EvoLife News

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[h3]Dear EvoLife Fans! [/h3]

EvoLife v0.7 is finally here! The most visible feature is the Tree of Life displayed next to the game world, but a lot happened under the hood. See the list below for details. The save files used to record the trailer are available as in-game save files, so you can check out the creatures yourself. With the changes implemented, sadly, I had to break backward compatibility with old savefiles.

If you find any bugs, or have a feature idea I should implement, please feel free to reach out to me in the Steam forums or Reddit. The week after the release is the hypercare period, I freed up my calendar, won't have anything else going on (except my 9-5 job), I will focus 100% of my free time to squash any bugs that may pop up with the new release.

I am just a guy, I could test this release on an RX 6750 XT, a GT 710 and an NVS 4200M. To remedy this issue I want to provide a free demo you can try out, to check if the game works on your machine. Please make sure you have the newest drivers installed for your graphics card.

Demo limitations:

• Only the smallest world size is available
  
• No built-in savefiles from the trailer
  
• No DNA editing
  

[h3]In this release[/h3]

• Tree of Life : Finally the DNA tree is not just calculated in the background, but displayed in all of its glory. Find the most prolific species or niche filling ones at glance. Follow real time as new species are generated with mutations from established species!
  
• Vulkan backend : The graphics API has been abstracted away, so switching between graphics APIs is now possible! Vulkan is now also supported next to OpenGL. Vulkan is a difficult API, hard to get right. Current performance is a little bit worse than OpenGL on my AMD card, but a lot better than OpenGL on my Nvidia card. Check what works for you!
  
• Fluid drag : Has been completely rewritten, now circle particles and joints both can push the fluid and the fluid can push back. I am not 100% satisfied with the result and I feel like it is important to get this right for jellyfishes to work, but it is a great first step in the right direction.
  
• Settable parameters : Got all hardcoded physics, biomineral and cell parameters out as on-the-fly configurable from the GUI. Create worlds with crazy high gravity, weird rules, or change the energy required for life to sustain itself.
  
• Viable default species : Two viable species are default-generated on each world, one gas eating and one dead cell eating. If no proper organelle exists in the world to create these species they do something random and most likely die after spawning, as they wont have any means of getting energy.
  
• Highlight multicellular formations : Clicking the "select species" tool, there is a button to highlight all cells that are currently connected to an other cell.
  
• Cell spawning spawner fields : A long requested feature finally done, you can create spawner fields that spawn living cells.
  
• Runtime optimization : On the performance tab, I put an "optimize" button. Different video cards, different graphics APIs, and different world run best with slightly tweaked parameters. This button will launch a sequence to try and find the parameters that works best for the current scenario. The simulation will be slower while the optimizer runs, but after it is done I got about an extra +5% speed in most use cases.
  
• Reworked population count sync : Nvidia cards had an issue with getting the population count displayed in the GUI in the previous release. I reworked this code to be no longer a problem.
  
• OpenGL discrete video card : Found a solution to request the discrete video card from Windows, while using OpenGL, without fiddling with Windows display settings.
  

[h3]What I want in future releases[/h3]

• CUDA support : CUDA is compute only, I checked OpenGL-CUDA and Vulkan-CUDA inter-op. OpenGL seems easy, Vulkan seems complicated, but sadly the CUDA compatibility promises are broken for graphics inter-op. I have to think about how to best support this.
  
• Sexual reproduction : The meme "sex update" everyone would talk about. Sadly it would break half of the simulation, the whole species system, the DNA tree. Would increase the GPU memory usage by a lot. But would be really nice.
  
• Better GUI : UI/UX is a big part of the feel of the software. I plan to hire a freelancer to help me out design an interface for the 1.0 release.
  
• Steam Workshop : I plan to do it for the 1.0 update, I would hate to break savefiles uploaded with a release.
  

The included species "egg" does not have any organelles to gather energy from its environment. Lets add one to it!

• Click on the DNA tab
  
• Click on edit species (1)
  

• Click on the organelle tab
  
• Set up the filters (2)
  
• Add an organelle DNA piece to the species (3)
  
• Copy the ID of the organelle over to the species (4)
  
• Set the organelle slot to r01 (5)
  

• Set reg0 to valid in the default outputs tab
  

• Add the modified species to the world
  
• Watch it thrive!
  

Dear EvoLife Fans!

EvoLive v0.6 is a big step forward, making my life simulation vision reality! As the cell internals and game logic stabilizes I started to make the game more discoverable! Hover over any GUI element to get a descriptive text of what it does! I recorded EvoLife University videos to explain core concepts and features! The game is far from complete but I feel like future releases do not need to be complete overhauls but additional customization features, visualizations and expanding possibilities on a stable base!

Please feel free to comment, provide feedback here, on Reddit or YouTube comments. I would be happy to hear any feedback you have! Report a bug, suggest a feature, ask a question!

In this release:

• Save files incompatible with past releases
  
• Primitive multicellularity evolves regularly under right circumstances
  
• Mouse hover discoverable GUI
  
• EvoLife University YouTube videos
  

In future releases:

• DNA tree visualization
  
• More world specific customization of game logic
  
• CUDA/Vulkan releases
  
• Joints interacting with the fluid simulation (I want jellyfishes)
  
• Performance optimizations
  
• Organelle visualizations, better graphics
  
• Steam Workshop integration
  
• TIS-100 type puzzles
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We arrived at a big milestone: the first multicellular lifeform has been evolved out of nothing.
I feel like this is a very important step worth celebrating. If you want to check it out it is in the upper left corner of the built in savefile "first multicellular".

I've completed so far the biggest overhaul in the history of EvoLife.

I added a smell system. I want it to be analogous to how pheromones are in the real world.

I also added a biomineral system. I want it to represent the the bark of trees, the hard shells, the bones, the claws and the nails of the animal world.

Cell internal workings are completely redesigned to allow for more flexibility while adding simplicity.
I removed the v0.4 "sense" ability which worked even trough walls. Now cells can sense touch, damage taken, smells and environmental vectors (fluid speed, cell speed). I plan to add a raycast "seeing" in the future.

The last piece of simulation code running on the CPU was the system responsible for randomly changing the DNAs during mutation. Now this last part also runs on the GPU, so fast forward is possible without CPU-GPU synchronization.

I completely rewrote the way joint constraints are handled, the system is much more stable and robust now.

I also modified how circles interact with the fluid simulation. It is now closer to the F ~ v^2 of the real world. This will need some more tuning, as there is no feedback yet for the sake of numerical stability.

I added a slight wobble to the surface of the cells, I'm not satisfied with it, but it is what it is for the time being.

Sadly for all of this to happen I had to break savefile compatibility. EvoLife v0.5 can not open savefiles created with EvoLife v0.4. So much stuff changed internally that there are no meaningful conversion between the two.

I'm just a guy coding my own dream game/simulation. My beautiful girlfriend helps with testing and branding materials but we can not catch all bugs. If you find one please do not hesitate to reach out and make a post here or on Reddit. Before I add any more features I want to prioritize bugfixes and features requested by the audience. As a sandbox game everyone plays it a little bit differently and I want to accommodate everyone's needs.

List of thing that I wanted to add but had no time to implement, coming up in a future release:

• DNA evolution tree visualization
  
• Better cell internal representation (graphics and GUI)
  
• Graphical overhaul, fancy shaders
  
• Steam workshop integration
  
• Support for smaller screens
  
• Chinese translation