Play with our Prototypes - BIOME
| Spore™ has been a huge undertaking. Along the way we ended up exploring countless design directions in gameplay, simulation and user interface. One of the ways in which we explore possible design directions is by building simple, playable prototypes that we can play around with to get a sense for a particular system. Usually these prototypes are never seen by the public, but we thought some of the more intrepid players out there might enjoy playing around with a few of our early Spore prototypes. Keep in mind these are not tested, supported or even easily explained. |
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BIOME
BIOME is a programmable cellular automata simulator that allows users to develop simple "SimCity-like" grid simulations.
The grid-simulations in SimCity were inspired by Conway's "Life" program, which produces amazingly intricate patterns from simple rules
BIOME uses a language based on chemical stoichiometry, the notation system used to describe chemical reactions. Cells in a BIOME simulation change state the same way that chemicals change when exposed to other chemicals
Systems such as this can be used to simulate phenomena such as forest fires, disease epidemics, animal migration patterns and crystallization
BIOME supports both rectangular and spiral cellular automata configurations. The spiral configuration was used to study stochastic, self-propagating star formation (the process whereby the ignition of a star promotes the creation of more stars) on the galactic scale.
