So I'm gonna try my hand at making an evolution simulator.

…And no, it's not gonna be a Spore clone.

User input will be pretty basic. You'll pretty much just define the environments and set it in motion.

When FPS starts to drop to an unreasonable level, which it undoubtedly will with hundreds of organisms crawling around, the sim will kill off 50% of the population. But it'll give the player a choice as to what kills this 50%, whether it's a flood or asteroid or whatever. This choice will determine exactly which organisms die off during this mass extinction, thus changing the course of evolution.

I toyed around with the idea of creating a DNA-like code for the organisms that actually determines their traits, but I think actually creating a meaningful organism-defining code that can mutate randomly to result in random new features would be too difficult. Not to mention that if I did somehow get something like that working, it'd probably take way too long for notable changes to occur.

Instead, there will just be a variety of random mutations that a new organism might be born with. The random mutations will have prerequisites though, which will prevent a basic cell-like organism from suddenly sprouting advanced eyes or something.