Perception & Camouflage

For anyone who’s been following, I’ve been trying to design a prototype of the Auto-Evo system on the dev forums here. It’s been going well so far, but there’s still a lot left since there’s so much content to cover.

One of the upcoming parts will be about Perception. The effectiveness of a species’ perception will be calculated by two things: Factors that increase/decrease the organism’s perception, and factor’s that increase/decrease the target’s camouflage. Let’s brainstorm as many of these factors as we can!

Vision

Let’s start with Sight (Vision). What factors can you guys think of? These are the ones I’ve got.

Increase Organism’s Vision

  • Increased field of view for eyes
  • Increased resolution/acuity for eyes
  • Increased range/line of sight for eyes
  • Increased colour detection for eyes

Increase Target’s Visual Camouflage

  • Murky/silty water
  • Fog/mist/rain/snow
  • Dust/sand
  • Low level of light
  • Target has camouflaged colours
  • Physical obstacle obstructing view

Decrease Target’s Visual Camouflage

  • High level of light
  • Target’s size
  • How much the target moves
  • Target has bright colours, or colours discordant with the environment

Remember, these are factors that affect the Auto-Evo calculations. The way vision is simulated in game is handled separately.

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Would the target squirting a cloud of ink count as murky water under camouflage, or would that go under evasion (since a chase needs to start first)?

I’d go into the other form of ink (decoy “pseudomorphs”), as well as creatures taking advantage of the predator’s own perception to avoid becoming targets (herds of visibly indistinct creatures, brightly-colored poisonous creatures and their non-poisonous mimics), but I’m assuming that may be outside the pre-detection phase of targeting as well.

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Would “Image processing speed for brain” be different from “increased resolution/acuity for eyes”. If not then “darting speed of target” could be an “Increase Target’s Visual Camouflage”.

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Yeah that would probably fit under murky water, but it’s interesting to consider how we could implement that into the calculation because the ink is only released when the ink-carrying organism is being chased or feels threatened. It’s also interesting to consider whether to classify targeted chemical attacks differently, like for example an organism that shoots a chemical into the threat’s eyes to temporarily reduce/obstruct their vision.

Oh as in the target moving faster than the predator can visually process?

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Yes. For example, a creature might be able to process images of the world around them in a high resolution, and a full spectrum of color, but say either their eye are too far from their brain or their brain simply is unable to transport and process that highly detailed image fast enough to know if there is something in front of them, they will not be able to react to fast moving prey or predators.
On the opposite end, if a creature can move fast enough to beat a slow image-processing animal they may never even be recognized in the first place.

On a separate note, something like this may be the solution for plant game play (imagining plants as incredibly slow image processing creatures) but I suppose that should be discussed on a different thread entirely.

Oh that’s an interesting idea. I’m not sure how physically possible it is though, because the update time on photoreceptors in eyes are so fast. But yeah perhaps it would be something cool to look into.

Can that factors use to other tipes of vision (rengenvision, thermovision or eholocate?) or adapt them to that vision?

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Would the number of eyes be a factor? Whether it be the difference between one eye and two (the addition of depth perception) or additional eyes past two, like spiders and other animals? I’m not really sure why animals evolve more than two eyes honestly, other than maybe increased field of vision

Well, one eye v. two eyes would make a difference, but I don’t know how this would change gameplay.

I’m not sure how in-detail you want to go with this but it might be worth it to make a difference between detection, and identification.
For example, it would be very hard for a creature to move fast enough to avoid detection, but moving fast enough to avoid identification might be relatively easy.

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Another thing that in my opinion will be really hard to implement (if even possible) is animals that try to look like something that the predator doesn’t care about (e.g. a rock, different animal…). This is definitely LAWK (octopi, a lot of other marine life), but I doubt it would be implementable.

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Weirdly enough I was just thinking about something like this.
What I was thinking was related to flies on earth that have a similar pattern to bees. Then I was thinking in terms of “why are predators or anything in general likely to stay away from these?”. Because we’ve learned that “yellow and black stripes=bad”. I don’t know exactly how this could be implemented but it could work something like “if this is something like something else that I don’t like, I won’t like this thing”.

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That’s right. Nobody will learn the proportions of body or positioning eyes. All the predators will learn associations with favourite prey, like usual behavior, usual color and some other. Every animal, that knows danger from bees, associates “yellow and black strips = bad”. Nobody will associate bees with string on the abdomen. If you read my thread about unusual creatures, you know about fish-stone. I think, nobody will look at bottom carefully. Fish-stone just sitting on the bottom.

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What is Renegnvision?

X-ray vision…

How about hiding in tall grasses/bushes? Like predators could use it to ambush prey or prey could use it to hide from predators; its efficiency depending if the creature stay perfectly still and/or its colors matches the vegetation.

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