SimEarth
Encyclopedia
SimEarth: The Living Planet, the second life simulation
computer game designed by Will Wright in which the player controls the development of a planet
. The game was published in 1990
by Maxis
. Versions were made for the Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, IBM PC
, SNES
and TurboGrafx-16
, which was also subsequently re-released on the Wii
Virtual Console
.
, temperature
, landmass
es, etc., then place various forms of life
on the planet and watch them evolve
. Since it is a software toy, the game does not have any required goals. The big (and difficult) challenge is to evolve sentient
life and an advanced civilization
. The development stages of the planet can be reverted and repeated, until the planet "dies" ten billion years after its creation, the estimated time when the Sun
will become a red giant
and kill off all of the planet's life.
The game models the Gaia hypothesis
of James Lovelock
(who assisted with the design and wrote an introduction to the manual), and one of the options available to the player is the simplified "Daisyworld
" model.
The player's control of the planet in the game is quite comprehensive; display panels allow the player to regulate everything from atmospheric gases, with percentages to three decimal places, to the rate of continental drift
, to the rate of reproduction and mutation of lifeforms. In addition, the player is given options to place equipment or items
that interfere with the planet's development, such as Oxygen
Generators, which increase the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, and the monolith, a take on the one found in 2001: A Space Odyssey
, which aids in increasing intelligence of a lifeform through extraterrestrial contact.
The list of disasters ranges from natural occurrences, such as hurricanes and wild fire
s, to population-dependent disasters, such as plagues and pollution
. Effects on the planet may be minor or major depending on the current conditions. Increased volcanic
eruptions, for example, increase the amount of dust in the atmosphere, lowering global temperature; earthquake
s in a body of water may produce tsunami
s; and the shortage of nuclear fuel for a nuclear power-dependent civilization may potentially trigger nuclear war
.
All player-triggered actions have a cost specified in "energy units" or "omega (Ω) units"; for example, 50 energy units are required to lay down a single terrain square, while 500 units are required to lay down a terraforming device. The energy budget is determined by the level of development of the planet, and the chosen difficulty level; on the lowest difficulty level, the energy budget is unlimited.
Gameplay itself can be somewhat mystifying; species may thrive or die out for no apparent reason. Mass extinctions, however, are often followed by periods of renewed evolutionary diversification, allowing the player to experiment with new sets of species and ecosystems.
of multicellular animals are on an equal footing, and thus it is possible to evolve, for example, sapient molluscs. The two single-celled lifeform taxa, Prokaryote
s and Eukaryote
s (or Bacteria
and Amoeba
s, in-game respectively) are treated specially. Some examples of animal taxa include Radiates
and Cetaceans as well as more well known taxa such as fish
and birds. As an "Easter egg", there is also machine life
, which can appear if a city of the highest technology level (Nanotech Age
) is destroyed by a nuclear explosion. Machine life can thrive in any biome or environmental conditions, generally out-competing any other lifeforms present, and can itself eventually evolve intelligence and build cities. Additionally, there are Carniferns, which are mutated, carnivorous plant
s, which can occur only naturally. Having an abundance of insects allows for these life-forms to develop. Carniferns are able to develop intelligence
just as animals can. In addition to the familiar types, the long-extinct "trichordate
s" are included. The game states that "We [the game's developers] felt sorry for them, and are giving them a chance for survival in SimEarth."
Life simulation game
Life simulation games is a sub-genre of simulation video games in which the player lives or controls one or more virtual lifeforms...
computer game designed by Will Wright in which the player controls the development of a planet
Planet
A planet is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, science,...
. The game was published in 1990
1990 in video gaming
-Notable releases:*Bonk's Adventure is released for NEC's TurboGrafx-16 and is the first US appearance of Bonk, the mascot of the TurboGrafx-16.*February 12 — Nintendo releases the NES game Super Mario Bros. 3 in North America...
by Maxis
Maxis
Maxis is an American company founded as an independent video game developer in 1987. It is currently a subsidiary of Electronic Arts . Maxis is the creator of one of the best-selling computer games of all time, The Sims and its first sequel, The Sims 2...
. Versions were made for the Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, IBM PC
IBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
, SNES
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...
and TurboGrafx-16
TurboGrafx-16
TurboGrafx-16, fully titled as TurboGrafx-16 Entertainment SuperSystem and known in Japan as the , is a video game console developed by Hudson Soft and NEC, released in Japan on October 30, 1987, and in North America on August 29, 1989....
, which was also subsequently re-released on the Wii
Wii
The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...
Virtual Console
Virtual console
A virtual console – also known as a virtual terminal – is a conceptual combination of the keyboard and display for a computer user interface. It is a feature of some operating systems such as UnixWare, Linux, and BSD, in which the system console of the computer can be used to switch between...
.
Overview
In SimEarth, the player can vary a planet's atmosphereAtmosphere
An atmosphere is a layer of gases that may surround a material body of sufficient mass, and that is held in place by the gravity of the body. An atmosphere may be retained for a longer duration, if the gravity is high and the atmosphere's temperature is low...
, temperature
Temperature
Temperature is a physical property of matter that quantitatively expresses the common notions of hot and cold. Objects of low temperature are cold, while various degrees of higher temperatures are referred to as warm or hot...
, landmass
Landmass
A landmass is a contiguous area of land surrounded by ocean. Although it may be most often written as one word to distinguish it from the usage "land mass"—the measure of land area—it is also used as two words.Landmasses include:*supercontinents...
es, etc., then place various forms of life
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...
on the planet and watch them evolve
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
. Since it is a software toy, the game does not have any required goals. The big (and difficult) challenge is to evolve sentient
Sentience
Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive or be conscious, or to have subjective experiences. Eighteenth century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think from the ability to feel . In modern western philosophy, sentience is the ability to have sensations or experiences...
life and an advanced civilization
Civilization
Civilization is a sometimes controversial term that has been used in several related ways. Primarily, the term has been used to refer to the material and instrumental side of human cultures that are complex in terms of technology, science, and division of labor. Such civilizations are generally...
. The development stages of the planet can be reverted and repeated, until the planet "dies" ten billion years after its creation, the estimated time when the Sun
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...
will become a red giant
Red giant
A red giant is a luminous giant star of low or intermediate mass in a late phase of stellar evolution. The outer atmosphere is inflated and tenuous, making the radius immense and the surface temperature low, somewhere from 5,000 K and lower...
and kill off all of the planet's life.
The game models the Gaia hypothesis
Gaia hypothesis
The Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.The scientific investigation of the...
of James Lovelock
James Lovelock
James Lovelock, CH, CBE, FRS is an independent scientist, environmentalist and futurologist who lives in Devon, England. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the biosphere is a self-regulating entity with the capacity to keep our planet healthy by controlling...
(who assisted with the design and wrote an introduction to the manual), and one of the options available to the player is the simplified "Daisyworld
Daisyworld
Daisyworld, a computer simulation, is a hypothetical world orbiting a star whose radiant energy is slowly increasing. It is meant to mimic important elements of the Earth-Sun system, and was introduced by James Lovelock and Andrew Watson in a paper published in 1983 to illustrate the plausibility...
" model.
Continental drift
Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other. The hypothesis that continents 'drift' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596 and was fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912...
, to the rate of reproduction and mutation of lifeforms. In addition, the player is given options to place equipment or items
Terraforming
Terraforming of a planet, moon, or other body is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying its atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology to be similar to those of Earth, in order to make it habitable by terrestrial organisms.The term is sometimes used more generally as a...
that interfere with the planet's development, such as Oxygen
Oxygen
Oxygen is the element with atomic number 8 and represented by the symbol O. Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς and -γενής , because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition...
Generators, which increase the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, and the monolith, a take on the one found in 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...
, which aids in increasing intelligence of a lifeform through extraterrestrial contact.
The list of disasters ranges from natural occurrences, such as hurricanes and wild fire
Fire
Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. Slower oxidative processes like rusting or digestion are not included by this definition....
s, to population-dependent disasters, such as plagues and pollution
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
. Effects on the planet may be minor or major depending on the current conditions. Increased volcanic
Volcano
2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...
eruptions, for example, increase the amount of dust in the atmosphere, lowering global temperature; earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...
s in a body of water may produce tsunami
Tsunami
A tsunami is a series of water waves caused by the displacement of a large volume of a body of water, typically an ocean or a large lake...
s; and the shortage of nuclear fuel for a nuclear power-dependent civilization may potentially trigger nuclear war
Nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is detonated on an opponent. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can be vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...
.
All player-triggered actions have a cost specified in "energy units" or "omega (Ω) units"; for example, 50 energy units are required to lay down a single terrain square, while 500 units are required to lay down a terraforming device. The energy budget is determined by the level of development of the planet, and the chosen difficulty level; on the lowest difficulty level, the energy budget is unlimited.
Gameplay itself can be somewhat mystifying; species may thrive or die out for no apparent reason. Mass extinctions, however, are often followed by periods of renewed evolutionary diversification, allowing the player to experiment with new sets of species and ecosystems.
Taxa
A feature of the game is that all taxaTaxon
|thumb|270px|[[African elephants]] form a widely-accepted taxon, the [[genus]] LoxodontaA taxon is a group of organisms, which a taxonomist adjudges to be a unit. Usually a taxon is given a name and a rank, although neither is a requirement...
of multicellular animals are on an equal footing, and thus it is possible to evolve, for example, sapient molluscs. The two single-celled lifeform taxa, Prokaryote
Prokaryote
The prokaryotes are a group of organisms that lack a cell nucleus , or any other membrane-bound organelles. The organisms that have a cell nucleus are called eukaryotes. Most prokaryotes are unicellular, but a few such as myxobacteria have multicellular stages in their life cycles...
s and Eukaryote
Eukaryote
A eukaryote is an organism whose cells contain complex structures enclosed within membranes. Eukaryotes may more formally be referred to as the taxon Eukarya or Eukaryota. The defining membrane-bound structure that sets eukaryotic cells apart from prokaryotic cells is the nucleus, or nuclear...
s (or Bacteria
Bacteria
Bacteria are a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals...
and Amoeba
Amoeba
Amoeba is a genus of Protozoa.History=The amoeba was first discovered by August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof in 1757. Early naturalists referred to Amoeba as the Proteus animalcule after the Greek god Proteus, who could change his shape...
s, in-game respectively) are treated specially. Some examples of animal taxa include Radiates
Radiata
The Radiata are the radially symmetric animals of the Eumetazoa subkingdom. The term Radiata has had various meanings in the history of classification...
and Cetaceans as well as more well known taxa such as fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
and birds. As an "Easter egg", there is also machine life
Self-replicating machine
A self-replicating machine is an artificial construct that is theoretically capable of autonomously manufacturing a copy of itself using raw materials taken from its environment, thus exhibiting self-replication in a way analogous to that found in nature. The concept of self-replicating machines...
, which can appear if a city of the highest technology level (Nanotech Age
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...
) is destroyed by a nuclear explosion. Machine life can thrive in any biome or environmental conditions, generally out-competing any other lifeforms present, and can itself eventually evolve intelligence and build cities. Additionally, there are Carniferns, which are mutated, carnivorous plant
Carnivorous plant
Carnivorous plants are plants that derive some or most of their nutrients from trapping and consuming animals or protozoans, typically insects and other arthropods. Carnivorous plants appear adapted to grow in places where the soil is thin or poor in nutrients, especially nitrogen, such as acidic...
s, which can occur only naturally. Having an abundance of insects allows for these life-forms to develop. Carniferns are able to develop intelligence
Intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in different ways, including the abilities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, planning, emotional intelligence and problem solving....
just as animals can. In addition to the familiar types, the long-extinct "trichordate
Tribrachidium
Tribrachidium heraldicum was an early Ediacaran organism famous for its unusual tri-radial symmetry. It was named and first described from South Australia by Martin Glaessner and Brian Daily in 1959....
s" are included. The game states that "We [the game's developers] felt sorry for them, and are giving them a chance for survival in SimEarth."
See also
- SporeSpore (2008 video game)Spore is a multi-genre single-player god game developed by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. The game was released for the Microsoft Windows and Macintosh operating systems in September 2008 as Spore...
- Impossible CreaturesImpossible CreaturesImpossible Creatures is a real-time strategy game released on December 29, 2002 developed by Relic Entertainment in conjunction with Microsoft Game Studios. Its unique feature is that the armies used are all created by the player...
- L.O.L.: Lack of LoveL.O.L.: Lack of LoveL.O.L.: Lack of Love, or simply Lack of Love, is an evolutionary adventure game developed by Love-de-Lic and published by ASCII Entertainment for the Sega Dreamcast...
- Seventh Cross: EvolutionSeventh Cross: EvolutionSeventh Cross: Evolution, known in Japan as simply Seventh Cross, is a video game for the Sega Dreamcast video game console. It was released on December 18, 1999. A sequel titled Ninth Will was announced shortly after the game's North American release, but it was apparently cancelled.-Gameplay:The...
- Evolution: The Game of Intelligent LifeEvolution: The Game of Intelligent LifeEvolution: The Game of Intelligent Life, also known as Genetic Evolution: The Race for Intelligent Life in Germany and Evolução: O Jogo da Vida in Brazil, is a life simulation & real-time strategy computer game that allows players to experience, guide, and control evolution from an isometric view...
- E.V.O.: Search for EdenE.V.O.: Search for EdenE.V.O.: Search for Eden, originally released in Japan as , is a side-scrolling action role-playing video game developed by Almanic Corporation and published by Enix for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Released in 1992 for Japanese audiences, the game was later translated and released in...
- CreaturesCreatures (artificial life program)Creatures is an artificial life computer program series, created in the mid-1990s by English computer scientist Steve Grand whilst working for the Cambridge computer games developer Millennium Interactive...
- SimLifeSimLifeSimLife: The Genetic Playground is a computer game produced by Maxis in 1992. The concept of the game is to simulate an ecosystem; players may modify the genetics of the plants and animals that inhabit the virtual world. The point of this game is to experiment and create a self sustaining...
External links
- SimEarth at Macintosh Garden (Not available)