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Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox

A toy ecosystem with fully simulated genetics and evolution. · By Pill Bug Interactive

What are you System Specifications? Sticky

A topic by Pill Bug Interactive created Mar 12, 2017 Views: 1,143 Replies: 4
Viewing posts 1 to 3
Developer

As I am preparing to form a company to sell Intelligent Design I'm realising this is going to start costing me a bit of money. For that reason I'm stopping giving away the game for free. I genuinely think the game I've made is worth paying for with the improvements I've made over the past few months, the free version was devaluing it I think.

I want to make sure people who don't have a PC powerful enough won't waste their money, so I need a realistic minimum system specification.

At the moment I've just put my system spec because I know the performance is fine on my system. However I'm sure it will run on lower spec than mine. If you guys could help me with an idea of what systems you run I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks

Sean

Agree the game is worth something. I got it via Groupees bundle. Playing on linux (lubuntu 16.10 x64) in a HP Pavilion g7 laptop with 240Gb SSD, 8Gb ram, AMD A6 Vision quad 1.5Ghz (== 6520G graphics) plays OK (== playable) at 1600x900 (17" lcd native rez) choosing "fastest" setting in start up dialog.

Thanks and Good Luck!

Developer

Thanks!

From my main machine (linux), two outputs just in case the 1st is simply too much information:

Shorter output:

~ $ inxi -zb
System: Host: drgnlaptop Kernel: 4.4.0-62-generic x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Cinnamon 3.2.7
Distro: Linux Mint 18.1 Serena
Machine: System: Acer (portable) product: Predator G5-793 v: V1.04
Mobo: Acer model: Challenger2C_SKS v: V1.04 Bios: Insyde v: V1.04 date: 09/19/2016
CPU: Quad core Intel Core i7-6700HQ (-HT-MCP-) speed/max: 799/3500 MHz
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA Device 1c60
Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: nvidia (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1920x1080@75.00hz
GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 1060/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 378.09
Network: Card-1: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter driver: ath10k_pci
Card-2: Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2400 Gigabit Ethernet Controller driver: alx
Card-3: Atheros
Drives: HDD Total Size: 768.2GB (56.5% used)
Info: Processes: 333 Uptime: 10 days Memory: 8746.6/16000.2MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.2.35

Longer output and more details (including game performance):

~ $ inxi -zbMSCSMD -xGI -xxIS
System: Host: drgnlaptop Kernel: 4.4.0-62-generic x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 5.4.0)
Desktop: Cinnamon 3.2.7 (Gtk 2.24.30) dm: mdm Distro: Linux Mint 18.1 Serena
Machine: System: Acer (portable) product: Predator G5-793 v: V1.04 Chassis: type: 10
Mobo: Acer model: Challenger2C_SKS v: V1.04 Bios: Insyde v: V1.04 date: 09/19/2016
CPU: Quad core Intel Core i7-6700HQ (-HT-MCP-) cache: 6144 KB
flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 20735
clock speeds: min/max: 800/3500 MHz 1: 818 MHz 2: 893 MHz 3: 833 MHz 4: 840 MHz 5: 800 MHz 6: 891 MHz
7: 800 MHz 8: 871 MHz
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA Device 1c60 bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:1c60
Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: nvidia (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1920x1080@75.00hz
GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 1060/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 378.09 Direct Rendering: Yes
Network: Card-1: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
driver: ath10k_pci bus-ID: 06:00.0 chip-ID: 168c:003e
Card-2: Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2400 Gigabit Ethernet Controller
driver: alx port: 3000 bus-ID: 0b:00.0 chip-ID: 1969:e0a1
Card-3: Atheros usb-ID: 001-004 chip-ID: 0cf3:e300
Drives: HDD Total Size: 768.2GB (56.5% used)
ID-1: /dev/sda model: SAMSUNG_MZNLN256 size: 256.1GB serial: S2SVNX0H918015 temp: 48C
ID-2: /dev/sdb model: Crucial_CT512M55 size: 512.1GB serial: 14360D917055 temp: 40C
Info: Processes: 337 Uptime: 10 days Memory: 8769.5/16000.2MB
Init: systemd v: 229 runlevel: 5 default: 2 Gcc sys: 5.4.0 alt: 4.6/4.7/4.8/4.9
Client: Shell (bash 4.3.461 running in gnome-terminal-) inxi: 2.2.35

Note, if someone else is going to run the same (inxi is awesome by the way), the -z flag says to sanitize the output. While not actually a concern, you'll note disk info includes serial number so you can strip that if you're truly paranoid.

From a performance perspective, the machine isn't even close to breaking a sweat, graphics chip is barely running at 1920x1080 resolution, highest quality settings in unity launcher. Even whipping the mouse around doesn't spike CPU or GPU to more than 30% (with things running in the background keeping multiple cores at ~10%). Process info (threads, memory stats, etc.) is below, along with current running time:

~ $ grep "^Threads\|^Vm\|^Name" /proc/`pgrep intelligentDesi`/status
Name:    intelligentDesi
VmPeak:     4709548 kB
VmSize:     4389988 kB
VmLck:           0 kB
VmPin:           0 kB
VmHWM:     1038552 kB
VmRSS:      975396 kB
VmData:     3849052 kB
VmStk:         164 kB
VmExe:       26384 kB
VmLib:       93720 kB
VmPTE:        2808 kB
VmPMD:          32 kB
VmSwap:           0 kB
Threads:    52

~ $ ps -p `pgrep intelligentDesi` -o etime=
   01:23:36

I got it in a groupees bundle, didn't actually start playing it until very recently (4k+ games in the steam library does that), but enjoying myself playing it. I'll review once it hits steam as well, it's an interesting diversion of a game. I'll likely end up grabbing a copy for the kids computer too, it's quite family friendly and the genetics is far simpler to deal with than Crazy Plant Shop, while actually teaching more (IMHO) about how natural selection works in a microcosim.

Developer

Thanks for the data and kind comments. Early reviews are going to make or break steam success so thanks!