“Welcome to the Fluid - A vast, viscous liquid, constantly evolving and changing. The melodies of life pulse through this primordial sea. This music is the catalyst for all living things.”
I am pleased to announce Amoebae, a game developed in Unity and coming soon to PC, Mac, iOS, and Android.
Almost all content in Amoebae is procedurally generated in real-time, based on sound data. Think of it as an extremely advanced visualizer. In addition to the game’s soundtrack, the player will also be able to use and import their own music playlist, or use a line/microphone input.
All life forms have genetic data that can mutate, possess higher-level thought processes and perform tasks such as eating and reproduction.
This game is more of a simulation, or “visual toy” - The player is able to move around, target different amoebae, and rotate them in order to help influence their behavior. This game isn’t won or lost in the traditional sense - I have an achievement-like system planned for the future.
Uploaded a video. There was a bug in how I calculated overall volume at the time - they are now much more responsive to quiet music and continuous tones.
Also, I may release the visualization system and/or the mutation classes when I make a better editor for those subsystems.
Love this idea. I like anything having to do with virtual critters, evolution and simulated life/system. I also like the idea of a toybox with achievements. I’ve been thinking of similar things while working on my own Unity project, a sort of virtual life sandbox.
Gathering data from music is a cool source for your ‘DNA’ too. Looking forward to seeing how your Amoebas evolve.
Very nice! I know it’s still pre-alpha, but here’s some feedback (personal taste of course):
Would be nice if the cage were used to generate a more organic mesh, more in the style of the other Amoebae floating around.
It really comes to life in the moments of transformation. Love it! It needs more to keep it alive/linked to the music the rest of the time… twitches, pulsing energy, color shifts…?
Personally not a fan of the movement in and out, made me a little sea sick… is it driven by the music or the user?
Might be cool if there were another axis to evolve along - complexity vs number. So you might end up with a cloud of simple guys or one complex guy. And maybe they can break apart/join back together… I know a lot easier said than done!!
Yea, there was actually a few bugs in the demo (the jerky camera being one of them). It is user controlled, however the auto-follow needed some work. Also, while most of the Amoeba’s rotation is automatic, the user is able to help guide them by rotating them (this happens a few times in the two videos). I’ll make a video explaining more of the features soon, and possibly a demo build.
The biggest issue, however, had to do with how the sample data was used. I applied an anti-aliasing filter and am now getting much better results and more life-like behavior.
I agree - I’m still tweaking the values as far as growth. Some of it will be based on genetics as well.
This is actually already possible with my current system. I had planned on using it to connect amoebae together and form a larger life form, but they can operate independently as well. Also, I have a system where an amoeba can buddy up with another (or attack each other) based on musical harmony or dissonance.
I have a new video to share, with swimming amoebae! Note that other than changing the sample data, no code changes were made at all - Just about every variable is exposed to a custom editor… I’m actually pretty proud of just how flexible the system is. Unfortunately I fixed the auto-follow right after making this. (whoops!)
The music-animation synchronization is on par. I look forward to seeing your progress with the game. I am also working on something in the genre of music as well but i won’t have anything to show for another month. I was trying to follow what the movement was reading from the music exactly. Increase in volume, rhythm, pitch is what it seemed to me.
I am a huge fan of these types of games so i can’t wait and look forward to it’s release.
Thanks! The movement reads various things from the music - it analyzes different frequency ranges. How exactly it responds to it varies from amoeba to amoeba.
I think I may have a creative mode that exposes this gui at runtime, where you can create an amoeba exactly how you would like - for example you could come up with things like this:
With this example, if I wanted to take it further, I can create two “sub-amoebae” on the same gameObject (you can create an infinite amount of amoebae that have a singular “nucleus” and AI) and assign parents to each arm or the neck if you wanted to make fingers or facial features. Each one can have a different renderer too per part - I plan on making an actual mesh as one of the various renderers once I wrap my head around getting my system to work with how Unity stores triangles.
I was just curious as to how the sound input (+mic) system works since it does seem really awkward to get working based on the comments of others. Any comments and pointers for a fellow in need of guidance?
I actually haven’t written the other inputs yet. Unfortunately, it is very much a pain because you can’t use Unity’s sound engine for it really. I’m probably going to see if I can tack on another audio library and use that, and perform my own calculations on it instead. There are a few resources out there on grabbing audio for each platform.
Also, I have a new video coming soon showcasing the different mutations and the new Creative mode - a mode where you can make any amoeba that you can dream of.
I’m really liking the mesh you have on display. Appears to be appropriate for the theme you are going for. I am wondering if you plan on using any translucent shaders for nuclei and what not. I also wanted to drop this link just in case it interested you. http://vamp-plugins.org/. A plugin for reading music. I was initially planning on using it before I started my project but it moved into another direction musically.
I like the atmosphere in the screenshot and hope to see more from you. Good luck.
Just wanted to post to say that this project is still going on - I’ve decided to work on a few core tools for the game - dynamics, AI, and some tweaking of the musical response code.
