Senses integration.

Tenebrarum wrote:

Okay then, Let's say I'm sniffing something. My creature should be able to tell that whoever marked this with it's scent is in good health. Now, I would suggest we simply say that with text, rather than say... show a picture of the animal in question, especially if it's not immedietly visually recognizable that the thing's in good health.

How do you know the difference between wet and shiny? Hot and cold? There are things we can't really do. And we'll need text for other things anyway, so why the Belgium not?

More advances smell that allows the player to identify individual species' scents and their health would require text. I was thinking more of when playing as a creature that uses senses in a similar way to humans. Smell-based creatures get their information through... Well, smell, and that cannot be replicated exactly with visual information. Some of this will have to be given through text.

We do need a touch overlay. It's possible creatures underground could have touch as their primary sense, so we need something to allow touch-based navigation. Other information can be given visually, maybe audibly if the creature don't have hearing, temperature could be given in a similar style to heat-vision (red=hot, blue=cold), just limited to what the creature is touching.

And as for why not to just put everything that can be text as text, don't expect players to read a newspaper-long text assault. People just don't have that much patience when playing a game. While not everything can be incorporated into the overlays, we should at least get as much as possible in them or it means more text to read, and less information available up-front.

The Uteen wrote:

Tenebrarum wrote:

Okay then, Let's say I'm sniffing something. My creature should be able to tell that whoever marked this with it's scent is in good health. Now, I would suggest we simply say that with text, rather than say... show a picture of the animal in question, especially if it's not immedietly visually recognizable that the thing's in good health.

How do you know the difference between wet and shiny? Hot and cold? There are things we can't really do. And we'll need text for other things anyway, so why the Belgium not?

More advances smell that allows the player to identify individual species' scents and their health would require text. I was thinking more of when playing as a creature that uses senses in a similar way to humans. Smell-based creatures get their information through... Well, smell, and that cannot be replicated exactly with visual information. Some of this will have to be given through text.

We do need a touch overlay. It's possible creatures underground could have touch as their primary sense, so we need something to allow touch-based navigation. Other information can be given visually, maybe audibly if the creature don't have hearing, temperature could be given in a similar style to heat-vision (red=hot, blue=cold), just limited to what the creature is touching.

And as for why not to just put everything that can be text as text, don't expect players to read a newspaper-long text assault. People just don't have that much patience when playing a game. While not everything can be incorporated into the overlays, we should at least get as much as possible in them or it means more text to read, and less information available up-front.

Ever heard of Angband or Dwarf Fortress? Those games are the Belgium.

Yeah, but you've got to figure that not all creatures will have the same senses. For our examination of an object, we would most likely only use two - sight and touch - maybe smell if it positively reeked, but the human nose is far less useful, comparatively, than one might think.

So, for sight, most of what we can tell in a real-life situation is going to be available on the screen.
Touch could give us a list like this;
[est. weight: 30 grams
surface: smooth, dry
some areas: soft, dry
pliability: somewhat pliable
brittle: No]

(I'm looking at the book sitting next to my mouse, in case you were wondering. It's paperback.)
So, until you have time to really analyze it, I suggest we stick with 5-7 conditions or less per dominant investigative (non-visual) sense, and no more than 3-4 conditions for a secondary. Anything else gets 2 lines max, provided that it actually applies to the situation.
With all "5 senses" stimulated, this makes for a maximum of 15 conditions checked. Anyone who's taking the time to "investigate" an object presumably has the 1 min of game time, most likely a lot less, required to read them. Most people will just skim for the conditions that they're interested in anyway.

Also, keep in mind that we can't sense what we don't program, so it is unlikely that we will have any details programmed into an object or substance that aren't absolutely essential to it's use in org or strat mode. So we don't need to muck around with fine details about how my window is smoother than my book cover - neither is abrasive enough for the detail to be useful.

@ Roadkill: Have to take your word for it. I don't recognize the examples.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Yeah, but you've got to figure that not all creatures will have the same senses. For our examination of an object, we would most likely only use two - sight and touch - maybe smell if it positively reeked, but the human nose is far less useful, comparatively, than one might think.

So, for sight, most of what we can tell in a real-life situation is going to be available on the screen.
Touch could give us a list like this;
[est. weight: 30 grams
surface: smooth, dry
some areas: soft, dry
pliability: somewhat pliable
brittle: No]

(I'm looking at the book sitting next to my mouse, in case you were wondering. It's paperback.)
So, until you have time to really analyze it, I suggest we stick with 5-7 conditions or less per dominant investigative (non-visual) sense, and no more than 3-4 conditions for a secondary. Anything else gets 2 lines max, provided that it actually applies to the situation.
With all "5 senses" stimulated, this makes for a maximum of 15 conditions checked. Anyone who's taking the time to "investigate" an object presumably has the 1 min of game time, most likely a lot less, required to read them. Most people will just skim for the conditions that they're interested in anyway.

Also, keep in mind that we can't sense what we don't program, so it is unlikely that we will have any details programmed into an object or substance that aren't absolutely essential to it's use in org or strat mode. So we don't need to muck around with fine details about how my window is smoother than my book cover - neither is abrasive enough for the detail to be useful.

@ Roadkill: Have to take your word for it. I don't recognize the examples.

that is very good but what about other senses? i know we have 5 senses but like sharks and snakes they have a sense's that we don't have. for instance snakes near the nose have nerve clusters that let them see inferred which can help hunting at night (seeing the heat emitted by things or animals). with sharks there is a case similar, for sharks especially hammerheads they can detect electrical impulses so they can know if something is a live or dead same with the snake. and since this game is going to have a wide array of players from the hardcore (probably us) and the soft core (newer members just came off of spore) those senses are needed probably even MORE sense's are going to be needed to enhance the game play

Scio swears that all vibrations, auditory, sub, and supersonic, should be handled by the sound in the game. My agreement is uncertain.

As for heat vision and electrical senses, I see no trouble in having them as togglable visual overlays - in gameplay as well as in investigative mini-mode.

So, for our 5+ senses we have
Visual: Whatever is on the screen. Plus a few togglable overlays. Includes "Heat-sensing" and "Electricity-sensing."
Auditory/all vibrations: Could be handled by the sounds in the game. I hope you have your sound on.
Touch: This is likely to be the prime investigative tool - it's covered above. You have the necessary data in text, to the extent that your species can determine it.
Smell/Taste: Probably going to have to handle it numerically. And, as you're not likely to go popping random things into your mouth, it's probably safe to treat these two as one and the same.

Can anyone think of anything else I've missed? Any suggestions about auditory mode?

Again, touch-based navigation - touch overlay?

Smell does already have an overlay, and a very useful one, but more advanced details like which creature it is can be given through text. But some of that info could be available normally too, in a right click menu specific to the smell overlay, for getting at the info a bit more easily. Filtering through the... Investigate mini-mode? Okay, filtering through the investigate mini-mode for the smellular details would be unhandy. Wow, unhandy's a word. Smellular isn't, though. Oh well.

Taste... Apparently it's okay to eat any rocks you find lying around, so there must be loads of random stuff that can be tasted.
But, anyway, maybe taste can be just for identifying how edible something is, and left out if the object is toxic/inedible. That's assuming the creature doesn't taste in a similar way to touch (ie have external tongue pads). In that case taste should be treated as a separate sense... How advanced can you get with taste, and could it, in this case, be like a cool cross between smell and touch? Have we thought about taste-based creatures at all? Have we even thought of moving this 'investigate mini-mode' discussion to an appropriate thread? Have I started asking too many questions again?

Touche. Of course, I never said the taste wouldn't sicken or kill you, only that it should be able to be done.

Tactile overlay = just too much to toggle, TBH. Electric and heat vision would be really, really simple to animate, and even if they were text, there is only one property that they would test for. Tactile has a range of things from weight (Explain, for the luls, how we could get a visual overlay representing weight to be usable to the casual gamer,) to other physical properties. We'd need at least four overlays. Text just seems to make more sense from a gaming and programming perspective - we're used to thinking of things we touch in numerical and yes/no categories. Weight, Hot/cold, smooth/rough, wet/dry, hard/soft, bendy/stiff... you get the idea. Every creature should be able to touch something, even if they're deaf and blind, so this is at the end of the day our primary close-distance investigation sense.

The touch overlay wouldn't have to give all touch-based info, it couldn't, just show where objects are, so things like feelers can be used for navigation. In an underground environment, most other senses would be useless for navigation, so touch would be the logical form of navigation in underground environments. The overlay wouldn't have to give details, they could remain available just in investigation, the touch overlay could be the very simplest, yet globally effective, navigation sense.

Good point. I was under the impression that we were using "hollywood darkness" (so, it's supposedly dark enough that the characters/creatures can't see, yet light enough that you know what's going on...)

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Good point. I was under the impression that we were using "hollywood darkness" (so, it's supposedly dark enough that the characters/creatures can't see, yet light enough that you know what's going on...)

That's not darkness... That's cheating...
No offense to hollywood, they're allowed to cheat if they want. They can go right ahead and cheat, I don't mind. (Cheaters... Light vision is there but no... It has to be cheating...)

Anyway, if we used this 'hollywood darkness', then darkness wouldn't be a disadvantage. Although, at night there should be stars, so above ground it isn't too much of a problem anyway. It's only when you go into the cavernous depths of the Earth's crust you begin to find...
...The beasts with no eyes!!!! Dun Dun Duun!!!!! (To be overly dramatic)

All right. So explain once more how the touch overlay is different from "hollywood darkness?" We'd still have graphics up on the screen.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

All right. So explain once more how the touch overlay is different from "hollywood darkness?" We'd still have graphics up on the screen.

How is it different? How...


Hollywood darkness is still sight, so (I assume) there is, for a start, colour. Touch would have no colour, unless we decide to include heat/moisture, but that's not relevant to this explanation.

Next, touch wouldn't be effective in open spaces, there is nothing to feel except the ground. This is why touch wouldn't be a particularly dominant sense in most situations; anything you are not directly touching with a body-part that can touch wouldn't be displayed. So if the feeler organs are... Well, feelers, the things they touch would appear and vanish as they are touched and untouched. Untouched is a word. What unusual vocabulary.

However, in the case of burrowing/tunnelling/something creatures, touch would be quite effective for navigation; with the lack of light, sound (only available from front and back, although likely to be a secondary sense), smell, and persistent heat levels, touch would be a good means of navigation in a tunnel environment. Although, you could argue creatures with very large tongues... But no, taste can have delays, and can also linger, so maybe not.

Additionally, not only is it a suitable alternative to other, less effective senses, but it makes the textures of the rock quite prominent, a useful ability when deciding in which direction to tunnel in to meet the least resistance. For example: a blocky, uneven surface would indicate a tendency to crumble, meaning the earth is weak; plain uneven = general earth; smooth, sharp surfaces would likely be a tough rock; and anything with very smooth, possibly blobby bits on would be coated with water. Bad description of the examples, I know, but the meaning is there (I hope).

And so I state the sense would be effective in underground (tunnelled) environments. And that it is different to hollywood darkness, which is still :evil:.

OT discussion moved to appropriate thread.

So, to summarize touch overlay for your eyeless moles, it would be

A) black and white (whereas hollywood darkness would most likely be night-vision green or just generally dim)
b) Have a limited range - so perhaps you would see only part of your screen, leaving the rest in darkness.

Notice, I'm talking graphics-wise here. full-immersion gaming is still a thing of science fiction.
Right. That's good then. I was beginning to fear we wouldn't be able to tell the difference, but this is good, I think. Black and white is good for showing textures because it removes discolorations - basically, the world is shown in relief.
Processors might actually be happy for this development. If we're slapping texture on everything, and just showing the texture, not the color, it's just that sliver less work for the graphics card. Bonus points because black and white is cool.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

So, to summarize touch overlay for your eyeless moles, it would be

A) black and white (whereas hollywood darkness would most likely be night-vision green or just generally dim)
b) Have a limited range - so perhaps you would see only part of your screen, leaving the rest in darkness.

Notice, I'm talking graphics-wise here. full-immersion gaming is still a thing of science fiction.
Right. That's good then. I was beginning to fear we wouldn't be able to tell the difference, but this is good, I think. Black and white is good for showing textures because it removes discolorations - basically, the world is shown in relief.
Processors might actually be happy for this development. If we're slapping texture on everything, and just showing the texture, not the color, it's just that sliver less work for the graphics card. Bonus points because black and white is cool.

For the technical side of this, we could render with edge detection for vibration-based senses.

Here's an image that I compiled of different modifications we can have to the regular render method. they are based off of a picture I took earlier this year in the Keys, a chain of barrier islands on the gulf coast of the US.

Spoiler:

Direct link if you so desire

This is what echolocation might look like in game

However, with echolocation, colors would not be represented, only textures, and the light source would be your camera. Therefore, the stripes would not be seen and you'd be able to look aw what's in those dark holes.

Hi I'm new here but take a look at this:

Magnetic fields
The perception of magnetic fields by migratory birds has been suggested to be light dependent.[30] Birds move their head to detect the orientation of the magnetic field,[31] and studies on the neural pathways have suggested that birds may be able to "see" the magnetic fields.[32] The right eye of a migratory bird contains photoreceptive proteins called cryptochromes. Light excites these molecules to produce unpaired electrons that interact with the Earth's magnetic field, thus providing directional information.[33][34] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_vision)

So that means that magnetic fields maybe are a visible sense.

Milan0ka wrote:

Hi I'm new here but take a look at this:

Magnetic fields
The perception of magnetic fields by migratory birds has been suggested to be light dependent.[30] Birds move their head to detect the orientation of the magnetic field,[31] and studies on the neural pathways have suggested that birds may be able to "see" the magnetic fields.[32] The right eye of a migratory bird contains photoreceptive proteins called cryptochromes. Light excites these molecules to produce unpaired electrons that interact with the Earth's magnetic field, thus providing directional information.[33][34] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_vision)

So that means that magnetic fields maybe are a visible sense.

Hey there, nice post. You should probably go introduce yourself in the welcome section.

Nice information dive.

Scio, I vote that "noisy" be reserved for equiptment. It just doesn't look right as something that an organic creature would see, but it's definitely a possible problem with digital.

And I thought that picture looked familiar...

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Nice information dive.

Scio, I vote that "noisy" be reserved for equiptment. It just doesn't look right as something that an organic creature would see, but it's definitely a possible problem with digital.

And I thought that picture looked familiar...

"Noisy" can be used in combination with night vision for a true night vision effect. When it's very dark, you see RGB noise, even though your eyes only see in black and white in the dark.

Question, will visual overlay be permanently present, togglable, or will it be a 1st Person/3rd Person distinction?

Touch overlay: Underground is simple enough. If your face is pressed against dirt, toggle limited echolocation.

Now, for regular touch, I vote we have a box or shard or whatever in some corner of the screen that opens up whenever you examine sommit. This will contain text as nessicary, as well as a few visual clues. This should help speed up the recognition procces on the players part. Show a little orb in the shard/box. If it's cold, it'll turn blue. If it's hot, it'll turn red. If it's smooth, it'll be a perfect circle. If it's rough, it'll be grainy and jagged. If it's sharp, it'll grow spikes.

Silly idea, I know, but it might cut off a few seconds of time and help alleviate the immersion fracture text tends to bring.

Tenebrarum wrote:

Question, will visual overlay be permanently present, togglable, or will it be a 1st Person/3rd Person distinction?

Touch overlay: Underground is simple enough. If your face is pressed against dirt, toggle limited echolocation.

Now, for regular touch, I vote we have a box or shard or whatever in some corner of the screen that opens up whenever you examine sommit. This will contain text as nessicary, as well as a few visual clues. This should help speed up the recognition procces on the players part. Show a little orb in the shard/box. If it's cold, it'll turn blue. If it's hot, it'll turn red. If it's smooth, it'll be a perfect circle. If it's rough, it'll be grainy and jagged. If it's sharp, it'll grow spikes.

Silly idea, I know, but it might cut off a few seconds of time and help alleviate the immersion fracture text tends to bring.

That's quite a good concept. Yes, of course, overlay is toggleable.

Wait a second. I don't think excessive sensory overlay is a good idea. So smell should also be in text.
Also, if we have a deeply underground creature without echolocation, it might well be the earlier mentioned newspaper read, with your screen a page saying,
Smells food! It's a Pinercalosaurus!
Feels traction from racing across the cave floor
No, pain! Got stabbed by stalagmite!
Hears scream of Pinercalosaurus
Closing in
Crunches on tasty Pinercalosaurus
Sound: cave moving!
Pain while dying by falling rocks

Sense Smell
organ Nasal organ (may be something else, I hear cats can smell through the roof of their mouth)
render method text displaying smells (smells...) with low sensory, if the smell sense is stronger, they can click a "track" button under the text and a trail of light appears which they can follow
levels weak smell (only text) slightly stronger (text and very faint tracking trails) strong smell (text and bright tracking trails)

Smell is not only used for tracking.

Deathbite42 wrote:

Smell is not only used for tracking.

I didn't say it was. I said it's an option if you can smell good enough.