This Thread is what could be added to help figure out how to make a 3d modeling program for the creature editor during the aware stage. The idea is that the editor shows a x-plane that can be bent and connected with the other side, making a whole model. Also y-planes can be implemented to cover existing holes the x-planes can cover. I’ll be making a more detail drawing here later.
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I’m thinking that the organ editor (which would give bigger species their look) would work more like a sculpting program. Where you can add material to some spot or remove it. This way we could also easily limit the amount of changes the player can make with the mutation points they have.
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How would one deal with joints in such a way that looks accurate and natural without limiting diversity of choice for limb designs.
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I was origionally thinking it would be more like getting the core body parts, espiecially for early development. The idea would allow players to make their own presets instead of the dev team making presets. So the limit is what their creativity. Also this thread is for the idea to be built upon, but don’t forget that we should also figure out how to process it in steps instead of jumping to the final product. It’s good to think of the final product, but keep in mind if it’s possible to get there with the current programming, programmers, and engine that we have at our disposal.
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Wow, that’s really complex !
Yeah, too bad I didn’t make the team… But that doesn’t mean I can’t still help though.
I think it would be more like when creating the body part the player needs to select what it’s function is, like a leg or arm. Certain parts would have a joint placed onto the grid and can be moved around via a fixed x/y positions. Or maybe give them the option of placing down down a joint module.
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That could definitely work, but speaking of body parts would there be a collection of different mouths if not how would we allow people to create mouths with different teeth and different structures easily.
By body parts you could also make smaller parts as well, maybe a spherical grid can be made for eyes and resizing the models in the editor mode. Also another note is that gravity should be applied and a test mode, this way the player can find the spots to place the joints, making it more realistic.
I see so you would propose that there is a feature that allows you to create a “body part” then assign it a funcion thereby allowing you to modify it farther, allowing people to create custom parts for any of their creatures rather than having people locked to a list of presets like in Spore. That sounds like a pretty awesome system if it’s executed correctly!
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Yes! Thats exactly what I was aiming for! 
I kind of thought the layout would kinda look like how Spore was just more simplified. A x-plane with each tile can be manipulated, cropped, expanded, dimpled, or bloated outward. (to make bumpy skin)
maybe you could have a slider when creating something as an arm or leg, so you can determin the priority of useage of it. if that makes any sense.
so if you slide it far to the arm side but not the whole way you might end up with a creature that walks primarily on its back legs but if it comes to sprinting it would use is arms to enhance miovement speed, for example.
or you would slide it when creating a leg a little towards the arm side it would be used like a monkey or ape uses its legs/feet.
also you could make use of simple animation to let mechine learning figure out the best and most natural way of moving like this (what you the player suggested with simple click and drag animation of the skeletal body of your creature)
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So something like this?
running o grabbing o defensive o
Arm Both Leg
[--------------------||----------------------]
sets the priority of the limb or what it is used for?
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Yes, but creating all of this developpement-wise would take a loooong a** time haha
since there is no planned release date yet i assume we still have lots and lots of time…
These all sound like great ideas! Just keep in mind that you probably want to keep the editing to a healthy minimum, since we want to have a balance between the “natural evolution” and the players customisation. Click and drag ideas work the best and a lot of engines out there already support these kinds of features no problem. How about thinking of a way that lets you customize but only at the cost of specific in game actions?
That aside good thinking fellas!
I already thought of that when I made my idea. Each tile can be filled with the expense of mutation points. So the player can’t make the body part immediatly, this makes the stimulation of evolution to the player. They have to work for it if they want it.
Cool! What do the devs think about this? Im curious on how they could implement it
I’ve been talking to oliveriver on this and he told me to make this thread so it can gain attention, if it gains enough attention then the developers might consider it. I guess I didn’t specify enough about concept artist when I applied though. 
I had imagined that the editor would look a lot like Spore’s in basic function. There would be two main pages:
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Organism Editor: This is where the actual creature is modified and created. The creation progress would have three parts: First would come the sculpting. The player would sculpt the creature with tools and create the basic form of the creature or use parts they have made before (Like what you’ve talked here already about).
Then the player would have to apply skin and textures to the creature and add bones. There is no set order this has to be done. Bones would work more like just dragging the joints in place and connecting them together. The skin texture and coloring would affect how visible the creature is in different environments.
Finally would come the part where we add functionality to the creature. At this stage the player would add organs, bone/other kind of plating, sensory organs/areas and so on. These would be added as moldable spheres that are dragged inside the creature (There would be an option to auto-snap these spheres to the insides so they take all of the space in the area. This would be useful especially when editing the muscles in limbs.). After an area is specified it can be given a function. There would be different functions these areas can be given and by combining these you would get functional organs. As an example: To make digestion system we create an area, give it a tube form to increase its inner area to maximize compound absorption capacity and allow food to travel in it. Then we would add another function to it in the form of muscles. These would move the food in the tubes so we make these muscles weak to minimize energy consumption. After this we only need to add a filtering function to it and make it filter all wanted compounds outside the system. Now we have ourselves the intestines. Now we add a new organ and add a function to it to make it create an acid that dissolves the food so it can be filtered through and link it to the intestines. Now just add acid resistance to the intestines and voila! Any food that enters the intestines will be dissolved and filtered outside where the could be a circulatory system that collects it and sends it on.
Basically the game wouldn’t recognize such things as respiratory system or circulatory system or even digestive system. All it would care is if the necessary resources are received, if poisons are removed and energy is balanced. -
Behavior Editor: This is where you make a lot of important decisions for your creature: what it eats, what it knows to do, what it fears, what it hates etc. These would affect their respective ares in gameplay. Some of these decisions would have to be also made real in the Organism Editor, like making sure that the creature’s stomach can handle the proper food.
Of course, this would only work as it is in “creative” or free mode. To real gameplay I offer some ideas:
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Your modifications are not instant: Any changes you do between generations would take some time to happen but can be cancelled by editing the creature again. Depending on how much you have “gene-points” of whatever we will have then will decide how fast the changes happen. The bigger the changes the longer it will take for them to finalize. This would simulate evolution to some extent.
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Your modifications are instant: Any changes you do are instant in so that you, as a player, get to enjoy them immediately. However, the game would calculate how long it would have taken for the modifications to have evolved and adds that time to the global time, after which it would auto-evolve other species according to the time gone by. Spore has a similar system where bigger changes jump the clock forwards more than just adding one eye.
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Your modifications are limited: All changes you do to your organism while in the editor cost “genepoints” and you can’t do any changes that costs more than you have. Even removing parts would cost points. This way the player would have to plan what they want their creature to become and would also be penalized for bad decisions/natural disasters.
Edit: Didn’t even realize how long I wrote this. Sorry about it.
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