So flight?

In spore the biggest disappointment was finding wings and the putting them on and the result was a TF2 scout double jump effectively? will flight work how it dose in real life or will it exist at all?

Can’t find any threads about it, but I’m pretty sure the consensus is that you will be actually able to fly with wings.

That is good as spore was a huge disappointment

I was never sure why the player was incapable of proper flight in Spore. It was clearly a deliberate choice in what I assume was an effort to balance the player’s abilities, but I was never able to figure out just why that choice was made.

As Hh mentioned, we haven’t really discussed flight; But I assure you that at the very least if the AI can achieve fully fledged flight, so too should the player.

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That sounds good

(there is a 20 character limit)

I believe the world in Spore was finite with all levels of creatures being loaded in at the very beginning. The developers probably didn’t want the player skipping too a high level area so they nerfed the wings.

After watching 1 Spore speedrun, I can confirm that at least the speedrunning community thinks that the wings were (attempted to be) nerfed due them allowing skipping way too much of the game.

Like accidentally discovering space when you fly a little higher than normal and you’ve skipped the society and indriustial stages!

Ah I see, that makes a lot of sense as spore’s progression seemed to be tied to gradually moving inland in the creature stage. Luckily we won’t have to worry about that in Thrive!

Unless players find some way to exploit flight, achieving escape velocity and reaching the ascension gate while still in multicellular stage.

EXACTLY WHAT I SAID BUCKLY IS A COPIER

just kidding - for the lolz…

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Would the ascension gate even be put into the aware stage. I’ve always just assumed that it would have more to do with a tracked progress in the game rather than being hard coded into the world from the start.

The exact position or even existence of the ascension gate remains unanswered. But I can assure you that it will only be reachable/buildable in the space stage.

What I said here was only a joke about flight being used to skip through progression in Thrive. ~~Which in reality is more than likely going to be very much impossible for many reasons.)

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I saw a post on the development forum (the recent posts in this thread) asking the community about whether or not players would prefer an elaborate control scheme or a more simple WASD control scheme for flight and underwater aerodynamics. I’ve always envisioned creating a creature that can fly, so that discussion peaked my interest.

To answer the question, I do think it would be best if the default movement scheme option is the more simple one. God knows what players will create, especially those who don’t know much about biology. It would be torture if someone inexperienced had to deal with the concept of pitch and yawing and rolling if their creature had a dorsal fin somewhere it shouldn’t be, or if they hadn’t yet created efficient fins.

But I do think the more advanced control scheme should be offered to those players who really want to specialize in their creature’s movement. I think one of the most apparent reminders of just how important morphology is in determining the way a creature moves is looking through an encyclopedia of birds. Sparrows and crows and the sort all have similar wing shapes for a very similar purpose; making sure they can take off as quickly as possible in a volatile, constantly moving environment unfriendly to tiny and delicate animals. Albatross and many other long-distance birds have similar proportions; giant, sharply-shaped wings, to allow minimal effort for maximal distance covered. Many falcons have a rather shortened and sharp forearm - as seen in the peregrine falcon, allowing them to quickly accelerate to unparalleled speeds. And of course, the hummingbird.

Each body plan also has its shortcomings however. Albatross essentially need a runway to take off, and can’t do sharp turns very well. Falcons are all very lightweight to maximize the amount of speed they can get, which makes them incredibly delicate. Hummingbirds are similarly delicate, and on top of this, must constantly eat to support their high-maintenance flight pattern. And although versatile, sparrows and crows often fall prey to more speedy fliers, like eagles and hawks. Put an albatross in the city like it’s a crow and it will be eaten by a cat as it tries to take off. Put a hummingbird in the middle of the ocean like it’s an albatross and it’ll fly to exhaustion.

I think having the option for more advanced controls - and having the ability to effectively pitch, yaw, roll be dependent on your creature’s wings or fins - will serve as a constant reminder of the importance of morphology in determining niche. If you want a creature like an albatross, you have to give up some rolling capability. If you want a creature like a crow, you’ll be decent at everything, but not great at anything. If you want a creature like a falcon, you’ll be pretty aerodynamic, but if one thing goes wrong - and considering the speed at which you’re going, things can easily go wrong - you’re good as dead. Of course, this can all be done automatically through a basic control scheme, but having that level of control could be immensely rewarding to those who want to specialize in marine or areal environments.

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Unless I misunderstood what we were talking about, at least I was just talking about underwater controls. Flight is pretty much optional so even I wouldn’t mind having like inverted controls for flight for it to be more “advanced”. Many games that have otherwise normal controls have weird controls for flight.

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the control scheme i don’t think would effect how the world effects you. Those are separate areas of the code. The biggest thing is, if we take away the ability to control roll (automatically or otherwise) as you pointed out, we’d essentially have to make fins pointless since something like a dolphin/whale or a Manta can’t turn at speed without rolling. Also, I’m 100% positive after working with the physics in Godot that if we don’t have to bother with roll right off the bat, we won’t use it ever because it’s hard to just add in later and so aquatic stage will probably be closer to Garry’s Mod no-clip. Pitch and yaw will already be in the game, you have to manipulate those to move/rotate at all.

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Then we make a Kerbal Space Program control system with the normal WASD, and Q/E for roll.

Soooo yeah flying like how would it work and different ways to evolve flying

5 posts were merged into an existing topic: Space whales

tree creatures uplifted with ftl technology

How this thread turned into space whale thread?

Yeah, hang on, this thread is about flying on a planet, like birds. Take the space whales talk to another thread if anyone wants to continue that.

Edit: there’s now a separate topic for that.