the first one i actually subbed to, cause I don't want to miss any updates in the future. I guess you are planning on introducing "abilities" at some point?, like leaping and stuff? could even be a benefit of climbing up and leaping down, like a death from above attack - Looking forward to the next update. It's insanely fascinating.

[@ItsKwamzilla]

This is incredible! Love the co-evolution! Preventing interbreeding is really great too - having some sort of maximum genetic variance makes sense. I can't wait to see how it grows. It would be cool to have an "instinct" gene. E.g. controlling aggression/risk taking etc too... Especially if it could some how be influenced by non-genetic factors somehow.

[@BenjaminBlodgettDev]

I would love to see you attempt a basic simulation of the energy cost of locomotion for the different types of creatures. Maybe by developing a model which incorporates the number of legs and size of a creature into an energy model. Maybe climbing should be prohibitively expensive for larger creatures also.

[@Germanunkol]

I do like the concept, and I definitely need some ways of balancing things out. One thing I've already tried was to limit the accumulated volume of all creatures of a certain type, meaning that if the creatures become large then there will simply be less of them. I think that might be a good (and also slightly realistic, due to limited resources) way to limit overly massive creatures from always appearing.

[@bpeachey1475]

These are great! You should make some more! Maybe cover some specifics in the areas like the selection mechanisms, crossover process and mutation functions you looked at or are using

[@Amaterasu-wh6xj]

will the behaviors change as well, or just the body? will the the creatures be able to compete for resources or prey on each other? will they still reproduce after death in the final game or will they do it while they're alive? regardless, this looks really cool and I can't wait to see where it goes

[@Germanunkol]

Thank you! - Yes, wiring up their brains is the next big step! I want to give each creature small neural network brains that evolve alongside their bodies. To keep the game fun, these networks will likely make the "high-level" decisions ("go hide in the nearest concavity" or "attack the player playing the support class") while the low-level execution of those decisions (pathfinding, walking, attacking) will be coded. - Creatures fighting creatures will definitely not be my main focus. That might quickly go down the "evolution simulation" track (which there are many great examples of) and no longer focus on the interaction between players and creatures. However, I do believe at some point I'll try it out - once the brains work - just for fun. :D - As for the reproduction, I haven't really decided yet. I think I'll have to play around a lot with the fitness scores. I think I may end up with a list of criteria (survival time, size of the legs, damage dealt, ...) that I'll be able to freely combine - and then it's mainly a question of playtesting and seeing what's fun.

[@revimfadli4666]

​@@Germanunkolcreatures fighting each other like in an evolution simulation reminds me of Rain World, would you enable the systemic/emergent creature interactions like found in that game? Or maybe the ability to tame monsters?

[@Germanunkol]

@@revimfadli4666 Taming monsters would be cool, but it's not a priority. I would love to have real emergent creature interactions, that's one of my main goals. However, as they don't fight each other (at least for now) I hope they'll learn to cooperate against the player... like larger tanks protecting smaller, faster attackers...

[@greenin5537]

Maybe you can make it so the creatures only get certain functionality depending on their species. For example, only creatures with clawed feet or sticky fingers can climb, or those with large hind legs can jump (depending on the force of their legs). And when you introduce the witches you can also use this system to add certain offensive functionalities, like creatures with big heads can do charge attacks like a ram, that creature that had long arms in 5:30 could throw them around, creatures with long torsos could constrict them like snakes, creatures with a round shape can roll and if they have spikes they do more damage, or they could even throw spikes. Also, maybe you can save the seeds of interesting creatures like the ones you show at 5:30 to have them for future tests to see how they do with the new changes you introduce in the future. Idk if the projectiles of the turrets are like homing missiles that you can not avoid, or they just have a fixed direction once the turret shoots, if that is the case then maybe if you add functionalities like the ones I mentioned, some creatures will be influenced to evolve thinner bodies or even learn to do small leaps/jumps to avoid projectiles, but like you said, the creatures don't have brains yet so that would be for the future. I'm guessing when you add a basic pain response to them they will immediately enter a fleeing mode. Also, would you make it so their behavior will also be transferred to their offspring?

[@Germanunkol]

Hey, you're spot on with many of these ideas! Yes, the creatures' bodies will definitely influence not just their statistics but also their abilities. I'm not sure yet how far I want to take this, but I definitely want some physological changes "unlock" new abilities. Limiting climbing to come creatures is definitely planned, for example, and I hope to also implement something like a charge/ram ability for the creature types you've mentioned. The turrets are homing missiles at the moment, but that will likely change. I really do want to make creatures with thinner bodies able to avoid missiles more than those with larger bodies, that would be another way to prevent everyone from just evolving huge bodies. And yes, behavior and brains will be inherited and mutated along with the body! I don't know if I'll let the creatures themselves "learn", i.e. modify their brains, but I definitely want them to pass their brains' genes on to their children.

[@lukeschmelzer8146]

Super cool concept! I'd love to see where this goes. Keep updating when you can!

[@overrideFunction]

Good idea and fun Devlog. Please keep making this game and continue to bring us along

[@thecharredmage]

Awesome work keep it up!! cant wait to see how you handle the offensive capabilities of the beast

[@vnxmpr]

Might donate soon, would be cool if u added different type of beasts that have different ways to be killed. Like a species that has a huge shells and clings to the wall but jumps at u to attack (meaning you’ll have to adept to different species and attacks) very exited for these little improvements that will hopefully grow into my favorite game. ❤

[@oberonpanopticon]

Ngl I love the rough, unpolished aesthetic you’ve got going so far. I really hope the final version keeps this look!

[@revimfadli4666]

For something "drastically simplified" it does include offspring quantity, which I rarely see in evolution edutainment content

[@tobyraub3243]

This is super exciting! The game looks like so much fun :)

[@marilunaadams]

you should try adding like an aggression gene. On one end it could go straight for an attack to the play and the other end maybe run away or remain passive. It would be cool if players could eventually tame creatures

[@kiyasuihito]

What would be cool for this concept is an open world survival game with tons of caverns and caves and varied terrains where generations of creatures keep dying off and reproducing just like this simulation, all while the player is exploring and trying to survive. So there ends up being a large variety of creatures the player encounters, and the longer the game progresses, the more optimized the creatures are to survive in their surroundings, which also makes it harder for the player to survive and fight against the creature. This concept is awesome. Just take my money already lol

[@Germanunkol]

Yeah, that's sort of what I would like to create, but I need to keep a few practical issues in mind. Breeding takes a lot of computational power, so I don't want to breed many creatures that the player might never encounter. Same goes for simulating a creature's life/movement etc - that can't be calculated on the user's PC for hundreds of creatures. I have a few solutions in mind, might make another video about those ideas... Thanks! :)

[@Human-tn5qq]

damn dude this is liyerally so cool, i cant believe ive just found you out. keep up the amazing work

[@faizanqaiser4027]

really happy to see this devlog. Do have a selfish wish of seeing a tutorial on how the procedural animation system works in detail but would rather have you work on important stuff.

[@Germanunkol]

Thanks! I'll actually have to re-touch the animation system to add more abilities soon (biting, hitting, maybe jumping). In that process, I might be able to capture more footage and would then definitely have enough for a full DevLog without too much additional work. So no promises, but I am considering it! :)

[@neuro_4385]

This project is so cool! Im excited to see whwere it goes :))

[@codeplayer8575]

I LOVE the concept of this game, can't wait to play it!

[@AzazelHash281]

I will watch your career with great interest

[@badmonkey2468]

this is AWESOME!!!! this is a game I've dreamt for ever since Spore came out

[@sirjamesfancy]

I want to see camouflage and different hunting strategies. And creatures fighting one another.

[@colorado841]

Maybe make a simpler 2d model of these species, with more creatures per simulation. Have them do complex tasks such as hunt eachother or collect food.

[@ayylmao.mp3]

Really cool! Hope to see some creatures fighting soon. Also creatures evolving different communication strategies and sounds would be very interesting, like they could warn other creatures around or coordinate to attack players.

[@BuddhasRandomTravels]

Really Great stuff. love the speciation aspect, it would be great to add resource competition for food and water, combat between animals , ability to wok in groups ie flocking or an ai paramater than can evolve more intelligence at a high energy cost

[@Germanunkol]

The last thing you mention (flocking/working in groups/more "intelligence") is my absolute dream for this game! I certainly hope I get there some day! As for resources - the creatures will probably be competing for resources primarily against the players - the players are here to steal the creatures' food.

[@Jayloran]

As a biology student i love your project !

[@striyoc9568]

Its super inspirational content. The potential in your game is awesome and i hope te get my mind blown again by your next devlogs.

[@pog1791]

I love this series!!! me too worked on some dna based creature generation but yours are soooo good! The pit was really good, i can imagine a game mod where you need to build a defensive outpost in a cave and these creatures keep crawlin on you end evolving aginst you. Keep up the good work and these professional devlogs!!!

[@ChaoticGecko]

Incredible work, very excited to see this project progress!!!

[@joshuaedley5191]

looks really interesting good luck on your game project!

[@duanelortie9423]

What about different types of locomotion? The walker/runner group you already have composed of quadropeds,pentapeds(?) sextapeds etc.. lacking bi-peds, which technically is a new group, walker/jumper and/or hopper/flyer-glider .. Since your goal is to climb a wall to the top of the cave some locomotive types have no hope of ever reaching it. Curl-up & roll for getting away from danger would be terrible for climbing walls. These same experiments would also be interesting, possibly even more enlightening on aquatic "life forms" or in a near zero-G environment to make jumping a viable method of locomotion. Either way AWESOME work. Interesting, educational & occasionally pretty damn funny.

[@Germanunkol]

So... I like the idea of having different types of locomotion. It's not quite as easy, though. At the moment, all creatures can use very similar code for movement (albeit with different parameters), which simplifies things a lot. Different locomotion types would likely require to use very different code. And, what I find worse, I'd like the change between types of locomotion to be as gradual as possible (before creatures make large leaps, they first need to learn how to make smaller leaps, for example) and that means if I have N types of locomotion I'd likely need to code not only N types of movement scripts but (almost) N*N types of transitions between them. With that said, I do want to have charging, jumping/leaping and maybe even swimming in the game, but they're not priorities at the moment.

[@treeeza7601]

this is amazing, please dont give up on it

[@saladcollective3380]

Very excited to see where this leads! Please keep up the great work!

[@CardboardBones]

Super super cool concept and execution so far. I look forward to seeing more in the future!

[@ForsmanTomas]

One of the more interesting projects of this sort. When you add brains and goals other than surviving a turret it will become really interesting. The goals of saving and gaining energy is where a lot of magic happens when it comes to evolving different strategies and co-evolution. Like if they have low energy they need to go down to the circle and nab a snack and then get out of range from the turrets to heal up. The possible energy to be nabbed would be limited, how much they need is depending on their DNA make up, how fast they heal as well. Size might change how often they are hit, color might mean they stay hidden longer, scales make them hungrier. Will small and fast creatures that don't eat much survive along side the large ones that can survive going in for a bigger snack even though they are slow? Looking forward to next update.

[@yiannchrst]

This was very cool! Can't wait to see what's next!

[@solsystem1342]

Precious babies❤ Also blood for the blood god!🔥

[@reznorrokicki3407]

Literally making my dream fame bro, please keep it up

[@Germanunkol]

No pressure :D

[@brendanchamberlain9388]

So damn cool man. Really glad to see you sticking with this game idea, I think its super interesting and has a ton of potential

[@d1g1beastpr1me7]

I was literally ravenously crawling through my search history a week ago trying to refind this. You should have seen my face when I found out you hadn't uploaded another video on the game yet Perfect timing, keep up the good work

[@Germanunkol]

Sorry for the long wait! I had to re-write a lot of stuff for this all to work, because previously it was mostly a collection of loose "test-scripts" to try out core functions - now it's actually a game project folder. I hope to be faster next time, but no promises, as mentioned, I do this in my free time.

[@SoupeurCrouteux]

Really cool stuff, can't wait to see more and I would definitely play the final game !! Keep up the good work

[@ayoubMazouz]

This is inspiring, thank you!

[@lidoooooooo]

This is too good! Please make more videos, your channel is extremely underrated

[@davisxboys934]

Looks like an absolutely astounding process man keep up the beautiful work! I’ll be ready to buy this game soon as it’s out

[@pulsarhappy7514]

I loe where this is headed, I'm so hyped to see what's coming in the future

[@aristob642]

You should change the turret bullets so they don’t lock on so creatures can dodge. Also ai learning could be amazing for your game so not just jenes but the minds evolved

[@Germanunkol]

Yes, I'll need to make the turrets less powerful! I'm still trying to figure out what kind of weapons/abilities/magical elements will be in the final game, when I finally find a concept that I like the turrets will probably change a lot (or be removed altogether). For now, they're a nice placeholder to let me test stuff! As for learning - yes, the next big step will be adding brains! :)

[@Volcano22207]

Btw in nature a surprising amount of animals simply rely on making A LOT of offspring at the expense of life span (rabbits all the way to the male angler fish which have no defense mechanisms and simply bank on finding a female and breeding quickly) which may be useful for makeing fodder monsters

[@Germanunkol]

I was thinking of letting the amount of offspring either be influenced by a gene, or the amount of body-mass in each generation could be normalized, i.e. either a few large creatures are produced or a lot of small ones. But I feel like the latter might be too controlling - I'd rather have the system "figure that out" on its own. The main issue remains that breeding is still somewhat slow. It might help, though, if I can let siblings share the same texture, as texture baking is currently the bottleneck.

[@newtforgegames]

This is really cool and cannot wait to see more, I would say maybe adding an evasion chance based on some gene like maybe speed? Or create a new one as that could also influence the creatures in an interesting way and allow for more strategies

[@aarontriplett5852]

A brilliant game concept, but may I make just a couple of suggestions for you to consider... Firstly, the trapped environment and lack of a creature goal inadvertently force creatures to move away from the centre of the pit leading to generation being chosen on how best to escape. This could be altered by giving some food or other sought after need inside the turret area. Secondly they only have one route to manoeuvre, consider some winding caves that they could escape to. Finally, and this envelops my other points, consider having a spawn area away from the turrets, something akin to a hatching area, creatures would need to take the food from the pit back to the hatching area and find a mate, then their genes can replicate for the next generation, this may also need some reduction in damage from the turrets to work properly but would create a closed loop environment that should help your natural creature progression. Just ideas, take it or leave it, the game is looking good.

[@yaaannn8126]

holy shit, these barrels are very serious

[@perniciousthought9173]

I really like this game idea. It would be so cool exploring a cave and for example seeing some biiiiiiig tanky bugs that are hard to kill. Then later coming back and seeing that smaller bugs evolve into being more passive/faser to avoid the big ones. It would be very cool being a part of a ecosystem that evolves on it's own and you can clearly see it happen while also being a big influence on what evolves yourself. I imagine you could use different kinds of attacks/strategies too. Both for the player and the wildlife, like venom, big spikes, electricity, just being tanky and seeing monsters adapt to it. There is so much potential. Like monsters having spikes that are very good at skewing flesh but break easily on bones/scales with good animations that would look insane. I am a Game Dev (C++) student right now myself and it makes me so hyped seeing all this stuff. Wishlisted the game and can't wait for more updates :D!

[@TheSpectralForce]

This looks amazing

[@arbaman4676]

Good stuff You’re inspiring me to work on my own projects 😊

[@Germanunkol]

Thanks! Very cool - if you ever make something related, please do show!

[@iphoeniximarco5488]

where next devlog? :D i need more, love the project!

[@Germanunkol]

Soon, hopefully! I have lots of new stuff to show already, just didn't have the time to make a video yet.

[@parmesanzero7678]

There should be a trade off for HP/size. In the old Maxis SimLife game, creature size increased caloric intake. You could make a huge creature with a short gestation time, high speed and huge teeth and claws, but they’d ever get enough calories.

[@xaviermagnus8310]

Damn been working towards something similar myself. Gotta watch this for sure. Though I go a different direction but evolution is still a center.

[@Germanunkol]

Nice! Do you already have anything to show? Always interested in evolution-based games!

[@kross_apollo1833]

Maybe a feature where their skin can also harden or soften, causing a change and speed and damage taken. Maybe large soft-skin creatures would form to have high health and move fast, or it might evolve small and thick, large thick, small thin, you get the idea Also, can they evolve more legs?

[@bo2_435]

This is awesome! However, I think for future showcases it would be wise to make the testing environment a bit lighter and more sterile in order to be able to track the creatures better and see them more clearly. You could still do this while keeping the dark fantasy underground style though, I think it sets quite a mood. It's just a shame that you can barely make out the creatures' tiny silhouettes when such amazing work has been done on their appearance. Anyhow, you have got my attention!

[@Germanunkol]

Yes, I hear you! It's quite challenging to set the right lighting that works in-game, on phones as well as on longer KZbin videos, but it's definitely something I want to (and have to) work on. Thanks for the nice feedback!

[@oo1o11o]

Amazing, epic, and very cool Would definitely buy

[@ewokrothaar8434]

Impressive. Very nice.

[@mendenhall0239]

right proper barrels. 10/10

[@dfghj241]

well you said that you would pre evolve all the enemies on blender before transporting them to a game engine, so this pleasent video was a bit of a surprise to me.

[@Germanunkol]

Sorry, I probably didn't explain that well the first time around, because I didn't have any video material backing it up yet. What I explain here in the second DevLog was always the plan - creatures will evolve primarily as a response to the players' actions (so no pre-computing). Maybe what I meant before is that the creatures will not evolve in real-time in-game, since I do need some time to compute the next evolution step (the creature generator takes a few seconds to generate a new creature mesh and then a few seconds more to bake out the textures). I don't show this part in the video here, but between every generation there is a few minutes of downtime where the creature generator sets up the next generation. I will probably outsource this to a server, but more on that in the next videos!

[@JonathanUsmar]

These are lovely

[@Ritrixone]

Keep it up man!

[@teawrecks1243]

I'd love to see a predator-prey coevolution, with the Predator Species being selected for how well it can catch the Prey Species which in turn is selected on how well it can escape.

[@InGameScientist]

As we've already spoken, I LOVE this concept and makes the geneticist in me, very happy :) I don't know how complex you want to make your fitness model, but there is an argument to be made about shorter lifespans being "better" for evolution. Essentially, getting a few good offspring from parents and then killing them off so they aren't taking up resources for the next generation may be a viable strategy over keeping the parents alive for as long as possible. The co-evolution stuff is cool! I don't know what kind of interaction you placed between the species, but it would be cool to see what happens to species if you antagonize them (allow the species to "throw" the other under the bus/into harms way) or if you make them cooperate (allow one to "hop on" for protection sort of thing).

[@Germanunkol]

Very good point about the lifespans! I won't be entirely biologically accurate in this game, for example because I will need creatures that die to still produce offspring for the next generation (if they performed well otherwise). With that said, I definitely don't want to use just the lifespan as a fitness model, I'll probably start with something simple like a "damage dealt vs damage taken" ratio and then add more complex criteria later on. In fact, I'd probably like to add some way for players to configure their own fitness model and play around with that! As for the co-evolution: Yes, I would very much like things like that to happen! I'll start implementing creature abilities and brains next and I really hope they'll learn to use both to their own advantage, even if it means to harm (or help) the other species!

[@slBrelaz]

Nice. I feel like fast and/or tiny creatures should be able to evade the turrets a bit. Also I know this isn't the plan but it feels like a great setup for a td/factorio style game.

[@ShadowDrakken]

Propogating damage into the creature's core is going to force the evolution to favor large cores

[@ansgarz5816]

Underrated as heck

[@kingBenTheBadger]

might the criteria select for larger individuals rather than many smaller ones, as the only variable selected for was lifespan, discounting a strategy like mice

[@durpyflabergazm9339]

Ooh. Very interested to see how this progresses. Just found yah.

[@isteyak78]

it will grate if player can control any beast and then beast will fight again other beast

[@osakitsukiko]

good stuff

[@potatomrpotato]

Keep the good work🔥 Where is devlog 3?

[@butanium_]

Awesome!

[@LeoFazio]

This is amazing! I'd like to ask, are you looking for people to help you? I'd love to build models, levels, textures, etc... for this project!

[@Germanunkol]

Hey, I saw you reached out on twitter as well? Let's talk there!

[@rahuljha8596]

Considering the complex system you are building is I guess you have already considered this but I will mention it anyway. I hope you are considering the tail to be an important part for character movement. Basically larger species (or species with long legs) will need a tail to balance off the weight. Losing the tails should make walking difficult for the creature. This will ensure that tails are considered vital for weight balancing (allowing species to take tight turns at high speed/more flexibility) and not just deadweight. BTW awesome concept.

[@miguellilly8859]

I've subscribed I want this game Edit: coevolution would be great!

[@OrcaFlips9842]

This game is awesome, however, the main thing it needs Is the species to compete for food with carnivours and herbivores.

[@tiradeepinthewild]

These things look like they could fit in an alien world wow