Posted December 17, 2022 by The Bibites
#Release #The Bibites #TheBibites #evolution #simulation
Hey everyone! I'm so glad to be able to present you all the 0.5.0 update of The Bibites!
We have a lot to cover today, so let's not lose too much time and get right into it!
But let's go with the boring stuff first:
I mean... look at that... Night and day. I had forgotten how bad and lame the 0.4.2 menu was...
It feels weird to boast about doing what's nowadays standard, but I'm proud nonetheless. I'm getting better and so is the sim.
No more will you ever wonder what a button or a setting does 😎
In 0.4.2, in order to load or save a simulation, you had to first start a simulation, and then had to physically go through a file explorer to locate the save file you wanted to load. Unacceptable!
We now have dedicated panels that allow you to go through your saves, see the important related information to each, as well as see a nice preview of the map of this simulation, accessible from both the menu and in-game. And if you don't want to bother with that, you have a nice "Continue" button in the menu to load the most recent save.
Same as Saving/Loading, you could only change the App's Settings while running a simulation, and it was ugly. We now have a dedicated panel accessible.
The next thing I should probably make sure to add would be a key bindings section 🤔
A far better-looking information panel is here for you! With a few new functionalities as well 😏
But enough with the boring stuff! Onto the main new features!
One of the main comments I kept getting, was that it was really hard to create interesting experiments due to the amount and complexity of simulation parameters. So I decided to add Scenarios, a way of adding a simpler interface on top of the countless parameters, offering you a few curated interesting simulations right out of the box while still giving you a little bit of control. Of course, you can still then go into the nitty-gritty and create the exact environment you had in mind, and then save it as a scenario to share with others!
You can now also easily create your own zones, and place them precisely over the map to materialize the exact environment you want to create. Especially since you can now change a few settings on a per-zone basis, like the pellet material to spawn (only plants and meat for now), pellet size, relative fertility, and zone movement, allowing you to create different environments in the same simulation and see how bibites adapt differently to each region! You'll also get a nice estimation of the biomass and pellet count, allowing you to finely tune your scenario.
It's pretty basic for now, but the idea is that this is the first step toward making complex biomes possible as development continues.
Another comment that I kept getting, was that it took too long for the first bibites to establish themselves and reproduce. The default "virgin" bibite that spawned at the start of every simulation was pretty bad, and even slight modifications to the simulation's parameters could potentially make it unlivable for them.
So, I decided to add a selection of Bibite templates that comes with the simulation. These bibites are used as the "virgin" bibites across the different scenarios, as some environments require specific adaptations, like the Whale, specialized in filter-feeding in dense environments with a lot of small pellets, or the Camel, specialized in efficiency and that can go on for a while between each meal.
Of course, you'll also be able to save your own bibites and use them as the starting bibites in your own scenarios!
That's self-described. I added the possibility of changing some parameters during the simulation! Not all of them are there, as there is still a lot of "baking" behind the scene that prevents being able to just change the values and all the simulation's system adjusting reliably, but I'm slowly working my way up the list and adding more. This also allows you to save the current settings as a scenario, for future use.
In the future, this panel could allow the addition of "seasons", where some parameters could vary cyclically over time, but we're not there yet.
That's it. I added a tool that allows you to pen-in pellets. Give a pile of plants to your favorite bibite as a reward for being who they are, or just use it to paint ugly drawings as I did there, I don't care, and I'm not your mother, you're allowed to have fun.
Better understand at a glance the brain of your bibite. At least, once you learn the different icons and what node they represent.
I mean... it's still very confusing and complex, it's Artificial Life, after all, simple would mean boring. But it's a lot better than it used to be
I look forward to your feedback! The last changes were done pretty much last minute and weren't thoroughly tested through and through, so it's possible that there are going to be a few problems or bugs that were missed. If there are a lot of them or just a big one, I'll release a patch as fast as possible!