Functional "Nose"

So, noses… It’s hard to visualize a sense of smell, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t implement it. There are a lot of ways to show a sense of smell visually, one of them would be to give each creature colored trails that are invisible until another creature gets close enough, to “smell” them, which, admittedly, is a pretty clever way of doing it, but there are other ways as well, (probably less dynamic ways, but I’ll put them in anyway) Such as having an arrow indicator pointing in the direction the smell is strongest, along with the name of the smell, this is probably a much worse way to go about it and I think the fading trails might be better for the task of smell, ant it could allow for other things as well, like having better smell allows for a wider Field Of View or Smell Sense Radius for the player to achieve by making more complex smelling organs fit for the environment. Honestly I think this could be a really cool mechanic in the game and I want to see your guys opinion on it. Leave your thoughts below.

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Here’s some smell ideas I had:
Particle effects for rancid meats, flowers, and bodily wastes. They would be distinct from one another, and warn the player of danger or just good smelling flowers.
High powered senses of smells could unlock thrivepedia entries via smell, and allow you to match random smells to things you already know for more information.

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It would also be cool to be able to modify your own smell to better blend into your surroundings, or keep the AI from hunting you.

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