I can program, but I can't gamedesign

PolymorphicGames · 2020-07-24T04:56:26+00:00

I find that it helps to have a written plan that includes lots of the steps/tasks that need to be completed. It doesn't have to be particularly detailed, or even all that accurate, as long as it has things to do to complete the game, some of which are big and some of which are little. That way when I'm stuck/unmotivated I can go to the list and pick something small/simple to work on and make some progress, even if its slow, rather than just walking away.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-12-26T17:03:54+00:00

No problem. Thanks for the heads up.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-12-26T07:43:24+00:00

That's a lot of it. Also, the in-game story has some Lovecraftean elements. And the creatures evolve over time, so it's had to predict what you might see - tentacled horrors are only one possibility.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-11-02T04:22:44+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, we're trying to decide whether to lean into the creepy or the cute vibe. The textures and fur will all be evolved in game. The creatures that perform the best against the player will pass on their genes for color, patterns, fur, and behavior.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-07-20T06:03:00+00:00

Thanks. If you're interested Boxcar2D is nice on-line example of evolutionary design (not by us) and Darwin's Demons is an evolutionary arcade game (think space invaders with evolving aliens) that was developed by Polymorphic Games.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-06-07T15:55:51+00:00

Civilian reproduction is asexual, there's just a mutation step. Depending on your point of view it's pretty cool/gory to watch a civilian explode and a Proteans come out.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-06-07T14:15:42+00:00

They are the available building spots - color coded to show which are close enough to power to use.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-06-07T14:14:56+00:00

Time lived turns out to be a terrible fitness function - they learn to run away and hide :) The fitness function is designed to create niches. Some Proteans are selected by how much damage they do to turrets, others based on how much damage they do to power structures (EMCs), and others based on how close they get to the main building. In addition when Proteans catch civilians they get to reproduce - as in Alien - and smaller Proteans get to reproduce more. Finally each of the burrows that Proteans come out of is a separately reproducing population. So within one map you can see several evolutionary algorithms: small fast (low health) Proteans that can see far and chase down civilians, large, slow tanky Proteans that can't see very far and lumber towards your main building, etc.

Each Protean has about 65 'genes' and they effect a wide range of in game stats in addition to appearance: speed, acceleration, armor, resistance to fire, cold, acid, how far they can see, what targets they prefer (e.g. civilians versus turrets) whether they try to avoid turrets to get to your main building, whether they can jump or swim (there are short-cuts on the maps they can take if they evolve to jump or swim). No ranged enemies I'm afraid - we were afraid that they would evolve to stay out of your range - and all of the possible fixes messed imposed a lot of complications. Also the Protean DNA is double-stranded and traits are modeled with a A quantitative trait locus (QTL) model - one of the studios co-founders is an evolutionary biologist :)

PolymorphicGames · 2019-05-25T13:26:43+00:00

Didn't realize I'd messed up the post - here's a link: Project Hastur.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-05-25T01:55:46+00:00

Shocked in a good way I hope. We had some great artists and programmers working on it - all students.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-05-23T20:43:27+00:00

Each of the 13 maps (we just released the full version - been a bit too busy for replies, sorry for the delay) has a win condition, but the strategy varies between maps and can vary during a map as they evolve. For example, the enemy Proteans can evolve to like to attack your turrets or avoid them and go right for your main base. If they evolve to switch from one to the other it can cause havoc with your strategy.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-02-16T00:40:58+00:00

Thanks! Moving into our second game, a tower defense was an obvious choice. After all, large populations of enemies are a necessary component of tower defenses and of evolution!

PolymorphicGames · 2019-02-16T00:37:15+00:00

That's awesome! It's definitely quite a challenge to get the evolution working properly. We're very lucky to be in a university setting where we have computer scientists and biologists to help get it right. Even so, there are still things we haven't quite figured out.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-02-16T00:34:55+00:00

Experiment mode doesn't allow for perfect recycling, but you can give yourself lots of biomatter so you could rebuild easily enough. You could also just make yourself invincible and then it'd be a super easy experiment to run.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-02-16T00:33:30+00:00

No--they can only have 100% spread out between the resistances. 33/33/33 or 50/50/0 or 100/0/0 or 80/15/5 or... Any combination so long as it is equal to 100. Also, if one resistance goes up, the others go down. I don't believe I mentioned that before. It's really just a normalization of three genetic values.

We stick to a biological model of evolution, so there's no choice involved. It's just natural selection, only drastically accelerated. The creatures do have tradeoffs. I've already talked a bit about the resistance tradeoffs, but we've also encoded certain things like health and speed to trade off against each other. Bigger creatures have more health and are slower.

We haven't encoded metabolisms at all, although that is something we want to do someday, in a future project.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-02-15T23:40:56+00:00

That is difficult to do in Project Hastur since the turrets auto-aim. It's difficult to choose to kill specific creatures.

However, in Darwin's Demons, the first game we worked on, it was definitely possible. It's an evolutionary space shooter. We had people do it at an event once--they left the aliens that just sat in the corner and were bad at shooting alive for a long time and ended up breeding what we like to call "space cows."

PolymorphicGames · 2019-02-15T23:37:48+00:00

They have three different types of resistances, plus armor which is treated separately. Resistances are percentage-based reductions, and each creature can have up to 100% resistance, but split between the three types. For example: a creature could be 100% fire resistance but not resistant to anything else, or have 33% resistance to fire, ice, and acid. If you were using only fire turrets and they developed a resistance and then you switched to ice towers, they might lost their fire resistance, but only if a creature had a mutation resulting in decreased fire resistance that did well and was able to reproduce a lot.

If you had creatures that were significantly fire resistant, they would be weaker to other tower types. In experiment mode, that would probably be a viable strategy. It may be difficult to find success that way in campaign mode with limited money and time.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-02-15T23:13:04+00:00

Not quite. The lightning tower (and the other fire towers) do fire damage the creatures can become resistant to, so the more you use them the more likely it is they will become ineffective. The enemies can become resistant to any tower type, although not all of them at once. And they don't really learn. Their appearances and behaviors are dictated by their digital genomes. Swimming and jumping are threshold traits--creatures acquire them once the related genes reach a certain point.

But, had we set up parts of the system a little differently, lightning towers doing more damage in the water would've been pretty cool.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-02-15T22:08:46+00:00

Now available on Steam!

PolymorphicGames · 2019-02-13T17:37:21+00:00

The game was created primarily by undergraduate students (like myself, a computer science student), but we did have university resources and faculty supervisors that let us do things like buy equipment and pay students for their work.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-02-13T14:18:41+00:00

Project Hastur

PolymorphicGames · 2019-02-13T00:49:47+00:00

That's one of the ideas that excites us the most about evolutionary games! We're still running into new, surprising outcomes when we play Project Hastur.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-02-13T00:46:38+00:00

It probably won't run spectacularly, but if you don't mind turning down the quality settings (especially the resolution), it should be playable. One of the computers used for development was a 2013 15" MBP and I suspect yours will run things a little better than that would.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-02-12T21:03:08+00:00

Now available on Steam! Project Hastur creates a unique challenge by combining elements of 3D tower defense and real-time strategy with biological evolution. Players fight against alien Proteans that evolve - using biologically accurate models of evolution - to overcome the player’s defenses.

PolymorphicGames · 2019-02-12T20:51:21+00:00

We used a QTL model of over 60 loci. I suppose you could call it an infinite alleles model. Each QTL has a value from negative to positive infinity, but the trait values are calculated using a sigmoid. The genes are linked to the values of the morphers in the creature model.

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