Implementing Underwater Civilizations

There's been 14 pages on this thread trying to find ways to do metalurgy underwater, or finding another way of developing all the things we need metals for. And this has not been the only thread about the subject.There has been more. The "closest" one was a kind of super selective breeding to turn some other underwater animals into tools. But that would take too much time to turn a profit (the star would die out before that)

If you can find a way of developing metalurgy or an alternative to metals underwater, go on and share it with us. But check before in case someone came with that idea before, at least in this thread, but there has been many before you, and noone could find a way.

We will be able to get to stone age technology underwater correct.

One question, would it be possible to mount an attack on a wooden boat that is above water, using spears and rocks. If we can do that, you could get gold (or other valuables) from the ship, and use it to buy technology.
This would be uplifting correct.

In order:

Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes.

Ok, I've been snooping around and reading stuff for a while. Decided to make an account.
Just finished reading the thread and I believe I may have a vague, but possible solution: So, there were posts mentioning creating substances like spiders, and others talking about artificial selection with other creatures. How about mixing the two? Maybe the underwater species can create a sort of "living" organism themselves? It started as a way to break down prey or distract predators, but eventually evolved to be a coral type substance that becomes their vehicles and such? An idea to think about.
Another: The organisms being the vehicles and ships and stuff themselves. How about a species that can adapt/change their bodies in a relatively short amount of time? Their cells change or create new special cells to do the tasks they need, when they need it. Or certain members have different "jobs" that they specialize in.
Think about this one, maybe? I'm writing this while very tired, may impair my thinking.
These may take a long time though, not too sure about it. Not really too sure about either of them, but underwater civ is too cool to not have in this game.

so first of all, wiggin has a great idea.

@wiggin do you mean something similar to this thing( http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-016 )

also if there is a way for the creatures to let raw oil out to the surface of the water and find a way to set it on fire (still working on how they would do this) it could be a major start. from there they would not need to use the fire to work with the metal as they could then use objects around them. for example and this is about to go on the organ design thread as well certain species of sea urchin have spines powerful enough to bore through steel (at least from what iv'e
read, part of the reason why none of my aquariums have them)

also maybe on alien planets there could be certain metals that we do not no of that do not need fire to work ( or we could just create an underwater forge in a volcano, this may have been said before, i dont know)

Yes, thank you for that link! I am thinking of the same type of organism, only multicellular. They can change/mutate themselves in order to make up for the lack of technology/metallurgy. And to ellaborate on my first idea, the organism would create bio-versions of all the technology, in the same way artificial selection (the wolves -> dogs example) would.
The metals not needing fire, and the volcanic vents, have already been mentioned and discussed. The metals aren't strong enough, and the volcanic vents aren't hot enough.

Not sure about what you are trying to get at with the oil and the sea urchins, though. Care to explain a bit more?

underwater there are always deposits of crude oil somewhere. if these creatures could find a way to access said oil and keep a controlled stream of it together all the way to the surface, then when they lit it on fire (by the way in case anyone did not know, oil can burn on water) they could hold bits of metal ore in the fire using , stone staffs i guess and break it down into the pure metal, or at least closer to it. from there they could carve it using the sea urchin spines or something else similar.

Again, as discussed when discussing thermal vents, even if you get the necessary temperature, as the water spreads heat so fast, getting near to it would mean instantly killing the creature.

Other than that, acording to this article (which speaks about burning crude oil from a spillage, quite similar), it is usually not possible to keep the oil buirning on the water, as it spreads too thin.

Additionally, geting the oil pocket to break and spill all the oil on the water would be quite hard, as they are usually not too close to the surface.

Additionally, those pockets would not last too much, making finding new ones a necessity. And they are not too common.

Additionally, the oil is very bad for the health of most water creatures, and it blocks sunlight while it is on the surface, making underwater plants not recieve light, which is a big hit to the environement.

Overall, not possible for many reasons.

Well, what if the civilization started on land, but moved underwater for some reason that made the surface inhospitable; bad nuclear test, zombies, contagion, etc?

Basically what I am say is, would it be possible for the civilization to move into underwater settlements once they've gotten metal work and the other supplies needed? Or for space empires to colonize a water planet and have undersea dome colonies or something along those lines?

The idea of a mutating multicellular creature is a good start.
However , how would one evolve this ability. It would be very hard, and in most cases would not happen.
--
@Aiosian_Doctor_Xenox
Yes that is possible if the civilizations people are amphibious or if they get the correct technology to survive that deep underwater.

Something like this perhaps?

Spoiler:

Yes but are the inhabitants intelligent beings evolved from aquatic creatures? It seems, since the city is Atlantis, they are just humans that built an underwater city inside a waterproof dome. Remembers me of Bioshock, except that Rapure doesn't have a dome and buildings themselves are waterproof.
So I think you missed the point.
I like the concept art though.

Aiosian_Doctor_Xenox wrote:

Something like this perhaps?

Spoiler:

Yes, that is perfectly possible, because in that case metallurgy and fire were developed terrestrially.

Well, what if these 'aquatic civilizations' never went above sea level for their metallurgy?

Bare with me here, I may have something.

What if the creatures stumbled across some caves that had air pockets, and saw a vein of molten rock in there, and it sent sparks off onto plant roots(or fungi tendrils or something) hanging from the ceiling into the water, and there is an oily substance on them that catches fire, and burns in the water. This creature leaves and brings back others, they figure out what this 'fire' thing the old coot is talking about is, and it somehow burn underwater, out of the oxygen in the water. They then figure out how to make a forge in their little aquatic village after observing the cave more and the fire itself, or if the oily stuff is too much, then maybe they had some limited ability to breath air for a short time, and just built a forge in that cave?

Or would that be too out there for you folks?

Ok, this is getting a little ridiculous. That just combined several other series and throws in such hypothetical unlikely situations that we can't even hope to simulate it.

Seriously, we just need to admit there is no way to do this without uplifting. People have been debating this for three years and it just won't happen. I'm not being negative or rude to those suggesting ideas, I'm just saying that at this point it's not helping everyone to continue debating this. That brain power would be much more useful in finalizing Microbe Stage or the Function Part Discussion.

Well, it was worth a shot, I guess.

But, now that I look back, I guess you're right.

It is indeed a very difficult concept to articulate into something easy to use.

Like I said, I'm glad you're being creative, but we also need to think of things that we can program into a game. We can't be so realistic as to get that kind of environment (I wish we could though...)

What, no underwater caves?

Not even for aquatic stage?

CURSES! I was hoping to make like a subterranean critter that lived underground, but could hold it's breath like a wale so it could hunt in the water. .3.

Ahwell, Guess I'll have to stick with a realistic alien Pikachu.

I don't get it, whats the hype with this Underwater Civilization? We would get enough underwater experience with the fish stage anyway, there are much more exciting things to do with water than building civilization, like drowning people with tsunami waves.

Caves are a possibility. We hope to implement these (though it will be very tricky (due to the planet generation algorithm we hope to use)). However your idea would be way too hard to implement doctor.

No aquatic stage?
Belgium, that is one of reasons why im contributing to you.

WilliamstheJohn wrote:

No aquatic stage?
Belgium, that is one of reasons why im contributing to you.

I think I'm right in saying there will be an aquatic stage (well, you can play as an aquatic creature during the organism stages), so I'm not sure where you got that from. What's being discussed here is whether an aquatic creature can build a civilisation. Marine life is a certainty in the game either way.

As Oliver said, There will be underwater life. Even more, you will e forced to be underwater for the first part of the game (You start of as a free floating cell in the sea, evolve into a fish, and eventually are able to evolve out of the water if you wish).

The discusion here is if an underwater civilization can advance fully underwater, without uplifting or evolving as an hybrid (can life both under and over water). Advance means get to space, as a basic, stone-age-level underwater civilization is possible.

Could caves be implemented by creating cave-"modules" that can be randomly put together? But we'd have to make many of those "modules" to keep the caves unique.

That is one way. We have to decide still how are we going to handle storing the terrain. If it is a voxel-based system, we dont need any of those cave modules. If it is a heightmap, we will need something like that to handle anything that doesent fit a heightmap, like caves. That discussion, however, doesent go here.