17-01-2000 06:05									#1
	Pangea? Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

Hello fellows!

I hadn't been for long in the Apolyton forum, but now Sid's new game drawned (or drew?) my attention and revived my will of discussing. In fact, I enjoy discussing about games in development even more than playing games.

I apologise if I may sound stupid, as I have neither read the forums nor all the diaries. I was traveling, and I spent the whole day reading the last few weeks magazines and newsletters and my head hurts. Anyway, I'll hope you forgive and I'll get to the point then.

Sid's talking about Pangea and the differences between a global environment and a scenario environment in his 3rd Diary (I really recommend you reading it). He says that creating a global environment with a single continnent (Pangea) that would then be divided in several ones, just like it happened. With the diviosion, the dinos would gain abilities like flying and swimming as a need to move from one continnet to another.

I'd like to say my dear friend Sid that he's either watching Discovery too little time or he missed his Science classes in Grade School.

Why? Simply because that concept (explained before) is totally wrong. The dinos simply learned to swim because there were lakes and rivers, and they had a need of accessing those places. I'd also like to remember that life started in water and a huge part of the animals didn't lose the ability of swimming, and many of them learned it again later.

Is Sid forgetting that the Reptiles and Anphibious evolved from the Fish. The Reptiles wanted to move from one lake to another and that's how they created legs. The Anphibious could leave the water, but had to go back to for Reproduction.

The ability of flying possibly came from animals that lived on trees and learned how to fly to move from one to tree to another. That has no relation to Pangea and its division.

For last, to travel between spearated continents the dinos would have to learn how to travel through smaller distances before!

As I said earlier, I know very little of the game and forgive if I may sound idiot, but those comments deserved a note.

Thanks for the attention
Novice

	18-01-2000 15:06									#2
	Put an end to popups!

(Sorry, this was a double post - removed)
[This message has been edited by Adm.Naismith (edited January 18, 2000).]

	18-01-2000 15:06									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Novice, you have a point, neverthless I think you lost the focus of the last diary.

IMHO Firaxis is not representing a correct, scientific view of the Dinosaurus era. They are trying to put some funny into a very hard style of life: survival. All of us, from most acclaimed first Disney's cartoons, really think to animals as kind of slighty different human beings, so we want to model animal evolution like the human technical evolution. We diverged from other animals because we deeply changed the surrounding world (e.g. with large use of tools, more complex machine and the like).

We "learned" to travel by sea not genetically evolve to swimming for longer time, but developing (building) better ships. We "learned" to flight developing planes.

The trouble is that Firaxis probably know there is not a lot of funny (no challenge, in gamplay meaning) into the trial and error process of genetical mutation and evolution. So they steer for a model (not realistical, as you correctly suggest) of "learn and develop" for mission target. The whole concept of "scenarios" is about a know mission to address, instead of some more "open world" to interact with.

Well, in short don't expect too much realism from Dino game: IMO they are looking more for a Dino Park than for Sim dino; it should be a winner game, but that's another story.

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Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant

	19-01-2000 05:08									#4
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

Thanks for the (good) post man.
My view of the game was somthing like a "world building" or "animal evolution" *sim* game.
As I read in the diary, many of we think, how would a group of raptors be like if they were twice bigger (ok... not a good example) or how would the dinos be like today if a group of them survived in an island up today.
The proccess of genetical mutation and evolution *can* be placed in the game and be fun (also because hundreds of years of evolution can take a couple of minutes in my PC).
As I thought the way dinos evolved is a big player in the game, I'd be disappointed if my dinos learned to fly miles before learning to fly from tree to tree.

Again, thanks for the post
novice

	19-01-2000 05:11									#5
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Oh, BTW, I was just thinking about 'biolabs'. The players would be mad scientists trying to mess with dinosaurs evolution. Would fit in the scenario idea.

	20-01-2000 10:30									#6
	Suffering from ads?

Once again, I can understand your idea, and I think it could be good (if well done, that's obvius ).
The only similar concept I know in gamefield (apart SimEarth, that a friend of mine own years ago and that I tried to understand without success) is in "Creatures" serie.
You have to grow, teach and genetically modify babies of some creatures. They learn, react, reproduce and died. Something was (simplicistically) related to "Tamagotchi" game(?) a few years ago.

I never played one of these games, but I red every review and I think they have pros and cons (e.g. too much open ended to grab all the needed effort, without a target to achieve).

I must add that they (the creatures) interact with a more limited world than your "world building" scenario, simplyfing a lot the whole model and IA.

Anyway I wish the best for your "Dino game of evolution" hope. Only don't mess with monkey evolution, you mad scientist , do you?

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Adm.Naismith AKA mcostant