Any evolutionary traits you can think of...

Game Play & Game Design
#1

I’m making a game/experiment that involves evolution, where everything is pretty simple except for the races, which are incredibly complex. In order for them to be that way, however, I have to think up probably around 500 different evolutionary traits to use as variables. I just started thinking of them tonight, but I figure you JGO guys can give me some ideas. Put anything you can think of, no matter how crazy. Could be fun to put in.

Here’s what I thought of so far:

Aggression
Swimming ability
Muscle speed
Physical size
Muscle strength
Diet (omni, herb, carn)
Ability to learn
Ability to problem solve
Tendency to flee
Ability to see differences
Social level
Reproductive drive
Reproductive rate
Reproductive type (mammal, egg, etc.)
Pregnancy length
Number of offspring
Dexterity with limbs
Tendency for tool use
Type of body (biped, aqua, quadriped, etc.)
Shell (like a turtle)
Carapace (like a bug)
Skin thickness (elephant vs. rabbit)
Camoflauge (ala chameleon)
Feathers (down vs. none vs. flying etc.)
Blubber (heat insulation)
Horns/thorns/other boney defenses
Scent
Sight
Hunger level (eats a lot or rarely)
Hibernation
Methods of breathing (lungs, gills, etc.)
Hemoglobin count (more hemoglobin = less oxygen needed)
Immune system strength
Weight
Bone thickness
Exo/endo/no skeleto (echinoderms or bug-like or mammal-like etc.)

And that’s it for now. Do me a favor and waste a bunch of time adding more!

#2

Some of these traits are kind of tied actually, so you may need to think up more- for example, diet has a huge effect because if you are modelling that correctly herbivores pretty much have to eat for a lot of the time and eat a large amount purely because the food they consume has a very low energy value, whereas carnivores are in the reverse situation as they get very high value food, but if they overdo things they will wipe out their own food supply and kill themselves off, as well as the high energy input required for successful predation.

In fact, finding many Orthogonal traits is going to be surprisingly difficult, but if you’re using a genetic system perhaps you don’t need to- if you set up the environment right, they should find themselves.

#3

Yeah, this is what I hope. For now, I’m not thinking about orthogonality too much (although I did scrap traits like cold resistance to be replaced with blubber and fur) at this point, more just getting a lot of ideas down. I don’t think 500 will be too hard, it’ll just take a lot of research into how real animals work. There’s a lot more than 500 real-world traits to model off of.

#4

I won’t comment about the method your problem should be handled, just try to add stuff :slight_smile: I’m surprised you started off with such small list… the count is endless (and especially surprised that you forgot flying). Just pick any animal and name it’s characteristics. Do that for 100 not so close animals and you’ll surely have more then 500 characteristics which you can turn into general descriptions for your list.
I don’t know much techical english terms so you’ll have to guess what I meant :slight_smile:

flying ability
wheter change sense
cold / warm blooded
shape change (octopuss)
color change (also octopuss)
permanent shape change (like butterfly)
wings
solo / in group society
sonar (dolphins, bats - but not water related thing)
moves through water using air (seals I think)
sight (up to 8 colors?)
ability to “breathe” fire
tail
spine
centralized place for senses (head)
poison defense
heat vision
night vision (?)
parenting or mass reproduction
high pressure resistance (whales)
can dig through dirt

… ok I got bored