Visualization of the five senses

[The_confused_protist]

@50gens

@The_confused_protist

Depth perception - effects how detailed a shape is, you start from barly being able to tell where the head of a creature is into seeing a human level of detail

Showing creatures in low resolution would just lower the gameplay experience for the players. They should be shown in perfect quality within the seeing range, and disapear once they exit the range.

What meant by simplifying the visuals is by simplifying them in way that has the visuals still look good but giving them less details. Like making the textures on a creature look smooth, or not being able to see the mouth but it still has a defined headshape, etc. But this is a difficult balancing act to have and might not be worth it, but it is a fun concept.

@50gens

The world can have dull colors, but it should look normal. Moving objects should have their positions updated every once in a while instead of seeing them in real time.

This is an interesting concept, but what if your creature doesn’t have eyes or is in a pitch-black area? I think the player shouldn’t be able to see any color if they have no way to interpret colors. I think positions should only be updated if the player interacts with them, hears them, or if the object gets hit with sound waves.

@50gens

The image doesn’t load. I agree that the closest objects should be shown to the player even if the creature lacks sight. But it shouldn’t be limited to the things you are touching which is useless.

Fixed! ^-^
We can change the size of the illuminated area until it feels right. Keeping the areas you touch illuminated would also help, the area could fade after some time, leaving an outline before disapearing completely.

@50gens

The information you gather from smell (such as: a creature passed from here 20 minutes ago) can be shown with a line of text. What else can there be? Adding colors everywhere adds no functionality, it just blinds normal vision.

Well what I was thinking of was that this version of smell would be ideally used if you didn’t have sight, or if this was the strongest sense you had. Thats how I designed all the senses with the assumption that it is the main one. Giving information on all the smells in area would help the player find things other than just food. The surroundings could change color depending on the concentration of smells. so you could see at a glance that a area is dangerous just by the color, or follow a trail to a nearby stream, you could also follow a smell of a material you were looking for.

@50gens

All the senses should show the world the same layer so that they don’t require switching. For example you may not see a creature due to tall grass but if you can smell it, it should just look visible as if you can see it

Good point,
To keep it from getting cluttered a simpler version of the rest of your senses (ui or visual) could go with whatever sense you’re using at the moment, and if you need more detail from a certain sense, you can just toggle it. The problem with this approach though is that it you would have to make five different ui plus whatever other senses could be added for this to work.

@50gens

@Lanata

a filter is an easier solution

Would you want the game to have worse graphics when you progress beyond cell stage?

Color filter =/= worse graphics
Also this topic A more stylized representation of sightless 'vision' in organisms shows how microbe stage could later better represent how a microbe would “see”.