(WARNING TO VIEWERS OF THIS THREAD: This post is mostly for the OP, so it may very possibly be boring for anyone but OP.)
Hey thanks for your post in my thread! it was thought provoking.
I figured you might be interested in some of the cool stuff I have come across when searching for inspiration for a game where you play an animal in a natural environment. For insight into why I have some of the links below: My main idea is a possibly procedurally generated simulation of creatures (not necessarily real animals like a deer) that have different abilities. They compete in the environment for survival, they have offspring which would spawn new animals in the world, and then at some point they die. When you have offspring, they have characteristics very similar to your own, but slightly varied.
So its a simulation of evolution. That player of the game would play as an animal. If they die, they are dead, game over, unless they have any living descendants in the game world. If you have multiple offspring, you have the choice of which one you want to take over. You can view its stats and decide.
So that’s the gist of my idea. My idea might be a lot more based around evolution and AI than yours, so many of these links are about those subjects too.
3D game lets you see through an animal’s eyeshttps://youtube.com/watch?v=rT3Iz5VA2eQ
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent website devoted to explaining evolution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeTssvexa9s&src_vid=mcAq9bmCeR0&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_467006
Evolution Simulators:
http://www.speciesgame.com/
http://www.freeworldgroup.com/games9/gameindex/bacteriasimulator2.htm
http://biologyinmotion.com/evol/
http://www.framsticks.com/
Redirect a whole bunch of good simulations
Get A-Life: Core Wars / Tierra
BoxCar2D
Some Games:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zauu3qBm-iA Wolf Quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlDDOdhMhks Fly Like A Bird 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7phu7m3zGAw Animal Planet Wild Lands
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftju_mJwWaU the paper fox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szbFRTgNoEs#t=67 “GRAV”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1_mHsX0SjQ&feature=youtu.be “shelter” badger game really cool
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCiJqfhgnlA shelter 2
http://store.steampowered.com/app/264710/ subnautica
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UksxcTQaBEE creatures in subnautica
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liXlZrtRuPI - TerraTech game - robot evolution…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Szr2NwA-cM Captain Forever - interesting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYDmdd0lv4o Captain Forever Remix
TWO SPECIES COMPETING AGAINST EACH OTHER coevolutionary genetic algorithm - Google Search coevolutionary genetic algorithm - Google Search
REDDIT THREADS (about AI mostly)
http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/1tttu7/a_neural_network_learns_to_play_video_games_by/ http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/ http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/2sxbas/some_students_gave_super_mario_an_ai_with/ http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/2dxp3p/example_games_of_players_teaching_ai_agents/ http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1tb1fm/create_vs_ai_hard_difficulty_via_machine_learning/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1y0s03/hacking_flappy_bird_with_machine_learning_hn_1/ http://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/2x5h50/google_develops_ai_that_is_entirely_self_learning/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2xcyrl/i_am_jürgen_schmidhuber_ama http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2u0unv/askml_where_do_you_get_your_daily_machine/ http://www.reddit.com/r/gameai/comments/2iwvyh/how_plausible_are_anns_for_game_ai_theoretically/ http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/12omad/would_getting_a_phd_in_the_artificial/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/15ccfi/i_am_a_msc_ai_and_i_am_currently_thinking_about/ http://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/2u73yv/whats_next_after_ga/ http://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/2x4yy1/google_deepmind_nature_paper_humanlevel_control http://www.reddit.com/r/elixir/comments/2ondcl/what_are_people_on_relixir_using_elixir_for/ http://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/2xnc73/eli5_how_exactly_is_computable_aixi_modelling_the/ http://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/y5mce/introduction_to_neuroevolution_an_alternative/ http://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1zwivq/psychologist_suffers_from_linear_thinking_and/ http://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/27fg2v/a_simple_idea_artificial_intelligence/ http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1qm0ue/guy_explains_the_ai_in_skyrim_and_makes_it/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SSBM/comments/2yznt1/can_melee_be_solved_with_ai/ http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/12nvbq/noam_chomsky_on_where_artificial_intelligence/
YOUTUBE VIDEOS (about AI mostly I think)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1esNfaTRFuk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgWQ-gPIvt4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M028vafB0l8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Str0Rdkxxo&list=PLEpwzRUUrDwhkSlQW2Yrlf4YTMYeN64t8
playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXd6CQRTNek - really good (last 3/4ths)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP-Ne1YeH6YK6Jvink87mNQ/videos geeuwd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m97_kL4ox0
https://www.youtube.com/user/PeterLNewton/videos super good
https://www.youtube.com/user/aicourses
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9pXDvrYYsHuDkauM2fLllQ/playlists
NEWS STORIES http://www.proton4.com/artificial-intelligence/google-ai-now-self-learning/
AI WEBSITES
http://ai-jam.com/
http://rednuht.org/genetic_cars_2/
More coming…