That depends on what sort of lifestyle they have, no?
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Quite true, and I think having something like hazardous lava on a terrain should probably not be a problem? I’m not sure if having damaging collision on objects (and especially more “grabbing” effects) could be done just as cheap. I don’t know how that would work with the planned LOD system, so I am afraid I am the wrong person to ask.
Random suggestion: maybe you can keep your “current version” (of the whole system as you envision it) in something like google docs file I could link people to?
So I agree with your principle, but I ask again, why not just:
“Vegetation is defined as Sessile (and inactive) organisms.”
It covers all of your cases and is far simpler to understand and compute. It also does not leave gaps and does not have to be updated with any new metabolisms added.
I also don’t think that being the primary producer is a necessary distinction unless you want to exclude filter feeders in some cases.
This is for naming individual species, yes? We don’t have such a system yet for naming organisms in the existing game (or plan). It could be helpful for giving fast information to players, but I don’t immediately see a practical purpose for this. I also don’t see this being very relevant for classifying vegetation types, because in my opinion that should be focused much more on the morphology of the organism. What was your plan with these again?
Most of your names make sense though.
I would argue this kind of thing only makes sense to distinguish if there is an actual mechanical difference (implemented in Thrive) between them.
I don’t immediately see this term mentioned in the literature outside geology in a non-biological context. Does this need to be explicitly separated from other aquatic biomes, other than just with the requirements of its sub-groups?
Random thought: should this both just be a “reef vegetation classification” in a sunlit floor versus a sunless floor terrain/climate region?
I would say under my definition, this is complex vegetation.
Also some comments on a previous comment of yours that I ended up accidentally writing (honestly not sure which I commented on before). Probably some things you’ve already altered since:
At first look through, these do all make sense to me.
First I want to say that the vast majority of this makes good sense to me, so I think it’s a good basis. I’m just going to pick at some individual aspects within it.
Does this make sense as being part of the vegetation classification? Or should this be evident from the combination of climate and the “forest” classification?
Is this typically present over a large enough area that you’d classify a whole region as this? Or is it more of a semi-local feature within a forest region?
This does not quite fit my understanding of an old-growth forest, which has different definitions, but is usually just defined as a forest of any type that has not been disturbed by human activity or extreme natural events for a long time.
Same as with Cloud Forest: can this apply to a whole region?
Having some trouble seeing what you mean by this? Tons of forests have a lot of moss in them, including Cloud Forests.
Makes sense to make this distinction if you’re playing as a plant, but I’m not sure if this should be in the vegetation classification, or somewhere else.
The large group of Heterotrophic species would themselves probably be aware, right? I think the example here was penguin colonies?
(Which actually makes me question whether this makes sense to define again, since they’ll cover a relatively small area. Maybe if this is a very large area which does not have major vegetation but does have many colonies (plural) spread across it)
And as you said later, I think being within the soil underground is solidly part of the same terrestrial ecosystem/biome. I don’t think we’d separate ants and moles into a separate biome. With subterranean biomes I am more thinking of large caverns, if we have those.
I think using terms for both terrestrial and aquatic vegetation makes sense when there is clear practical overlap.
I like floating things. I really hope we can get this type of life in the game. And if it does, I think this is a good candidate for splitting into multiple types based on what kind of (and amount of) floating vegetation there is.
After all, if you have enough large plants floating in the water, that actually opens up miches for terrestrial species on the water.
This makes sense as a separate question to consider. For example, I can see already two different types here:
- Traits that could apply to whole large regions. (for example tempestuous)
- Those that exist in the region but only pop up at specific spots within it. (f.e. geologic activity, oases)
- Highly local traits that might only exist in one spot within a region. (f.e. a singular volcanic area, a specific lake)
How can the world system handle this? How should this affect auto-evo?
I’ll have to discuss with HyperbolicHadron whenever they’re around.
But as I think I said before, I am hoping we can set auto-evo in such a way that a region’s calculations can also take in certain traits only existing in part of a region. (and having the in-game spawning system using the results appropriately)
I would say yes.
I’ve always been an advocate of making these classification entirely based on the morphology of the organisms, without considering their metabolism.
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Wouldn’t this create area simulation units smaller than regions, the supposed smallest area unit?
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So, what I am hoping for is approximating the auto-evo effect of smaller areas within the simulation of larger regions. For example if 50% of the land in a region has flooded soil, maybe the region can make 50% of the sunlight (miches) only available to plants that can survive flooded soil. Then in-game the spawning system can place plants in the correct places relative to terrain features.
To some degree I think this will be necessary anyway. For example, if a region is calculated to have 80% treecover, there’s going to be some spots without trees, and that should affect auto-evo for animals.
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This will still allow for transitional areas between those main % zones right?
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Barrens is a term for areas that don’t have vascular (medium or hard) vegetation. In water, the word barrens is not used when large amounts or nutrients are flowing in from other places, or when dealing with filter feeders. Allochtononous Zone seems to be the common name for an Ocean Biome without Seaweed or Seagrass. I am open to alternatives, but “Barrens” just didn’t seem right.
That is more or less what I was going for. Photic is sunlit floor and Deep Water is sunless floor. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the question.
I was trying to distinguish “Hard” from “Medium or Soft”, but not “Herbaceous” or “Bryophyte”. It needs work.
The very first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry you linked MENTIONS multi-layered canopies.
" An old-growth forest [a] or primary forest is a forest that has developed over a long period of time without disturbance. Due to this, old-growth forests exhibit unique ecological features.[1] The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations defines primary forests as naturally regenerated forests of native tree species where there are no clearly visible indications of human activity and the ecological processes are not significantly disturbed. One-third (34 percent) of the world’s forests are primary forests.[2] Old-growth features include diverse tree-related structures that provide diverse wildlife habitats that increases the biodiversity of the forested ecosystem. belgium or first-growth forests are old-growth forests that have never been logged. The concept of diverse tree structure includes multi-layered canopies and canopy gaps, greatly varying tree heights and diameters, and diverse tree species and classes and sizes of belgium debris."
The Thrive Developer Wiki lists Cloud Forests, so I listed Cloud Forests, and then tried to add other subtypes. But I think you might be right.
The system I suggested is based on 2 most common plant types. That was “What do you call a biome where the two most numerous plants are a Tree and a Bryophyte”, but perhaps that is not needed.
Actually, it was “Pinniped and Seabird” (seals, walruses, sea lions, pelicans, puffins, etc.). It was based on MT2.2 from International Union for Conservation of Nature Global Ecosystem Typology, because they alter the local plant growth and niches available.
The general idea was, in the later space stage, when you discover other world filled with vegetation that grew under a different color sun than your own, you would need to know it requires a different color light than you are use to growing plants under to successfully grow it somewhere else. Assuming that gets implemented later on.
I thought that, if 2 very different groups of vegetation (say Plants and Fungi) appear on your planet, of if, in the later space stage, you find a planet whose vegetation is very different from yours, you might want a way to classify “Kingdoms” of vegetation.
You are probably right.
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There doesn’t seem to be a block of colour options for the players that play with photosynthesis organelles, so I wouldn’t count on this until this is confirmed as something planned.
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After further contemplation some of your comments, I have further edited my double post the following ways:
- I added notes a few places that are in need of further discussion (including about the # of Climates, my Soil System suggestion, the fact that Mossy (Hard name here) is probably not needed, an the fact that, in general, my suggestions were ment to classify a smaller scale than I think you are looking for)
- I am now defining Vegetation as: Sessile Organism or Floating Organisms with no powered propulsion
- I have moved Gallery Forest and Cloud (biome) to “Additional Traits”. I am leaving Old Growth Forest where it is as it is for now.
- I have redone Aquatic Vegetation. This includes:
- Combining the two Reef categories
- Moving Planktonic System to Simple Vegetation
- Adding Desolate Water: A vast area of uninhabited water
- Clarifying Allochthonous Energy Zone:, which I have redefined: A Biome whose primary production energy and/or nutrition comes from outside of the Biome. (I didn’t realize before that cutting the word Energy made it a geological term)
- Redefining Animal Forest as: Dominated by Heterotrophic Vegetation that do not meet the criteria of a Reef and a lack of Autotrophic Vegetation. (I realize that you will probably still see this one as unnecessary, but I cannot shake the feeling that these should be separate from Herblands and other Forests)
- Suggesting an alternative to Open Depths; Organic Fall Zone:: A biome where organic material regularly falls down from above
Also, per your suggestion:
I hope I am doing that right. It is my first time using Google Docs.
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Maybe “suspended” is a better term here?
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i found this, might be useful for further classifying vegetation
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I think we already have developed the distinctions for those plant categories?
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Hmmm, do you think this still fully fits? I’m not sure if it will be possible, but a visually large amount of non-vascular vegetation might not look so barren.
I would actually love to know where you found that term, because I only see it in a geological context. Do we need an umbrella term for this at all? I imagine in-game we would not show Allochtononous Zone - algal bloom, but just algal bloom.
What you are talking about seemed like a unified biome name combining life forms and environmental conditions. I was talking more about a separation between life and climate/terrain like we discussed for terrestrial biomes.
Yes, that’s an example of traits an old-growth forest can have. But that depends on what type of forest it actually is. This wikipedia page is comparing it against human-managed forests, which often have trees all at the same height because they were all cut down and re-planted at the same time before.
The vast majority of forests in-game are going to be old-growth in-game (until society stages). Because it mostly just means “natural forest that has not been recently disturbed by humans or other massive catastrophies”.
Ah, this makes more sense now. Yes, allochtonous basically means “not from here”. Often used in geology for “allochtonous rocks” that are in a rock layer, but came from elsewhere. But allochtonous energy makes sense, though obviously this is a descriptive term for the environment. Any place that has sunlight, vents, or sufficient ferrous iron, would be autochtonous instead.
Coming back to your biomes: this is good for developer understanding of how ecosystems work. But do you personally think this should be shown in-game? If so, where?
(Also fun: you can imagine this also applying to a cave ecosystem that is fed by organic material falling in from above.
I can access it, so this works! I will point any developer that wants to work on the biome system to this document for pointers.
Looks like the only issue here is google docs not taking the ”markdown” formatting you copied. This does appear to have an easy solution.
Hmmmm, “suspended” sounds more scientifically specific but I think “floating” also works for most cases and is more evocative for players?
But this does make me realise: there are some separate possibilities here:
- Suspended in the air.
- Floating at the surface of the water.
- Suspended in the water.
I was mainly thinking of the first two at first, but number 3 is also a thing. We only indirectly discussed it when talking about clouds of microbes.
I think I came across this before. I think it’s a good example of the type of classification we want, though its exact criteria, categories and level of detail might not be what fits our needs.
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Would it be possible to have both suspended and floating occur as descriptive terms then or would we only wish to have one make it into the game?
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this book talks about each single lifeform classification for plants as of my knowledge. might be useful.
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Where/How did you find this?
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It is the main reference used on the wikipedia’s plant life form article. the current link on wikipedia is broken tho, so i had to search on wayback machine
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It’s about saying: this area has no Vegetation but still supports life. Similar to Barrens in that regard, except the Aquatic equivalent, except I think one can work for other areas.
And I immagine we would not show Barrens -Desert, just Desert. I still defined Desert as a type of Barrens.
After further though, do Barrens and Allochtonus need to be Super Types like Subterranean and Aquatic?
Terrain
- Terrestrial
- Aquatic
- Wetland
- Coastal
- Subterranean
- Aquatic Subterranean
- Barrens
- Allochtonus Energy
- Atmospheric
- Magmatic
Edit: Actually, no, that looks weird. I think the answer is: just use the subtype name?
Are you referring to the Forum formatting? Because I figured out a long time age not to post a heavily formatted document without putting it in forum format first. Posting regular bulletins always gets very messed up, and the default bold does not work, so I have to manually change it every time. That is how it looks on my computer, because that is the easiest way to post it here.
Would the subtype “Multiple-Layered Canopy Forest” work better for you? Or is it more that Social stages will need a “Managed” subtype, and before that all will be Multi-Layered Canopies?
I haven’t tried to add in Anthropogenic Biomes, nor Polluted or Destroyed Biomes, as of yet, because I wanted to work out the kinks with natural biomes first, and build off of that. Because changes in how natural biome are done will mean changes in how Anthropogenic biomes are done.
Edit: I have realized I was misunderstanding how many Aware/Awake generations it takes for a Forest to become “Old”, this clearly needs a reverse subtype for Social stage+.
Yeah, 1 thing I don’t like about Wikipedia, it is not easy to check their references.
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Honestly it seems to me like the old growth / multiple layer canopy forest would be the default forest type and “one layer canopy” would only come about along with civilizations
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I thought it might take a few generations to develope Multi-Layered Canopies. Maybe a “Young Forest” subtype? How many organism generations from when trees evolve to when they are Multi-Layered do you think it would take? Cause what I read did not sound like 1. But I could be wrong.
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The problem is a single round in aware/awakening would still be at least a good few dozen thousand years, which is easily enough for a young forest to become a MLC/OG forest.
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