Leparlon’s time wasters blog

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Gotta love them cockroaches!

Who’s the one that said that the Education on an educational game can only go one way? Why should we be the only ones who learn something? To show them we are bigger than this, here comes:

Cockroaches Evolution Party!

Videos:

How they Start
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01W8Spq8NPM

Damm Sppiners
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wdeF_H4a8A

Energy Savers (With the moonwalkers bug, now fixed)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMMGGxj4Ld0

Takes no Shit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kQNivJDVs

Small sense of smell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4qDGg0zn8Y

Status and Fitness configuration windows made
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSbefr0beCg

(name subject to change..sugestions?)

Screenshot of the day:

You can configure what is important for the roaches now.

Game Concept

The game is about learning and teaching. You learn by uncovering information about these marvelous and beaultiful beings that are those cockroaches,  and you teach, well, kinda hard thing to do, since them can’t learn anything in life, all they have is instincts and almost direct conections between their antenas and legs, no brains interpreting, deciding or even a heart to love. So, how can this game be Two-Way Educational one?

In one word : Evolution.

Cockroaches don’t learn in life, so, they will learn by dieing.

Older screenshots:

You can now interfere with roaches in real time, by creating theyr world.

Nothing special, second generation roaches

This game is based on evolution (genetic algorithm), roaches begin knowing nothing, just a bunch of random simple actions, activated by 2 antenas and a mouth, and, as they die (out of starvation, poison, crushed, trapped, etc) the ones that are dead, wont be able to reproduce (in this design, ONLY one will be able to reproduce with all the others, always the most suited one).

You learn, they learn.

The game will consist on cicles, each cycle will be a different generation of roaches. Between each cycle a given number of generations will be simulated, this number will be defined by the level of difficulty (The simulations should be very fast). The cycles in wich the player can interfere will be timed, this time has yet to be defined (maybe 2 minutes, I don’t know yet).

The player interferes with the roaches mostly indirectly by laying obstacles, poison, food, traps (roaches sees them as food)  and, by weaving the mouse cursor, after all, roaches sense the air movement most than anything.

I have some ideas on how this game will progress,  I think the best way is making the player need to uncover all the pieces of information about cockroaches. In the form of achievements, like:

-Trap 30 roaches;

-Poison 100 roaches;

-Get 90% of the roaches to survive one cycle;

-Kill all the roaches in one cycle;

-Kill all the roaches in one cycle without interfering;

-Trap 10 roaches in one cycle;

or some harder ones:

-Create one immobille roach (I could do it twice on todays version)

Etc.

They will evolve after each cycle, so the player will have to correctly “Time” the achievements, or they will be too hard to acomplish (ie: trap to many roaches at first, and they will run from food, since the traps are poisoned food, making it too hard to get the roaches not dieing from starvation); Each achievement complete will reveal one very nice piece of information about roaches, preferably one that has to do with the achievement completed.

All the roaches are able to sense is: Poison, Food, Obstacle and Air Direction. In both antenas, they sense those, and they act according the theyr evolution.

I really think that is my best shot at making this a nice game. New ideas will always be welcome.

(improvement needed)

I am implementing it in C++, using Playfirst’s Playground SDK (very fast-start engine, suitable for this quick compo I guess, its Open for Everyone)

(07-03-09)

I think I have the whole engine implemented, except for the air movement caused by the mouse (Think I found an easy way to do it, but not implemented yet) and the pheromones sensitive (also thougth on a Very easy way to simulate, but yet to implement). The roaches are evolving OK, but there are still some wierd behaviour occuring if there is only food on the field (like spining roaches, or SHAKY-ones… i really hate the latter, makes me sick, really)

Developement history (Will post what I do from now on)

July 08, 2009, 10:03:17 PM

Today I took another step on “gamemaking”, by adding a gameplay. I had no time to work on the game last week, what put me behind on schedulle.
So far now you can edit the level, save it, and watch the roaches evolving on it (and the roaches genes are also saved). The main gameplay will be based on this (now I just need to implement a way to delete the parts you already placed  )

log
-Stoped with all the wierd behavious (very rare now)
-level maker working in game
-save/load, profiles, etc
-sense of smell
-roaches creation order and location
-removed the auto-food creator (was there for testing)
-some code optimizations
-game NEVER pauses

here is another vid with the roaches now bearing a sense of smell (but taking too long to evolve, need to balance, 5000 gens were needed for some effects to appear)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4qDGg0zn8Y

Next step is to make them sense the mouse movements, and I am done with features.
I decided to cap the ability to sense other roaches and all my other “desires”, since it would add nothing to the game.. and this is not supposed to be a simulator..

I..can’t… stop.. adding stuff.. 

July 19, 2009, 1:25:17 AM

One step closer to a DEMO (or beta) I should have one ready this week (hopefully). I could work a LOT on this game this week (meaning 10-15 hours), in a way that I think the Genetic Algorithm, and the evolution now doest need Any Adjustments, its all on the player hands now (and I mean it, see the latest vid for the fitness window)

Video
Status and Fitness configuration windows made
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSbefr0beCg

log
-implemented delete
-implemented statistics manager, not being used yet
-inter turns window (simples stats window)
-faster and better simulation
-Fitness window (you can set what is important for the cockroaches)
-improvements on the level
-game-like progression
-organized tilling for the level editing

Next steps:
-a way for the player to directly interact with the roaches (maybe generating air currents with the mouse movement, I dunno)
-Achievements (or statistics) window
-come up with some dummy achievements
-achievements feedback
-main title screen
-button and dialog art(?)
-let the player choose the champion roach(?)
-alpha release!!
-Choose a final NAME!
-!!!! Sound!!!!!!

July 28, 2009 at 2:12 am

Engine Demo, somewhat playable (called it an alpha, but that is a lie)

DOWNLOAD : cockroachesevo

There are still a Lot of bugs that are being fixed (some levels impossible to complete), most of the gameplay still needs to be implemented. The game has nothing to do with achievements now (for now at least, the feedback from you people who plays it, may change my mind), now its all about making a roach fetch the radioactive Shit.  Everything is unlimited, and there is no education so far.

GET THAT RADIOACTIVE SHIT!

btw, to play custom levels, just place them on the customlevels folder, but it have to be named level0.xml [levelZERO.xml] so far, sorry

Game is not saving anything automatic yet.

(in-game, press esc to open the quit menu, 1 to simulate 10 gens, 2 to 20, etc…)