Artificial Life
| Category | Price | Seller | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Games | $0.99 | Stormy Productions | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
Over time, the organisms with the most useful behaviors will pass on their genetic code, leading to interesting patterns of behavior unfolding before your eyes - flocking behaviors, solitary predatory tactics, scavenging, and hiding are some examples - and all this behavior is evolving from total randomness.
Two modes of play!
* Sandbox Simulation
* Survival.
In Sandbox Mode, you can adjust environmental factors as well as the chromosomes defining the behavior of individual protozoa. There is no overall goal in Sandbox mode, other than to enjoy watching life evolve over time.
In Survival mode, you get to test your own custom protozoa against a random population. See if you can do better than natural selection. The goal is to have your protozoa survive as long as possible. The simulation ends when your custom protozoa dies.
Controls:
* Double-tap the screen to select an individual protozoa.
* Pan and zoom using using touch and pinch gestures to explore this virtual world.
And, if you don't like how some of the organisms are behaving, you can always resort to the finger of death and destroy that which displeases you.
Queue up some music with your iPod app and then launch this app for some relaxing times in the microscopic world of Artificial Life.
You can read more about the app and view a video demonstration at:
www.stormyprods.com/alife
Thank you all for the feedback! It is appreciated. As time and practicality permits, more suggestions will be incorporated into newer updates. You've all suggested lots of great ideas!
** The Science Behind the Simulation **
This app was inspired by the computer science technique known as Genetic Algorithms. The idea behind genetic algorithms is to apply evolutionary techniques such as inheritance, mutation, and selection to computing problems. I thought, why not go full circle and apply these techniques to a basic biology simulation? This app reflects one such attempt. I hope you enjoy it!
Reviews
Unique
ModernTyche
It’s an interesting game that simulates life but also interestingly simulates or well actually has an interactive and interesting way of showing the basics of programming.
:/
Zi7ar21
Hmm... Where to start? The layout is all messed up and is forced landscape on iPad... It obviously was designed for portrait... good concept, it is semi-playable on iPad, but not very well executed... Maybe in time this app can redeem itself through improvements an compatibility... I would pay and be happy with it, but at it’s current stage it is not really something worth buying...
ARTIFICIAL LIFE RULES!!!
Dragons Rule!
I got Artificial Life a LOOOOOOOONG time ago now (LOL) and I. LOVE. IT!!! It rocks so much that I can't think of much else to say. And I also reccommend this especially to any Spore (the whole game, the one for the computer) fan (like me ) and also to most other people. It is SO worth 99 cents! And Survival Mode is AWESOMEFUL. I LOVE THIS APP! Update: OHMYGOSH MY OLDEST "Oldest" PROTOZOA WAS OVER 7,000!!! But then his "Avoid the Sun" chromosome failed to kick in (he must've been asleep) and he was burned to death... XP Argh! The most recent update said it fixed the incorrect score glitch in Survival mode, but it's still there! I just had a game where my Protozoa was over 1,000 years old when it was killed, but it said my score was 860.... :( Update: O.O LOL! I saw two red, tailless Protozoa circling a tailless yellow one in Survival Mode! It looked like the Sun when you're zoomed way out with 2 equally sized hiding spots! Forget what I said about the camera thing. The only problem is that it gets in the way when I'm moving the camera. HOWEVER, the update fixed the glitch that sometimes scrambled the chromosomes! THANK YOU!!! Now my Protozoa won't keep sleeping so long that they starve themselves to death!!! Once again, thanks! A third update: Thank you! The new updates fixed the glitch where it was saying that the population was at the max, but everyone was dead except the oldest Protozoa and occasionally 1 other Protozoa! Now I'm just gonna say a few random things about cool things I've noticed while using this app. Unfortunately, they don't exist any more because I had to restore my iPhone to factory state due to some glitch that kept crashing it. (It was a glitch in the iPhone software, not an app. ) There is a certain color of Protozoa in my world that steals babies from their parents. This is odd behavior, but makes a bit of sense to me because the baby then follows the one who stole it, thinking it is its parent. It also is usually a baby of a similar purplish-magenta-ish color but not the same. There is one color of Protozoa that travels in packs. Usually, probably about half the pack is it's on kind, and the rest is other colors. After traveling a while, some of the others will start trust the ones that are the same color and not ever leave the pack like some of the others. Then suddenly, without warning, the cyan ones (the ones that are all the sane color) will kill and eat the trusting ones. This behavior is very interesting as I have only seen it in the cyan Protozoa, all of them do it, and never do it to one another (well, almost never). It's also interesting because that is a very smart way to get food! The foolish ones stick to you, then you kill them when you want to eat. It is traitorous and has nearly killed the Protozoa I'm following (I try to protect the ones I'm following, and I also usually follow the oldest ones when that glitch isn't there), but I killed them or changed their chromosomes first. Another of the smart/interesting things about this is that they almost always eat the ones they kill instead of just leaving it there, and they seem to have a taste for scavengers. The last thing I wanna say for now is about the Protozoa I mentioned earlier that lived to be over 4,000. He/she/it kept on mating with his/her/its children, until some of them probably had the exact same chromosomes as him/her/it! But he/she/it only mated with the ones that were the same color as him/her/it. Strange, huh? I also think that's how he/she/it survived so long—he/she/it was always sticking around with it's relatives! The Protozoa he/she/it mated with the second-most often were the baby-theives I mentioned.
Good update but one glich
Greencook
The new Petrie dish option is very good addition, but now the Protozoa lost the ability to hide in the spots-they jump in and out of the spots constantly instead of actually being "hidden asleep"
Extraordinary!
No Un
I absolutely enjoy running simulations with this whilst I do things like homework. Setting rules that determine the social habitat based on countless options and the order in which your instructions are put to play, tweak so many outcomes of behavior that is amusing to watch. I would like a little more interaction with the world though and I have some good ideas that I will edit into this post later.
I love this game/simulation!
Kaizen216
I think that most of these reviews have good ideas, so instead of restating I'll say look below. Also my suggestion is that there should be 2 or 3 levels of complexity, mostly for sandbox mode (I don't know how to work it into survival). That way you can do level 1 to get the feel for it, 2 to get going, and 3 to really challenge you.
Agree, kudos
BiologyChild
Great app! Like others, however, I would suggest some way to keep track of lineages, also maybe manipulate what determines what traits protozoa look for in a mate (other than being the closest one)? Perhaps a way to "tag" and then follow a specific protozoa and its progeny. Whatever you can add will be happily accepted - designers clearly did a brilliant job and will surely be thinking of things I can't on the spur of the moment! If you are in doubt, buy this app. Really.
