Download Primordial Life 2.0

Primordial Life 2.0 is a shareware artificial life screen saver that runs under Windows 95 and Windows NT. Your your screen becomes a world in which living biots can survive and multiply. The sunlight that shines down upon this world is transformed into energy by biots with green leaves. But the world is not that simple. There are predator biots with red teeth that can feed on green leafed biots. Biots are not without a defense, however. Using blue shields, biots can defend against the red menace. Perhaps even more clever, biots with white lines can inject their genetic code into others, surviving by getting other biots to reproduce for them!

Thousands of biot shapes are possible. Each biot contains genetic code that describes how to build it. Over time, the most fit biots gain enough energy to reproduce. When they do, they attempt to copy their genetic code. Unfortunately, crossover and mutations can be introduced which results in children that are somewhat different than their parents. They may chose to put all their energy into one child, or divide it among as many as eight. In this manner, evolution takes place over many generations.

If you think you might like watching evolution happen in front of your eyes, this is the screen saver for you! You might also enjoy watching biots battle, or just watching interesting shapes emerge. I have spent hours watching the dynamics of cumulative selection.

Installation Instructions:

  1. Create a temporary directory and download PrimLife.exe (104 KB) into it.
  2. Run PrimLife.exe (use the "Run" of the Start Menu) and it will unzip into 3 files.
  3. Run INSTALL.EXE from the same directory.
  4. Now and select Primordial Life 2 as your screen saver!
  5. Don't forget to delete the temporary directory.

Known Bugs:

Primordial Life may leave pixel trails on your screen if you own a Matrox Millenium card or a Diamond Stealth card. Matrox recommends you turn GDI acceleration off to make Primordial Life work properly. You may also find that changing the number of display colors also reduces or eliminates the problem.