Snow quoted as saying "I made an oopsie."

2310 (BST) - London, England.

In a shocking lavender-scented turn of events tonight (30 July), the continent of Things That Are Fun (1,1,1:c) came into possession of prohibited armaments and, with a declaration of "what does this button do?", unleashed a wave of pink-tinted destruction upon an unsuspecting universe.

"It was a bit of a cock-up, really" says Snow, the rakish head of state. "I thought it would be lulzy, but it turned out to be what our defense department are calling an 'epic fail'."

Questioned about foreign policy and possible restitution, Snow only mentioned that he will not be reimbursing any lost resources and that "them buggers shouldn't be hoarding so much anyway, I mean, surely they should have spent it on something useful?" There was some frantic movement at this point as aides nudged a pile of suspicious magazines further under the podium.

"You must admit though, the colours are pretty."

Further developments as they come in.

Comments (11)

We'd like to draw attention to the fact that this round is a Beta round, the first Beta round for a number of years, and the first such round since neonDragon stopped developing Evolution.

What does this mean for me?

There's nothing to worry about. The fact that this round is Beta simply acknowledges the possibility of minor game-altering incidents that may or may not affect your game-plan.

What kind of 'game-altering incidents'...?

Unfortunately, it is not possible to know for sure until such an incident occurred. However, it would likely be something minor such as: Fleet Misplacement... or perhaps just universal amnesia of your continent's scientists resulting in the loss of everything that you had researched. However, there is no chance that there could be an incident as serious as complete erasure of all foru......... oh dear, we have already done that haven't we? In that case, who knows. Giddy up.

Comments (6)

The reset will of course be done on Sunday, at roughly 23:01 UTC.

There has been no discussion between any of the admins of changes to be made to creature stats or starting resources, but if any changes are to be made, you will be informed before the reset.

-The Admins.

Comments (9)

There will be a reset in 2 weeks.

We will post details in a week of what will happen.

-The Admins.

Comments (16)

It appears that the few we'd dealt with before weren't isolated incidents.

We will be going through the entire player bases inventory fixing any super boosted creatures and R&D.

-The Admins.

Comments (51)

Hi all,

As you have hopefully noticed by now most of your suggested fixes have been completed. It has been decided that this is now the end of work on Evolution 5 and that unless something goes very pear shaped there will be no further development on the game.

We'd like to thank you all for your support over the years.

-The Admins

Comments (24)

Well, as we were clearing out old forums (planetary ones), it seems we have accidentally the whole forum. Everything is lost and there is no way to recover it. :(

Our bad and we're sorry for the loss of information for everyone. But on the up side, the forums are pretty fast now.

-The Admins.

Comments (29)

Hi all,

It has been decided, on balance, that it does not make sense for development to continue on Evolution.

We are however having one last big bug-fixing session before calling it a day. We'd like you to make known to us any small problems with the game that can be resolved without too much effort. Details here.

To the three people who donated towards a new version of Evolution totalling £89: Thank you for your support, but of course if you would like your donations returned as agreed then do PM me over at (1,1,2:a) and i'll sort it out for you.

We *will* keep Evolution online, for as long as people want to play it. This does, as always, require that the server that runs the game is paid for. To that end, we will possibly place a donation-o-meter on the Overview page so that it is clear to everyone when the game is about to fall off the face of the earth. A higher population in the game would mean higher advertising revenue and more donations -- but this is all entirely up to the players. There is no advertising happening for Evolution or any other 'official' efforts to bring in more players.

Thanks,
neonDragon

Comments (22)

Hi all,

As you no doubt noticed the last 24 hours have been a bit topsy turvy for Evolution. In summary the most recent server invoice has now been paid (for which many thanks go out to those that have been donating) and as such Evo will remain online for the moment.

The round will continue where it left off as if no ticks have passed at 00:00 GMT 02/03/2010.

As an aside, for those that are doing so, we ask that you please turn off any adblockers you may be using and remind those that have donated, if you wish to turn off ads you can do so in your profile settings.

Remember, if you want Evolution to stay online, we need your support!.

-The Admins.

Comments (3)

Hi all,

As many of you know, I've been making Evolution in my spare time since around 2002, when I was 15 years old. In 2004, I went to university. I am now in 2010 nearing the end of university.

It has always been a hobby, one which I put most of the work into before attending university. There have been few significant changes since then. There has been no advertising, and so the only ways that people have found the game have been via word of mouth. Consequently, there has never been a huge number of players.

When Evolution was linked to in the forums of sundayleague.com, and hit the front page on digg.com, there was an influx of new players. Along with this came an increase in the hosting requirements of the game. I was fortunate enough for some players to suggest that I accept donations for Evolution, and to help me find the right equipment to run the game properly from a datacentre instead of the previous location of under my desk. We have been running from a single server ever since.

Recently, the game's population has fallen to pre-sundayleague/digg levels. We're about back to where we were before that publicity happened. Unfortunately, along with this, advertising revenue on the site has fallen to practically zero, and to put it bluntly, no-one has made a donation for months. Evolution is now not paying for itself, and the current server has only been able to stay online for these past few months due to proceeds from the gaming servers I run at games.neondragon.net.

This means that a choice has to be made. There are two options:

1. To switch Evolution off. It doesn't make sense for me to pay for something myself that I am not developing.
2. To resume development of Evolution and to transform it into a product capable of earning profit.

Option 1 is fairly self-explanatory, and I would prefer not to take that option given the choice. Option 2 means that after university I would be able to work as a developer as my full-time job, rather than as just a hobby.

I already have a plan for Evolution that I am yet to implement. The first thing I want to do is to 'finish' Evolution 5. I want to re-launch it as a more complete game, along with advertising on other sites to get players in and ways for the game to earn enough money to keep it running.

Providing that works, I then want to work on a new, more modern version. There are many new possibilities for Evolution now, in 2010, than there were when I first started work on the game, and it would be great to be able to take advantage of them.

If I am to launch a finished Evolution 5, I need new computer equipment to do so. I've sold all old equipment that is no longer of use, however, ~£10,000 is still required to purchase appropriate server equipment and to have it put in a datacentre for a few months -- hopefully long enough for things to take off to a level where those servers continue being paid for. The current game has very few players, and at its peak had only about 2000 daily players. I am expecting to be able to populate a new version with an order of magnitude more players than that -- and this is why far more computer equipment is required than for the existing game. It would be disastrous to launch a new game on hardware that fell over as soon as things started to become popular -- it has to be the bare minimum that allows rapid expansion in future.

Without the equipment I won't realistically be able to go ahead with taking Evolution forward as a professional game. Here's how you can help:

• If you have or are able to get me server equipment for free or a discount, please PM me at (1,1,2:a) so that we can discuss it. I'm looking for 1 or 2 unit rackmount systems.
• If you are able to make a donation towards new equipment and other costs, no matter how small, please either use the Donate button at the top of the page, or PM me at (1,1,2:a) to discuss alternative methods of donating. If I do not use these donations to buy equipment and release a new game, I will refund them -- so nothing you give will go to waste. Every little helps.

If anyone wishes to ask me further questions before making any kind of donation, please PM me at (1,1,2:a) or send an email to . I think that'd it'd be fun to keep working on games... and I think that everyone here would enjoy being part of it too. Lets make it happen. :)

Thanks,

neonDragon

Comments (26)