So, the idea here is to have total control in the 3D macroscopic creature editor. Basically, you start with the main body, (whatever you’ve already built) and you grow a limb from it, (from a pool of materials) you can add joints and ball-socket bearings with limited rotation, and now you have a limb, you can add actions for the limb to preform when certain conditions are met, (like a button press) or you can have the limb just lay there and flop around, or be stiff until an action needs to be preformed, there can be a “straiten limb” button in the editor where you select 2 joints or points on the limb and press the button to straiten the limb between those two points. In the main body you can have the organ placement system where you add, move, or remove organs to fit your creatures needs. (organs will not be rendered in game unless they are external) This would add a lot of freedom into the game (at the cost of processing power,) and would make it more enjoyable. (for people who want to spend all their time creating a character) I also don’t believe it’s been done so points for that.
That sounds awesome and I think that kind of control is what the devs are aiming for, but by the time we’re there you could just say in the processor requirements that you need like a kiloflop of quantum processing power to handle crazy load times this would create and that would be normal./jk for real though I approve.
Hasn’t that always been the idea? Am I missing something or is this one of those threads from people who thought that we would be going for a “Just slap some parts you want on your creature” type of editing?
https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/organism-editor/1740
You said the plan that the devs are already using
Apparently I did… I still like the idea.
Just checking, do people like the idea of this and optional snap-on parts and-or saved snap-on parts using this?
So first of all take everything I say with a grain of salt because I’m neither a biologist nor a game developer so I’m just guessing on all of this.
Second of all, here’s my opinion.
I think snap-on parts will be useful once your creature is more evolved. Like if your creature has really small limbs, it would not be absurd at all for it to just downright evolve another pair of them in one editing cycle, so being able to paste them would be necessary for that. But of course for more complex limbs it would be much different. At most you could evolve something resembling a limb in one editing cycle, but it would definitely not be a straight up replica of the already existing one.
So for example, look at the feet of starfish. They’re very simple. They’re controlled by the flow of water and look like little tubes. It would be absurd to need to evolve such simple limbs individually over multiple cycles, from a nub to a full limb. In my opinion, with a limb so simple, it makes total sense to just duplicate the whole thing and snap it on. But with animals like whales which have lost their back limbs, when they get a mutation that brings them back, they’re very small and reduced because the shape is just so complex. In other words they can’t just be duplicated perfectly in one generation. It would be the same with the editor. Maybe you could duplicate parts of your existing limb and snap it on, but you wouldn’t be able to snap on the whole thing.
Same thing with structures like leaves. Duplicating and snapping on a leaf should be very easy to do. One editor cycle should be enough.
I also think soft-bodied organisms would have more snappable parts because things like limbs don’t have to fit in with a really complex endo or exoskeleton. When animals with skeletons evolve a new limb that shouldn’t be there it’s usually non-functional because it can’t fit into the rigid ‘puzzle pieces’ of the skeleton well enough and its own skeleton is likely to be deformed. But if you’re soft-bodied the tissue is probably just going to be made of muscle or something similar anyways, so it will usually function more of less the same. And it’s not going to be as deformed either since it isn’t a mutation with hard interlocking pieces that need to go together perfectly to look right.
It actually seems like changing the overall structure (how many limbs) there are is extremely difficult, at least in larger species like mammals.
Yeah, it is, but that’s why I imagine it’s easier for animals with already simple limbs. I also had in mind this would be in small animals which I should’ve mentioned. Probably given enough time a small animal would be able to replicate really simple limbs. Since editor cycles are so many generations in one, I think some parts should be saved ‘snappable’ parts. These snappables should cost a LOT of MP, though. But… like I said… this is all just guesses on my part. I’ll leave the real decision making to people who know more on the subject.
Actually in an earlier post I was talking about making prefabs, where you can save designs for certain things In the body and paste them somewhere else.