S I M L I F E - T H E G E N E T I C P L A Y G R O U N D USER MANUAL CONTENTS Introduction ............................................................ 1 What Is SimLife? ..................................................... 2 What Is Artificial Life? ............................................. 6 Getting Started ......................................................... 9 Installation ........................................................ 10 Starting The Program ................................................ 10 Tutorial ............................................................... 11 Before You Begin .................................................... 12 Take A Tour Of Your Computerized Ecosystem .......................... 23 Building An Experiment: Splatt ..................................... 53 Reference .............................................................. 79 Introduction/The Basics ............................................. 80 Menus ............................................................... 84 File Menu ........................................................ 84 Edit Menu ........................................................ 85 Simulation Menu .................................................. 85 Windows Menu ..................................................... 94 Disasters Menu ................................................... 96 Windows ............................................................. 98 Dashboard ........................................................ 98 New Game Window ................................................. 103 Edit Window ..................................................... 104 Map Window ...................................................... 117 Populate Window ................................................. 123 World Design Window ............................................. 125 Biology Lab ..................................................... 128 Climate Lab ..................................................... 151 Graphs Window ................................................... 152 Mortality Window .................:::::...........:::::.......... 156 Gene Pool Window .................:::...::::::::....:::.......... 158 Food Web Window ..................:::...:::...:::...:::.......... 165 Population Interactive Window ....:::...:::...:::...:::.......... 168 Population Window ................:::...:::::::.....:::.......... 170 Diversity Window .................:::...:::...:::...:::.......... 171 History Window ...................:::...:::...:::...:::.......... 174 Laws of Physics Window ...........:::...:::...:::...:::.......... 175 Variables Window .................:::::...........:::::.......... 182 Phenotype Window ................................................ 184 Speciate Window ................................................. 185 Evaluation Window ............................................... 187 Locate an Individual Window ..................................... 188 Run Control Window .............................................. 189 Sample Experiments ................................................. 190 Miscellaneous Sim Stuff ............................................ 194 Glossary .............................................................. 198 Bibliography .......................................................... 200 Index ................................................................. 202 Machine Specific Addendum & Quickstart Guide & Keyboard Chart ......... 204 [PAGE: 1] INTRODUCTION "Life! Don't talk to me about life." - Marvin The Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams [PAGE: 2] INTRODUCTION SimLife is an Artificial Life Laboratory/Playground designed to simulate environments, biology, evolution, ecosystems, and life. WHAT IS SIMLIFE? SimLife is a game, a toy and an experimental tool to learn about life, real and artificial. As a game, SimLife challenges you to successfully solve the problems presented to you in each of six different scenarios. As an experimental tool, SimLife gives you the power to: * create and modify worlds; * create and modify plants and animals at the genetic level; * design environments and ecosystems; * simulate and control evolution; and even * change the physics of the universe. A major feature and purpose of SimLife is that it is an exploration of the emerging computer field of Artificial Life. YOUR REASONS TO (SIM)LIVE The goals in playing SimLife are many, and, as with most Maxis products, are entirely up to you. If you approach SimLife as a game, then your goals can be to win each of the scenarios. If you approach SimLife as a "laboratory in a computer," your goals are as limitless as your imagination. If you approach SimLife as a toy, you don't need goals; you can just play with plants, animals and ecosystems. If you are interested in monitoring your personal progress or understanding of the ecological systems in SimLife, you can keep an eye on the Ecology Score in the Graphs Window. It displays an ongoing score of the ecological soundness of your ecosystem, which you can view as a rating of how well you are doing as master of life on your world. There is also an evaluation window that graphically shows how complex your ecosystem is, as well as assigning a score to your performance. [PAGE: 3] THE ULTIMATE GOAL? Perhaps the greatest challenge of playing SimLife is to start from scratch and design and build a world with a sustainable ecosystem. It's not an easy task, and once tou do it you may realize just how fragile an ecosystem can be: how a small change in the environment or the extinction of a single species can cause a wave of destruction that destroys life up and down the food chain. What can be considered the ultimate goal of SimLife is to look beyond the game, to understand that the real world with its millions of species with their combined billions of genes are all interrelated and carefully balance in the food chain and the web of life, and that this balance can be upset. Once we realize this, maybe we'll treat our planet, our environment and life itself with the respect they deserve and need. OK. Enough heaviosity. Go play. LEVELS OF PLAY SimLife was designed to be played at different levels: * On the simple game level of trying to solve the scenarios; * On a simple experimental/play level of building your own worlds, animals, and ecosystems; and * On a complex experimental level where you control (or meddle with) the laws of physics and manipulate plants and animals at the genetic level. You can do these things in any of five difficulty levels, from beginner to expert. [PAGE: 4] SOFTWARE TOYS AND SYSTEM SIMULATIONS SimLife isn't exactly a game - it's what we call a Software Toy. Toys, by definition, are more flexible and open-ended than games. As an example, compare a game, tennis, with a toy, a ball. In every tennis game, there is one way to begin, one goal to pursue and one way to end. There are infinite variations in the middle, but they all start the same way, chase the same goal and end the same way. A ball is more flexible - there are more things you can do with it. With the ball, you can play tennis. You can play catch. You can throw it at someone. You can bounce it. You can make up a hundred different games using the ball. Besides games, there are other things you can do with a ball. You can paint it, use it to plug a leaky roof, or just contemplate its roundness. In SimLife, the "toy" is a biology laboratory in a computer. When you play with SimLife, or any of our other Software Toys(R), don't limit yourself to trying to "win." Play with it. Experiment. Try new things. Just have fun. There are many types of toys. SimLife, like SimCity(R), SimEarth(R), and SimAnt(R) before it, is a SYSTEM SIMULATION toy. In a system simulation, we provide you with a set of RULES and TOOLS that describe, create and control a system. In the case of SimLife, the system is an ecosystem. Part of the challenge of playing with a system simulation toy is to figure out how the system works and take control of it. As master of the system, you are free to use the Tools to create and control an unlimited number of systems (in this case, ecosystems) within the framework provided by the Rules. In SimLife, the Rules to learn are based on biology and behavior, including: Environment: All life is affected by its external environmental conditions, including the landscape, the climate, physical disasters and most importantly, other life-forms. [PAGE: 5] Genetics: Living beings are defined by the genes they carry and pass on to their offspring. Evolution: Life changes in response to its environtment; species adapt to their surroundings and evolve into new species. Behavior: To survive individually and as a species, life-forms must find food and water, defend themselves from predators and reproduce. The Food Chain: For an ecosystem to be stable, the food chain must be a complete circle; herbivores eat plants, carnivores eat herbivores, plants consume animal waste and rotted carcasses. The sun provides the energy to keep the cycle going. Ecosystems: In addition to the cycling of material in the food chain, a stable ecosystem has to efficiently cycle oxygen, carbon dioxide, water and other important gasses and minerals between life, the atmosphere and the land. The Tools provide you with the ability to design and build worlds and ecosystems: * Create landforms with lakes, mountains, rivers and impassable barriers. * Modify the climate: set temperature ranges, humidity, seasonal changes, and day-length variations with the Weather Lab. * Mix and match pre-defined plants and animals, modify them at the genetic level, or create your own life-forms in the Biology Lab. * Use mutagens to cause mutations and speed up evolution. * Change the laws of physics: set the lengths of days and years, change the energy it takes to walk, swim, or fly. * Track your data with graphs and charts that display population and genetic changes through time. [PAGE: 6] But the most important Tool of all is the simulator itself. Test your knowledge, plans, theories and ideas as you watch your creatures and ecosystems thrive or die. WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL LIFE? SimLife is an Artificial Life playshop/toolkit/workshop. Artificial Life (A-life) is an emerging new field in computer science that is giving us a whole new way to study biology, evolution and life itself. Our Software Toys make use of A-life technology to simulate living systems that change and grow depending on the choices you make. The idea behind A-life is to produce lifelike behavior on a computer (or other artificial media), where it can be studied in ways real living things cannot. A-life creates a laboratory in a computer, where the scientist can completely control all environmental factors - even time. One of the most important features of A-life is emergent behavior - when complex behavior emerges from the combination of many individuals following simple rules. Two examples of emergent behavior are ant colonies in the real world, and SimCity in the computer world. In fact, biologic "life as we know it" can be considered a form of emergent behavior. Another important aspect of A-life is evolution - artificial life-forms can react to their environment and grow, reproduce and evolve into more complex forms. The future of A-life holds much potential and promise. It may someday go beyond the experimental world into the practical realm of design. The tools and techniques being developed now will someday allow us to grow or evolve designs for complex systems ranging from software to airplanes to intelligence. In a sense, A-life has the same ultimate goal as Artificial Intelligence (AI), but uses opposite methods. AI uses a top-down approach to create a thinking [PAGE: 7] machine that emulates the human brain. A-life uses the bottomup approach - start with single cells and grow/evolve life with intelligence. ABOUT SIMLIFE DOCUMENTATION There are five parts to the docs for SimLife: the manual, the machine- specific addendum, the lab book, the registration card and the President's letter/support info card. The manual (that which you now hold in your hands) was typed by Rygar and has: * An introduction chapter that gives you a little background on the game and a brief explanation of Artificial Life; * A Getting Started chapter to get you up and running; * A three-part Tutorial that gives you some background info, leads you through many of the windows and functions of the program and shows you how to set up, conduct and evaluate an experiment; * A Reference section that gives more background information, complete descriptions of every menu, window, button and function, sample experiments to try and miscellaneous information on the simulation; and * A Glossary, a Bibliography and an Index. The machine-specific addendum gives you any special info you'll need for your particular computer, including loading, saving, printing, special menu items, and keyboard shortcuts. It also has any last-minute features that were too recent to make it into the manual. If you have any questions that aren't answered in the manual, check your machine-specific addendum. The lab book goes along with the experiment in the tutorial to give you an example of one way to write up SimLife experiments. The lab book also has data sheets containing printed blanks of most of the windows that you can copy, draw in the data, and include in your own lab reports. [PAGE: 8] Sending in the registration card entitles you to free technical support, an extended warranty on SimLife and a while bunch of other things. Read it, fill it out and send it in. You'll be glad you did. The President's letter invites you to contact Maxis about any problems or suggestions you may have with or for SimLife. The support info (on the back of the President's letter) tells you how to contact us for customer service and technical support. VARIOUS SIMLIFE VERSIONS AND MANUAL GRAPHICS SimLife is (or soon will be) available on a number of different computer systems. We try to keep all the versions as close to each other as possible, while staying true to the individual interface differences of each machine. The graphics for this manual are taken primarily from the Color Macintosh version of SimLife because it was ready first. On any other computer, there will be some slight differences in the look of the program. All the same features and functions will be there, but some things (like buttons) may be moved around a little. If you screen doesn't exactly match the graphics in the manual, check in the machine-specific addendum for a complete explanation of how SimLife has been customized for your computer [PAGE: 9] GETTING STARTED "All life is an experiment." - Oliver Wendell Holmes [PAGE: 10] INSTALLATION * R Y G A R * On most computers, SimLife must be installed to a hard disk before it can be run. See your computer-specific addendum for installation instructions on your computer STARTING THE PROGRAM Once again, see your computer-specific addendum for starting instructions. ABOUT THE TUTORIALS There is an on-screen tutorial built into SimLife. Once you start the program, you will see the New Game Window. Click on the button that says Tutorial, then click on Make It So. You will be taken on a quick tour through the basic features of SimLife. In addition, there is a fairly extensive tutorial in this manual, written in three parts. The first part gives some background information on SimLife, and on life itself. You may want to skim through this section before going on. Most of you will just jump right in and start messing around with the game. Enjoy yourself - the information will be here when you want it. The second part is a tour of the major features, functions and windows. We won't be chasing any particular goal here, just playing around and getting familiar with many of the things you can do with SimLife. The third part of the tutorial is the complete design, setup and execution of an experiment. We'll define the goals of the experiment, decide what kind of world and what kind of life would be best to reach the goals, and carry it out. Included in the SimLife package is a "lab book" that summarizes the steps in the experiment, and leaves room for recording data and conclusions [SORRY LAB BOOK NOT INCLUDED - JUST EMPTY PAGES ANYWAYS - [R] [PAGE: 11] TUTORIAL "My boy, you are descended from a long line of determined, resourceful, microscopic tadpoles - champions every one." - Kilgore Trout from Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut [PAGE: 12] TUTORIAL This tutorial covers a lot of material fairly quickly. If you're not already somewhat familiar with SimLife, you'll probably want to run through the on-screen tutorial first. It can be started from the New Game Window. Or you may want to give the Before You Being section below a quick onceover, then do the on-screen tutorial. The graphics in this tutorial are from the color Macintosh version. The screens on your computer may vary a little. See your machine-specific addendum for more details. BEFORE YOU BEGIN Before playing SimLife, there are a few things you'll want to know. WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? I hope you have many heads, because while playing SimLife you'll be wearing many hats. Depending on the scenario you play or the experiment you design, you can think of yourself as: * a planetary game warden trying to protect and improve various ecosystems; * a behavioral ecologist exploring the different ways plants and animals interact in their ecosystems; * an evolutionary biologist trying to prove theories; * Charles Darwin (only in his dreams); * a being with amazing powers who creates worlds, populates them with plants and animals, and balances ecosystems for fun; * an Artificial Life experimenter; and * a normal human trying to play and win a pretty complex computer game. [PAGE: 13] What you are trying to do is: * win each of the scenarios; * stick your finger into an ecosystem, muck it up a bit and see what happens; * simulate current ecological situations (and disasters) and try to recover before it's too late; * build your own ecosystem from scratch; * design and carry out any number of experiments that deal with plants, animals, genetics, evolution and ecosystems; * casually observe the interactions between plants, animals and the environment over a long period of time; and * have fun. OF MICE AND KEYBOARDS SimLife is much easier and more fun to play if you have a mouse. This tutorial and the manual in general assume you have one. If you don't have a mouse, check in the computer-specific addendum for instructions on using menus and controlling windows, and for keyboard equivalents to terms like "clicking" and "dragging." SIMPLICITY AND RICHNESS SimLife deals with life and ecosystems in a very simplified way. Simplification serves a few purposes. If it were even 1/10th as complex as the world we live in, it would have taken us 100 years to make the program, it would cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars, and you'd need a computer the size of Baltimore to play it. Because it is simple, time can be sped up and experiments that would take hundreds of years in real time can be performed in hours or minutes. Because it is simple, many external influences can be removed for experimental controls that cannot be removed in "real world" experiments. [PAGE: 14] SimLife, even while extremely simple compared to life as we live it, is a fairly deep game/simulation/toy. It has many interrelated features and functions that make it quite powerful and take a bit of htinking to master. One of the most powerful features in SimLife is the ability to limit or ignore many of the features. Depending on the game or experiment you may require a large, rich, complex world with climatic changes, mountains and valleys, and a convoluted web of plants and animals preying on each other, or just a small spot of ground with no mountains, no weather changes and only one type of life. Both the tutorial below and some of the scenarios will deal with some small, simple setups so you can play and explore right away without learning everything first, and gradually deal with more complex worlds and experiments. BUTTONS AND MORE BUTTONS This game has more buttons than all the bellies in Chine. It can be a little confusing at first, but follow the tutorial and you'll meet most of them one at a time. Then you can read the reference section of this manual (just kidding - I know nobody reads reference sections of manuals) to find out exactly what each and every button does. If all else fails and you can't decide which button to press, try eeny-meeny-miney-moe. IT'S ABOUT TIME Time in SimLife consists of Ticks, Days and Years. Each year is divided up into four seasons of equal length: summer, fall, winter and spring. A tick is one simulation cycle. The actual length of a tick in real seconds depends on your computer's speed, the size of the world and the number of organisms in the world. The number of ticks per day and days per year varies with the different scenarios and can be customized for different experiments. By adjusting ticks and days, you adjust the rate at which time passes. When a scenario or experiment deals with the behavior of one animal or one generation, then you will want time to go slowly so the animal has time to exhibit its behavior. When a scenario or experiment deals with the genetic drift over many generations, then you will want time to pass quickly. [PAGE: 15] OTHER STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW (SIMLIFE CONVENTIONS AND TERMINOLOGY) Here are a few things to keep in mind while working your way through the tutorial: MENUS To play SimLife, you'll have to understand how to use menus. Many computers these days have menuing systems built into their operating systems, including Macintosh, Amiga and Windows-based computers. In these cases we follow all the standard menu-use conventions for your computer/operating system. Check your machine-specific addendum for special menu details (if any) and for keyboard shortcuts for opening menus and selecting menu items. DOWN-ARROW (TRIANGLE) BUTTONS Whenever you see a button with a down-arrow, or traingle pointing down, it means you can click and hold on this button to open a pop-up menu of choices. Clicking quickly on any down-arrow button wil automatically reselect the last selection without opening the submenu. SELECTED SPECIES Within most windows, only one species will be "active" at a time. And when playing SimLife, you usually play with one species at a time, checking it out in one window, spreading it in another, and modifying it in yet another. [PAGE: 16] Reselecting the species each time you jump to another window would be a hassle, so in most windows, when you select a species, it becomes the default or Selected Species for most other windows. The Selected Species stays selected until you pick another one. LOCAL SPECIES Selecting a species in some windows does not make that species the "official" Selected Species. The lucky plant or animal you choose in these windows becomes the center of attention for the current window only - they are local stars. Since we need to call the something, these are called the Local Species. Choosing or changing the Local Species in these windows does not change the Selected Species or Local Species in any other windows. WHAT IS: Warning: the following definitions are very short and simplified to give you just enough of a background to get started with SimLife. This is not a complete discussion of these topics, and they are dealt with primarily as they are used in SimLife, which is not a totally accurate representation of the real world. (In spite of this warning, I know I'll get some tersely reprimanding letters from biologists and other scientists for my casual treatment of these issues. I'm doing my best. So it's not perfect. So shoot me. I'll be taking notes for the upcoming manual for SimMartyr.) LIFE Defining life is not easy. (As if you'd believe me if I told you.) You'll get a different answer from everyone you ask and every book you read. But basically, life is a gene's way of making copies of itself. Some definitions of life include the requirement that organisms be composed of one or more cells. Is this chauvinism? If cells can be considered "building blocks," can we stretch the definition of cell to include building blocks made of computer code as well as protoplasm? Is this a subject that is likely to keep philosophers and science fiction afficionados occupied for years to come? [PAGE: 17] For the purposes of playing with SimLife, we'll define life as anything that exhibits lifelike behavior, including: adaptive behavior, self-replication and the ability to extract order from the environment. That's what life is. For answer to why it is or what it means, you'll have to look somewhere other than in a computer game. SPECIES A species is a group of related organisms or populations capable of interbreeding. ENVIRONMENT The environment, as used in SimLife, is the total external influence upon an organism. This includes the influences of climate, landscape, other life-forms and your computer. In fact, everything but the organism's genetic code. ECOLOGY Today, when most people hear the word ecology, they think of all the things that are going wrong, like pollution, endangered species and declining rainforests. But ecology, in our world as well as in SimLife, is also the "good stuff." Ecology is the study of the interrelationships of organisms and their environment. All the interrelationships, both good and bad. ECOSYSTEM An ecosystem is the combination of the environment and the life in it functioning together as an ecological unit in nature (or in computer). In SimLife, we will often refer to the world as an ecosystem, and use the words "world" and "ecosystem" interchangeably, since the SimLife world is such a small place compared to the world we live in. It is, however, possible to have two or more ecosystems running simultaneously in a SimLife world. [PAGE: 18] PLANTS AND ANIMALS In SimLife, there are two basic types of life-forms: plants and animals, which roughly correspond to plants and animals in our world, but are, of course, much simplified. All life wants to survive, individually and as a species. In order for an animal to survive as an individual, it must find food and eat without being eaten. To survive as a species, many of the individuals must also live long enough to find a mate and reproduce. The process of an animal finding food while simultaneously avoiding becoming food is called foraging. Foraging includes defense from predators, and is 90% of animal behavior. Finding a mate (in SimLife, at least) is almost a byproduct of foraging. Animals follow their foraging patterns looking for food and water and get distracted and sidetracked by the presence of the opposite sex. Plants, as well as animals, have behavior. They aren't as active or as noisy as animals, but they have to absorb nourishment, reproduce and spread their seeds. Plants don't have to forage for food; they get their nutrients from the soil, the atmosphere and the sun. In SimLife, areas with deeper soil have more nutrients for plants. Unlike animals, plants can't move around, but their seeds can. As plants and animals die, they decompose and enrich the soil (increase the soil depth). [PAGE: 19] FOOD, FOOD CHAINS AND FOOD WEBS FOOD Food is anything that can be consumed by the life in SimLife. All the food that plants need is found in sunlight, air and soil. Food for animals is more varied and includes plants and plant products, other animals, filter food and Ultra-Food. PLANTS When animals eat plants, they don't necessarily eat all the plant, or enough of the plant to kill it. They can nibble the leaves and the plant can grow new ones. Animals can also eat seeds. fruit and nectar from plants. FILTER FOOD Filter food is the microscopic and near-microscopic plants and animals in the water, air and soil that are eaten by filter food-eating animals. For example, some whales live on plankton, tiny plants and animals that live near the surface of the ocean. Filter food is alive and needs nourishment, and often sunlight, so it concentrates at the surface of the water, and near shorelines both in and out of the water. OTHER ANIMALS Animals can be predators and can eat other animals - if they can catch them. ULTRA-FOOD The closest thing to Ultra-Food that occurs in our world is the supermarket, where you can walk in and get any and all of the food you need. In SimLife, this food source looks like a shopping cart. It supplies an unlimited amount of whatever food an animal needs to any animal that approaches it. Ultra-Food is a useful tool for helping new ecosystems get started and for miraculously saving the lives of starving animals. [PAGE: 20] FOOD CHAINS A food chain is an arrangement of plants and animals in an ecosystem structured according to who eats whom. Usually with the eater shown above the eatee. Plants and filter food are usually considered the bottom of the chain, with herbivores (animals that eat plants) in the middle and predatory carnivores (animals that eat other animals) at the top. FOOD WEBS A food web is the combination of all the interactive food chains in an ecosystem. GENETICS AND GENES Genetics is the study of genes, the carriers of the genetic code that defines what we are and sets the limits of what we can become. The genetic code of plants and animals in SimLife is much shorter and simpler than for organisms in our world. Whereas our genes are encoded and stored in a complex molecule called DNA, SimLife genes are encoded and stored in something like a database file. While fewer and simpler, genes in SimLife are very powerful. One gene in a SimLife organism has the equivalent effect on that organism as hundreds or thousands of our genes have on us. CHROMOSOMES Chromosomes are long chains of genes. There can be many (thousands to millions) genes in a single chromosome. Different life-forms on earth have different amounts of chromosomes: Humans have 46, the fruit fly has 8, an onion has 16, a dog has 78, a goldfish has 94, and a rygarius has about 451. In SimLife, each chromosome consists of a single gene. [PAGE: 21] GENOMES, PROTOTYPES, POPULATIONS AND GENE POOLS GENOMES In SimLife, a genome is the set of all the genes in an individual organism. The genome will be different for each species and may vary from individual to individual within a species. PROTOTYPE GENOME Every species in SimLife has a "prototype" genome. This is the original or master set of genes - the genetic starting point when a species is created. Through evolution, individuals will vary from the prototype genome. Over time, individuals may vary so much from the prototype that they would no longer be able to successfully mate with it, and by definition become another species. POPULATION A population is a group of organisms from a single species. GENE POOLS A species' gene pool is the total of all the genes in a population. It represents all the genetic possibilities currently being explored by that population. A gene pool isn't an actual physical gathering of the genes - you don't take all the genes out of their organisms and mix'em up in a big vat or pool. It's just a way to think of the information contained in a while mess of genes at once, while they are spread out in their various organisms. EVOLUTION What most people think of as evolution - adaption of plants and animals to changes in their environment, physical changes in plants and animals, survival of the fittest, and new species evolving from older ones - are not evolution, they are the results of evolution. [PAGE: 22] Evolution, simply put, is the constantly ongoing process of changes in the gene pool over time. Nothing more, nothing less. It is the combination of many minute genetic changes over a long period of time that produces the noticeable results mentioned above. The mechanisms that bring about changes in the gene pool are natural selection, genetic drift, gene flow, mutation and recombination. In SimLife, evolution can occur by all of these naturally occurring mechanisms, plus one more. In SimLife, you can directly look at an organism's genes and physically change them. SPECIATION Speciation is the process of one species evolving into another (or group of other) species. It usually occurs when populations of the same species become physically separated and are subject to different environmental pressures. Over a long period of time, the gene pools in the two populations drift apart and eventually the two populations cannot interbreed (even if physically brought back together), and they become two different species. In SimLife, species will automatically change into new species as they diverge from the prototype (if you have AutoSpeciate turned on). These new species will retain the same icon and name - with the addition of the subname Version 2 - until you change them. You can also manually speciate - pick an individual and change it into another species. [PAGE: 23] TAKE A TOUR OF YOUR COMPUTERIZED ECOSYSTEM Make sure the game is installed properly, then start it up. See your machine- specific addendum for instructions. This tutorial assumes that you have amouse and know how to click, double-click and click-and-drag. If you don't have a mouse and/or don't know how to do these things, see the manual that came with your computer, and the SimLife machine-specific addendum. DECISIONS, DECISIONS Once the game has started, you will immediately be faced with the New Game Window and a decision: picking a scenario to play. Tutorial Meadows to Forests Predator & Prey The Longest Chain? The Roaches' Revenge Battle of The Sexes E Pluribus Unum Experimental Mode Each of the six scenarios present a different gaming and learning challenge. You can also play SimLife in Experimental Mode and set up your own scenarios and experiments. In addition, this window can launch you into the on-screen tutorial. (If you haven't already been through it, now would be a fine time for it.) [PAGE: 24] Click on (and highlight) the names of each of the scenarios - without clicking on the Play Scenario button. Read the descriptions of each scenario as they appear in the big box in the upper-right corner of the window. After you've looked them all over, click on Experimental Mode, then click on Play Scenario. We'll take a quick tour of the various menus and windows in SimLife, then build our own scenario. AND ON THE MENU TONIGHT... Take a moment and look at the Menu Bar. It will be at or near the top of the screen. As usual, these menus group similar types of commands together for easy access: all the file-related commands are in the File Menu and so on. Click and hold on each of the menus and take a quick look at the commands. Slide the pointer (while still holding down the mouse button) down to the differnt menu items. Notice that some items bring up submenus. Look these over, too. Check your machine-specific addendum for special menu details for your computer and keyboard shortcuts for opening menus and selecting menu items. HOW DASHING! The Dashboard is your control center. The Dashboard will differ more from computer to computer than anything else in SimLife. Depending on your computer, it may appear as either a separate moveable window at the bottom of the screen, or as a control bar at the top of the screen. It may or may not have the game clock included, and it may have some other slight variations. In addition, in some versions (including DOS and Windows), the Map and Edit Window Control Panels appear at the top of the screen along with the Dashboard. [PAGE: 25] MACINTOSH DASHBOARD DOS AND WINDOWS DASHBOARD, WITH EDIT WINDOW CONTROL PANEL DOS AND WINDOWS DASHBOARD, WITH MAP WINDOW CONTROL PANEL (skipped - later in the manual you will see what all the icons do! -RYGAR) [PAGE: 26] NOW YOU SEE IT... The left side of the Dashboard has lots of buttons and pictures. These are for controlling which plants and animals are visible in the Edit and Map Windows. A row of icons displays the differnt life-forms in SimLife, and how they will look in the Edit Window Click on the "A" button to display animals, and the "P" button to display plants. There are more plants and animals available than can be seen at one time. Click the right and left arrows to scroll through all of them. There is a little rectangle below each icon. Depending on your monitor, the rectangle will be a color, a shade or a symbol. This rectangle shows what the organism will look like in the Map Window. (Since the Map Window covers such a big area, the life-forms look so small that they can't be shown as icons or pictures, so they show up as small colored dots on color monitors and little symbols on black and white monitors.) What if two of the animals you want to use are the same color or symbol? You won't be able to tell them apart in the Map Window! Or what if you just don't like the color we chose for your favorite electronic pet? Your aesthetic sensibilities might be offended! Never fear: you have the power to change the color/shade/pattern of any organism. Click and hold on any rectangle to reveal a submenu of all the available colors/shades/patterns. (This is a super-secret hidden feature, [PAGE: 27] so don't tell anybody about it. This information isn't in anyone else's manual, just yours. We think you're special.) Below each rectangle is an On/Off button. Clicking these buttons toggles the display of each organism on and off in the Edit and Map Windows. Turning a plan or animal off in the Dashboard does not kill it or change it or remove it from the game or disk. It only turns the organism invisible. At the moment, other than the buttons changing from saying "on" to "off" and back again, nothing will happen since we haven't placed any of these life-forms in the world yet. Why not see everything all the time? It can be confusing to have hundreds or thousands of animals running around on your screen. Sometimes it's easiest to remove all the clutter and just look at one plant or animal (or a couple of each) at a time. A STAR IS BORN The middle section of the Dashboard displays and lets you choose the "Selected Species," which is, at least for a while, the star of the show. Often while playing with SimLife, you'll be concentrating on one species at a time, jumping from one window to another gathering information. If you select a species in one window, it is automatically selected for most of the other windows. This way you don't have to reselect the same organism every time you switch windows. The Selected Species can be chosen in most windows. To select it in the Dashboard, read on. GETTING DOWN Some buttons in SimLife open pop-up menus when you click and hold on them. These buttons are marked by a small down-arrow. The Dashboard has two of them, one near the middle, and one near the right side. [PAGE: 28] Depending on your computer, click or click and hold on the down-arrow button near the center of the Dashboard. You now see a menu of all the plants and animals in SimLife. To select an item, click on your choice or slide the cursor to it and let go. The name of the new Selected Species will appear in the middle of the Dashboard, and its icon will be highlighted in the Display section to the left. WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY BUTTONS As you may have noticed, many of the windows in SimLife have a lot of buttons, including the Dashboard. To help you remember what all the buttons do, we give you yet another button. Click and hold on the Help button. As long as you hold down the mouse button, you'll see a display of what every button in the Dashboard does. Most windows in SimLife have these Help buttons, and they all work the same way. Use them any time you want a reminder of what does what. Near the Help button are a couple of words. These words indicate the currently active tool in the Edit Window. We'll come back to this later. These Five buttons from Left to right means: Show Edit Window Show Map Show Biology Lab Show Climate Lab Scroll Species Left Census Window | Scroll Species Right PopUp Menu | | The currently selected Species | | | | Icon for a Species | | | | | Species Selection|PopUp Menu | | | | | | _|___|_________|_________________________|________|_______________|_________ |_V__ V_________V ________________________V________|__ ____________V_________| | | | | [~~] | | | | | | | | | V_ | | | | | | | | <-|-> | | [ ] | | | | | | | | | |__|| | | | | | _____| |___|___|__|__[__]__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|Animal |__|__|__|__|__| | | | | |__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|Sunfish | ________ |> || | | A | P | ^ | | | | | | | | | | |Ve^sion 1| |__HELP__| |_____| |___|___| | ON|ON|ON|ON|ON|ON|ON|ON|ON|ON|ON|__|______| Populate Tool____^___| | ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ~~^~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ^ ^ | | | | | | | | On/Off Switch for Species | | Pause | | | Display in Map and Edit | | | | | Windows | | | | Color Pop-Up Menu for | | | | Displaying Species in | | | | Map Window | | | | | Currently Selected Edit | See Plant Species | Window Tool See Animal Species Name of the Selected Species [PAGE: 29] HOLD ON A MINUTE The button on the far right of the Dashboard pauses the simulation. It works just like a pause button on a tape player. Click it to stop time. Click it again to start time. When you're done playing with it, leave the Pause off. YOU CAN GET THERE FROM HERE To the left of the Pause button are five window-opening buttons (from Left to Right) Open Edit Window, Open Map Window, Open Biology Lab, Open Climate Lab, Open Census Window Pop-up menu Notice that the Census Windows button has the down-arrow - that famous down- arrow that means a pop-up menu is hidden under it. Click and hold on the Census Windows button and look at the pop-up menu of all the Census Windows. Take a minute or two and click on each of these buttons, open all the windows, including all the Census Windows, take a quick look at them and then close them. Except for the Edit Window, they can all be closed by clicking in the close box in the upper-left corner of the window. As the windows appear, you'll notice a couple of things: * The Dashboard always stays on top of any other window - even active ones. * Only one Census Window can be displayed at once. [PAGE: 30] SEE THE WORLD Once you've had a chance to glimpse each of the windows, take a closer look at the Map Window. You can open or activate it either by clicking on the Map Window button on the Dashboard or by selecting Map in the Windows menu. This window shows you the entier world. If you screen is big enough, you can move the window around by clicking and dragging the title bar. You can close the Map Window by clicking in the Close Box in the upper-left corner. The main portion of this window is the map of your world. Somewhere in the map is a rectangle - the Edit Rectangle. It outlines the part of the map that is visible in the Edit Window (a closeup view of parts of the world that we'll be looking at soon). [PAGE: 31] CONTROL THE WORLD Note: as shown in this manual, the Map Window Control Panel is found at the bottom of the Map Window. On some computers, it will appear at the top of the screen, as part of the Dashboard. Don't worry, it's there somewhere. See your machine-specific addendum for details. At the bottom of the window is the Map Window Control Panel. It controls what information is seen in the map. In just about the middle of the Map Window Control Panel is a Help button. Click and hold on it to see an explanation of what all the other buttons do. The five buttons on the left toggle on and off displays of multi-level data. Each of these displays a range of information, like Altitude low to high. Only one of these can be on at a time. Just to the right of these buttons is a color key to help interpret the multi-level information. Go ahead and click on them. When you're done, leave the Altitude display on. To the right of the Help button are seven buttons that toggle on and off displays of single-level information. Any or all or none of these can be on at the same time. At this point, since the world is still very empty, the only button that will change anything in the display is the Water button. But go ahead and click on all of them if it makes you happy. At the far right of the Map Window Control Panel are two buttons that open two more windows, one to build worlds and one to populate them. [PAGE: 32] WORLD BUILDING 101 We will now design a world and build it. For this tutorial, any world will do, so go ahead and be rash in your upcoming decisions. Click on the Build World button in the Map Window Control Panel to open the World Design Window. The World Design Window has a number of sliders and buttons. Three of the sliders control the world's climate, controlling the average weather variation average temperature and average moisture. (In SimLife, moisture includes both humidity and precipitation.) Set these anywhere you want by clicking and sliding the arrows on each slider. Next, set the sliders for the amount of rivers and lakes you want and for the number of mountains you want. Over on the right are sliders that control how many artifacts will be spread around the world. In SimLife, artifacts are anything that can appear in the world that is not plant, animal, land, or water. The four artifacts are: * Toxins - poisons that negatively affect the health of organisms; * Mutagens - substances that increase the odds of mutation; [PAGE: 33] * Food Sources - this refers to Ultra-Food sources that supply any and all food that animals require; and * Barriers - barricades that SimLife organisms cannot cross. Set these four sliders anwhere you want. Next we'll pick a size for the world. There are four choices, each of which is best for different experiments. Keep in mind while choosing a world size that the larger the world, the longer it takes the computer to build it, and the slower the simulation will run. Choose the world size you want (I recommend small, but it's your world.) Now you get to name the new world. Highlight the words below New World Name: and type in whatever you want. Now, click on the Make It So button, and the world will be built, layer by layer, before your very eyes. If a dialog box or requester asks if you want to save the current world, click No. LIVE AND LET SIMLIVE Now we have a world. A barren, desolate, lonely world. Nothing to do, no one to talk to. Time to get a life - or better yet, a whole lot of it. Click on the Populate... button in the Map Window. The Populate Window lets us add plants and animals to the world singly or in large groups. [PAGE: 34] Click or click and hold on the down-arrow button in the Species box. A submenu of all the available plants and animals - just like the one in the Dashboard - appears. Slide the cursor until the llama is highlighted, then either click or release the mouse button. Now click on the up-arrow in the Number box until you reach 10 or 20. Click on the Add a Group button. Click on the On the Land Button Now click on Make It So. Ten (or however many you wanted) llamas are now alive and kicking in the new world. Now we have ten lonely llamas. THE LIFE OF THE PARTY Let's get this party moving and really put some life into it. Again, open the Populate Window by clicking on the Populate... button in the Map Window. Click and hold in the Species box, then slide the cursor to All Plants. Set the Number box to 25. Click on Add Scattered. Click on On the Land, then click Make It So. Twenty-five of each plant species will be scattered all over the world. Repeat the above process, but for Species, select All Animals. The world is now filled with life of all sorts. You can see the animals scurrying around in the Map Window, but let's take a closer look. Find the Edit Rectangle in the map. Drag it to a part of the world you want to explore, then double-click in it. [PAGE: 35] LOOK CLOSELY You are now in the Edit Window, ready for a close-up tour of the world. You can move the Edit Window around the screen by clicking and dragging the Title Bar. You can resize the window by clicking and draging the Resize Box in the lower-right corner. You cannot close the Edit Window. The main section of the window is the Display Area, where you can see varios plants, animals and artifacts, as well as land and water. [PAGE: 36] THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS. SO DOES THE LAND. Since the world is too large to show in the Edit Window all at once, you can scroll the window to show different parts of the map. Depending on your computer, there are a few ways to scroll. Check with your machine-specific addendum for more information on scrolling with your computer. There is a "joystick" for scrolling. Click or click and hold on any of the arrows to scroll the window in the arrow's direction. Note: On computers with small monitors the joystick will not be visible. Sorry In addition, if your Edit Window has Scroll Bars and Arrows, you can use them. If not, you can move the mouse to any edge or corner of the screen to scroll. However you do it, scroll around and look the world over. THE DISTINGUISHED PANEL Note: as shown in this manual, the Edit Window Control Panel is found on the left side of the Edit Window. On some computers, it will appear at the top of the screen, as part of the Dashboard. See your machine-specific addendum for details. Along the left-side of the Edit Window is the Edit Window Control Panel, filled with buttons and tools. Notice our old friend, the Help button. Click and hold on it to see a display of what everything does. At the top of the panel is the clock. It graphically shows the passing of day, night and the seasons. It also gives the Tick, Day and Year. Ticks are the smallest unit of time in SimLife. A tick is the time it takes an animal to move one step and do one thing. The actual time a tick takes depends on your computer's speed, the size of the world and the number of plants and animals currently living. ____ / \ / \ / \