Ecosystem News

We hope you've been having a great summer in these strange times. It's time for the July & August newsletter for Ecosystem! Over the past couple of months, lots of attention has been put into solving problems involving creating stable ecosystems with apparent trophic food chains, and there have been some surprising emergent results from testing of these improved systems. Let's start by talking about the relationships between predators and their prey, and how difficult it is to achieve a balanced, sustainable system that can last long term.

[h2]Predators & Prey[/h2]

As things stand in the current demo, it is very difficult to produce a stable system of balanced predators and their prey. In Ecosystem's accelerated evolutionary environment, the best swimmers tend to very quickly outcompete all other similar lifeforms and quickly cause them to go extinct, leading to a lack of diversity and just one or two species that are dominant. After that, a predator-prey relationship is difficult to keep stable without one or both going extinct within a small number of generations.

Some predators chasing their prey

Lots of the recent work has concentrated on addressing this. With the improved balance, having a stable relationship between multiple trophic levels of predator and prey is now quite possible! Apex predators - dominant predators that themselves have no natural predators - can now very much be a thing. Rather satisfyingly, the population counts now fit an approximation of the Lotka-Volterra equations that are useful for modelling predator-prey relationships in the real world.

[h2]Vision Simulation[/h2]

A large recent change to the game is that creatures must now explore their environment to learn about it, rather than just having all of the information available to them from the get-go. There is now a vision simulation for each creature which only gives it limited information about the ocean world that it lives in. Now, if a creature is to detect another (be that a mate, prey, or a predator) there is a check in place that must first be passed - it takes into account things such as light level, motion and a comparison of the creature's skin to the background behind it. The background could be plants, corals, terrain or open water.

A herd of creatures lurking amongst corals in the deep ocean

The pigment of creature skin is already part of the evolution simulation, but you can see how this major change adds real selection pressure for creatures to be camouflaged. It opens the path for creatures to take advantage of caves, lurk amongst plants, and disguise themselves in any number of other ways to keep them hidden.

[h2]Unforeseen Consequences[/h2]

Creature eggs, up until recent changes have been made to the unreleased build, would instantly spawn new creatures in the player-defined nurseries on the ocean bed. With the addition of ocean currents (see the previous newsletter for details on how this fluid simulation works) eggs are now carried off to distant locations and settle wherever they drift to. Nurseries are now more 'natural' in that they emerge from the other game systems working together. However, this caused an unexpected problem: there were now mass die-offs just a few generations in. This was a mystery indeed - what was the cause?

The flow of the ocean visualised

When a new species is spawned, the first few generations do not need to feed as per the simulation's rules, the idea being that they subsist on microscopic organisms in the water. What this means practically is that there's no selection pressure to reach food, they just have to be able to swim. The older nursery system made sure that creatures spawning in them were near the ground, and so had an advantage if they could navigate the terrain well.

A plankton bloom - food for a foraging filter-feeder!

However, in the newer system, the first few generations were adapting to the wider spaces of the open ocean, and when the time came for later generations to swim towards the ocean bed to forage, they were getting stuck on terrain they were not adapted to traverse. Making fertilised eggs sink slightly faster was the solution to this, so that the early generations had a chance to interact with floor structures. It wasn't a bug, but an unforeseen consequence of the evolution simulation working in unexpected ways. It's a rather mind-blowing example of how a seemingly tiny thing can have such wide-ranging implications in an evolutionary system!

[h2]Creature-Eye View & Seeing the Seeds[/h2]

A fun recent addition has been the inclusion of a 'creature-eye view', whereby you can select a creature and see a camera representing what they're looking at. It's not a headline feature but it is rather mesmerising to be able to see precisely what your creatures are focusing on! Another recent change is that plants and corals spread across the terrain more gradually, and there is now a visualisation of seeds being released to give the player a better idea of what is going on.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

That concludes our round-up of recent work on the project. The game is now starting to feel like a true Ecosystem, with complex relationships between many systems producing emergent qualities that are greater than the sum of their parts - many of which are unpredictable (in a good way) even from a game design point of view. Hopefully you've enjoyed this insight; keep an eye on the Ecosystem social media for weekly screenshots, videos and more regular news on the project!

http://www.twitter.com/EcosystemGame
http://www.facebook.com/EcosystemGame

This time we will concentrate on the dynamic plant and coral systems that will adorn the ocean bed in the finished game. It’s important to note that plants and corals are far more than just decoration – they are the keystones of the entire Ecosystem that evolves around them.

A deep-sea creature swimming near the ocean bed

[h2]Plants & Corals[/h2]

Over the past couple of months Tom has been working mainly on the plant / coral life of the game. Whilst they are not the main focus of the game and do not go through the evolutionary processes that creatures do, they are still the foundation of pretty much all the other life systems that the game simulates – and adding depth to their systems adds so much more to the emergent ways in which creatures behave and interact.

[h2]Adrift on the Ocean[/h2]

As things stand in the demo, creatures tend to learn to travel between food sources, nurseries and mating grounds, which are all fixed positions set by the player. We mentioned in the previous newsletter that a fluid simulation to represent the ocean currents will be a part of the finished game, and this will actively spread plant seeds and coral eggs to more distant locations.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
A visual representation of the ocean currents

This means that plants and corals will, depending on their particular preferences for their immediate environment, die off in certain places and spring up again in distant ones as their seeds settle in suitable spots, carried there by the ocean currents.

https://giphy.com/gifs/kIFdFpCF5ofNNZLCKo
Above link: A diverse coral reef

This means that plant and coral eaters will need to learn to follow the food as it were, leaving behind barren or depleted areas and seeking out fresh growths whilst using nurseries and mating grounds along the way. Predators will then need to follow them in turn, so you can see how these more complex systems will lead to all the evolving life being more migratory and interacting in new and perhaps surprising ways.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Coral eggs drift to a location and begin to grow, just like in nature

[h2]Picky Plants[/h2]

A lot of research has been put into the various plants and corals that will appear in Ecosystem. Tom has scoured academic sources and even guides designed for aquarium owners to be as close to reality as possible! Each species has an accurate representation of its tolerances for nitrogen and phosphorus as well as sunlight and floor substrate. There’s also been work put into how these plants and corals interact with each other – for instance, in nature corals often try to attack their neighbours for space by sending out ‘sweeper’ tentacles! With the more recent changes things like kelp forests are now a possibility (kelp is a much larger plant than can exist in the current demo – in real-world nature kelp can get very long indeed!).

Coral reefs will now build upon the bony foundations left by previous generations, much like they do in real life. This should lead to some spectacular, natural-feeling landscaping happening without needing any additional player input.

[h2]Interface[/h2]

Plenty of work has also gone into the interface – in the below example, the player is placing seagrass on the ocean bed. Game play information is given in the UI whilst this is being done – the nutrients that the plant will provide, as well as its preferred and tolerated substrates. There’s also some information relating to the real-world counterparts of the particular species that is being worked on – Ecosystem strives to be educational as well as everything else!

https://giphy.com/gifs/gJtFycKUwYhOCNxbQr
Above link: Adding seagrass to the map

[h2]Onward!
[/h2]
As we’re sure you can see the game is taking significant strides towards its goals, and it is currently in a state of significant difference to the existing demo. That means that an update to the demo is likely on the cards at some point to more closely represent how the finished product will be – more news on this coming at a later date. For now, thank you so much for reading, and we’ll have more to share soon.

Welcome to the 2nd Ecosystem newsletter! As well as some behind-the scenes bug fixing and plenty of polish, there’s quite a few things to share from recent development this time round – including what Tom’s been working on in terms of a realistic fluid simulation, a more natural system for the plant life, and the finalisation of work on the terrain editor.

Parrotfish-like creatures swimming in a complex reef

[h3]Terrain Editor[/h3]

The full game will have a far more advanced terrain editing system than currently exists in the demo. There will be extensive options for the easy generation of complex terrain, and the results can be very pretty. The short video below shows a glimpse of the potential of some of these new features.

https://twitter.com/EcosystemGame/status/1228834138272256000

The system allows large-scale base parameters for the beginning of your game such as the jaggedness of the terrain, different soil types, if it’s flat or mountainous, and lots more besides. The idea is that you can quickly make an ocean of your choosing, then edit it further manually. It’s easy to create reefs, lakes, beaches, cliffs, or even if you want to go a little further off the deep end (pun absolutely intended) alien-looking environments.

[h3]Fluid Simulation[/h3]

A lot of the most recent work has involved the creation of a fluid simulation. In a real-world ocean environment, the flow of currents is a vital transportation system for everything that breathes life into it.

Tom has recently been been working on a full current system, which will affect many aspects of the game. For those interested in the technical details, the new fluid sim uses a kind of Lattice Boltzmann method that accurately models the way a current flows around terrain. Plankton and eggs that creatures lay can now float in the current and be transported by it. It will also affect the distribution of nutrients, and the direction from which creatures can pick up the scent of them. In the below video the small blue lines (which are an optional visual) indicate the direction of current around a boulder .

https://imgur.com/a/uKBC8iK

The demo has fairly artificial-feeling nursery system, in that the game senses a U-shaped cove in the terrain and creates one, but they’re all as good as each other. However, in the new system, a cove really will catch eggs and plant seeds (more on that in the next section) and they will be affected by the flow of water over and around them, as dictated by the fluid sim.

[h3]Plant Growth and Decay[/h3]

Although plant life is not the focus of the game, the drive to make the whole environment feel like a unified, breathing ecosystem where everything is affected by everything else means that Tom has begun to work on a more involved system for plant growth. In the demo, once plants are placed they are static and do not respond to outside influence.

https://twitter.com/EcosystemGame/status/1236278580755259392

With the currently in-progress system, they will spread out across suitable terrain. They have their own preferences for light, soil, crowding and nutrients. If they’re healthy they will release seeds (which can be swept along in the currents, and deposited far from the parent), or if things are not to their liking they can become ill. It’s worth noting that plants will not evolve (the creatures are the evolutionary aspect of the game) but combined with everything else, they are now connected in a much more fully-featured Ecosystem. It gives more space for creatures to find evolutionary niches, and there’s no doubt some of them will be surprising.

[h3]The Real World Situation[/h3]

It would seem strange to write a newsletter potentially read by lots of people and not mention the current crisis going on in the world. We hope you and your families are staying safe in your homes, and let’s all remember to be considerate to those around us whilst this virus passes. Play some games, stay in touch with your loved ones, and above all be kind to yourself and everyone.

Welcome to the first Ecosystem newsletter! We'll be doing these on a monthly or bi-monthly basis from now on (depending on how much there is to report on), bringing together some of the more important points of the ongoing development of the project into one place. Before I continue, I should introduce myself - I'm Mike, community manager for Slug Disco, the studio publishing Ecosystem. Whilst Tom cracks on with the actual work of designing and creating the game I'll be doing the occasional wordy thing such as this and looking after the social media side of things in general.

A group of foragers

Back in September the demo for Ecosystem was released on Steam. It was wonderful to see the response to even the limited demo - it's clear that there's quite a yearning for a game such as this that handles evolution and learning in a natural, iterative way that hasn't quite been done before. It's great to see that it's captured the imaginations of quite a few people already and that is really encouraging! Many weird and wonderful creatures have evolved in your Ecosystems and we've thoroughly enjoying what your simulated worlds are generating.

This first newsletter will focus on three new features that have been added to the internal build that aren't in the demo, but will appear in the finished project. Obviously, the demo is meant to give a taste of the core concept of the game but there's a whole world of features and additions that go far beyond what the demo teases.

Predators in a busy reef

[h2]Path finding[/h2]

As it currently stands, creatures will adapt to swim through the viscous liquid of their environment, and learn to use the appendages they evolve to propel themselves in a direction with all the appropriate analogues of real-world swimming intact (drag and suchlike). However, in the demo the creatures cannot find their way around a cave system that the player has designed, or work out how to reach a resource in much other than a straight line. That will change.

See the Twitter post below for an early example:

https://twitter.com/EcosystemGame/status/1178007125840273408

True path finding is on the way - it will certainly increase the natural feel of the simulation, with creatures actively swimming through nooks and crannies the player has positioned to reach their intended nutrient sources.

[h2]Creature Editor[/h2]

A much-requested feature, and one that was always intended, is the creature editor! Using this feature you'll be able to design the physical form of your marine species the way you want them to be, rather than simply let nature take its course. You'll be able to adjust the creature's size, add limbs and suchlike, then set them loose in your ecosystem.

https://twitter.com/EcosystemGame/status/1200950547777490944

Creatures added in this way will not evolve their bodies any further, but their brains will adapt so that over the generations you will see them become better accustomed to using the form you have designed for them.

[h2]Symmetry[/h2]

Quite a lot of work recently has gone into increasing the likelihood that creatures with bilateral symmetry occur. In real-world nature, you see this symmetry everywhere – even down to a very small scale. It’s a very effective body morphology and has numerous benefits, such as balance in a fluid environment. Tom was having some difficulty encouraging evolution to take this direction, but use of the creature editor gave big clues on how to seed the natural creatures in such a way as to make it likely. In the current internal build of the game, symmetrical creatures have much better odds of evolving than in the demo.

https://twitter.com/EcosystemGame/status/1200950547777490944

[h2]Further into 2020[/h2]

Just as a parting note for this first newsletter – thank you from the bottom of the ocean for taking an interest in the game up to its current point, and it’s been really heartwarming seeing you all experiment with the current demo. The current plan is to release Ecosystem during 2020 (I can’t be any more specific than that for now), and things seem to be on track for that. So here’s to this year, may we all evolve to be our best selves during it!

https://twitter.com/EcosystemGame/status/1213447698755575809