Sadly, this project died back in the late 90s.
But in 2003 we started another project with similar aims.
Please check it out.
Living@Home
Index
The Project
The project began with a simple idea... a computer game with evolving enemies.
The idea was posted on rec.games.programmer by Christian Darkin and soon
people flocked to it. We have formed the nebulous game idea into a full
scale international venture. This simple idea has expanded to include
Genetic Algorithm and a multitude of other Artificial Life
techniques to create and evolve the enemies in the game. The
game itself can be described as a space-style game not too dissimilar from
the Star Control series. It involves AL, graphics, and sound techniques
which are on the cutting edge of computing theory... a truly ambitious
project.
Freeware
The project is a freeware game in progress. Our goal, however, is to
produce professional grade software comparible with many
commercial and shareware games of the day. But our game will have a few
distinguishing features. Since it's freeware and freely distributable,
it will be available to anyone who has access to get a copy of it. Then
as people play, they will be given the option to load and save the
evolved enemies and music to disk. With this option, we can set up an
FTP site where people can share their evolved creations with others,
performing their own miniature genetic experimentation ("What if I stuck
Johnathan's Fargle-Beast in with Sarah Tramson's Piranna?").
Portability
The code is being written in standard ANSI C, with machine specific
code sectioned off and kept to a bare minimum. With the standardized
graphics and sound, developed by the Art/Sound group, the game can be
easily ported to almost any platform. With this level of portability
being enforced, it will stand as a 'standard' game, being able to be
played anywhere, on any system, and trading data with computers on
completely different systems. The project is also designed to be ready
for a possible multi-player option, which could eventually lead to an
exciting, networked game as well.
Since each section of the project is a seperate chunk of
code, improvements and modifications can be easily made on certain code,
without the need for revision in any of the other pieces. Once the game
has a front end for a particular platform, all successive versions of the
game will make use of that same front-end interface. Likewise the
Articifial Life code can be modified completely without affecting
the rest of the code. The game code itself may even become a testing
ground for AL code of this type, simply by recompiling with a seperate AL
'brain'.
The Sub-Group Structure
To facilitate a more efficient completion of the project, it has been broken
down into sub-groups to work specifically on finite sections of the game
code. Each of these is lead by a coordinator, who is a part of the directors
group. The coordinators keep close contact with the other coordinators of
each section in order to keep each part of the project in line with the rest
of it.
Future Evolutions
It is doubtful that the project will ever officially 'end'. Once the
first version is out for a few platforms, new platforms will be added as
coders for those platforms join the project team, and work out the
front-end code for that platform. Also it is highly likely that there
will be constant revision on the artificial intellegence code and game
mechanics, and the game is likely to be an evolving game in itself -
never actually being 'complete' and always improving.
How To Join the Project
The possibilities are endless and constantly evolving. But we do need
more coders, artists, musicians and others to assist us in working on the
game. Those who are interested in finding out more about a particular
sub-group, there are descriptions of each in this web page and there are
files available at our Information FTP Site which describe each group in
detail. Also on the Information FTP Site, there are archives of the
various sub-group discussions available, starting with January 1995 thru
the present.
For anyone interested in getting the latest press information (beyond
what these pages contain) please contact Christian Darkan at:
christian@darkin.demon.co.uk
To continue on to read the introduction, click
here.
Page maintained by Charles Ofria
Send all comments to
charles@krl.caltech.edu