Aid
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What is? Auto-evo is a mechanic of Thrive which controls the natural selection and evolution of the game's species. The automatic evolution is part of the CPA System [Wanted article] (Compounds, Populations and Auto-evo)[1].
Where? The mechanic can be found in the first half of the game, that are part of the Organism Mode.
Why? Thrive is a game about the player fighting the natural selection (at least in the Org. Mode) and the simulation of the evolution is one of the most important mechanic
How? Steps:
- The auto-evo starts in the background while the player swims around
- For each species, generate 5 random mutations
- Simulate the resulting populations for each of those mutations, and for each species select the best one (or no mutation)
- Simulate a couple random patch migrations for each species, and pick the best one (if it is better than no migration)
- Override the results for the player species so that auto-evo doesn’t affect it. This is done because the player currently has no way to know what their editor changes would do. And also the basic algorithm currently in the game doesn’t match well enough what the player needs to survive swimming around. So those two things need to be resolved before the player species can have auto-evo affect it.
- After the player enters the editor, apply the external effects (for example if a cell dies on screen it gets a population decrease), migrations, and random mutations
- Remove extinct species (if population ends up less than 25 it is rounded down to 0)
- Add a copy of the player species to the world. This step is temporary until we nail down the species split logic, but I’d prefer a logic where if a species has enough population and there are multiple best mutations (for example due to the species being in many different patches), the species splits into two so that both halves have a different mutation.[2]
—DeepSix✉ 13:01, November 28, 2020 (UTC)