Do you know of a decent application that simulates the evolutionary process? I find Framsticks to be very unstable (and a bit hard to understand), and Evolites not transparent enough. Any suggestions?
E.V.O. Search for Eden for the Super Nintendo was a pretty fun action/platformer where you level up your character by ‘evolving’ different parts to be more adaptive to the environment and enemies - the first domain was the ocean, then it went into lizardhood, including an optional flying segment, then bipedals. You got a special ending if you actually evolved to homo sapiens 
Very, very accurate! Except not really.
If you’re looking for something less game-like, then are you sure you didn’t mean to start this thread in CS or GQ? 
Not really what I had in mind, especially since I don’t have Nintendo. 
I was looking for something a bit more scientific and less game like. Something wherein simulated creatures experience actual genetic drift and adapt to the simulator’s evironment.
I have Sim Life. I can’t stands it.
That sounds more like an intelligent design simulator. With a true evolution simulator, you wouldn’t know what you were going to get next, nor whether it would be good or bad. Of course, you also wouldn’t be able to model creatures anywhere near as complex as real-world bacteria, much less animals.
All I can think of is El-Fish.
There’s a fun little Flash game called Pandemic 2 in which you have to design an infection that decimates the earth’s population. Evolution is not really modeled, however, since you simply earn “evolution” points, which you then spend on other traits such as drug resistance, different symptoms, etc. It’s damn fun, though! 
I can recall reading / watching about research projects that involved evolution. (here’s one, for example).
One I vaguely recall was similar to the link, where predetermined shapes (like meccano, so that you’d be able to actually build whatever it came up with) were available for the goal of locomotion. IIRC is invented some really wacky ways of moving.
Check out Gene Pool by Jeff Ventrella.
I tried it but for some reason I couldn’t see any of the text in the menu boxes, so I couldn’t control any settings.
SimEarth and SimLife fall along those lines though neither are very good games. SimLife is more about environmental pressures than evolution but the principles are in there. SimEarth… well it’s like Spore for a planet and after forming the continents you can start developing life.
I’ve played both long ago. Not extremely fun indeed, IMO, and very old (I think I liked better SimEarth, all things considered). I’ve also played another (quite old too) that was simply called “Evolution” if I remember correctly. I don’t remember clearly if it was any good, but I couldn’t manage to have any of my species surviving, so I gave up after a dozen games or so.
I too would be interested in such a game.
What do you mean by “very old”? It had VGA graphics. I might have given you a pass if it was CGA only but very old in computer games needs to be reserved for things that required computer time at your college overnight to play. Or at least stuff that I didn’t buy when it was new.
There’s this obscure little game by some Wright guy that’s coming out soon. You’ve probably never heard of it, though- Spear or something?
(if you can’t tell, I’m being sarcastic)
Yeah, but you kind of elucidated my thoughts on the subject.
There is a game called Creatures (dubbed an “artificial life program”) which isn’t quite evolution, but it runs of a sort of “digital DNA” that changes slightly throughout different generations. The little fuzzy things you own aren’t going to become totally different creatures over time, but their behavior, texture, and minor features change over time.
Wikipedia link:
Also, here’s a link to a list of alife programs, you might find one you like the look of.
I used what seems to be the current common standards : old being maybe more than 3 years old, and very old maybe more than 8 years old.
Note that being myself 43, I personally perceive a 8 yo game as rather recent. But it doesn’t fit the perception of the wide majority of players, as far as I can tell reading message boards and such. So, knowing that most people wouldn’t even consider playing a game published in 2000, I adapt my comments, and warn them that the game is “old”. Maybe I’m erring too much in this direction for the SDMB, which has a more mature population.
I’ve played this one too. How on earth could you prevent the adorable idiot suckers from offing themselves all the time? I never found out.
Daniel Dennett (in the book ‘Freedom Evolves’) refers to a (presumably quite aged) computer program which was a grid with fixed rules of behaviour for whether certain clumps of squares would be ‘on’ or ‘off’ and would affect those around them - when viewed on a larger scale it was creepily reminiscent of life developing.
Does anyone know its name?
(apologies if it’s already been linked to…)
It’s called Conway’s game of life. It’s discussed at length in the book “A New Kind of Science” by Wolfram.
Karl Sims did some of the most famous work in this area. I don’t know whether he ever released anything people could play with though. Videos here.
Sorry, I whooshed you a bit there (though really I have a hard time describing anything released for Windows 95 and up as “very old”). I do find the tendency of gamers to think on such short time frames as silly but not enough to actually get worked up over it.