abilities

from my threads about mutations and killing styles and what not i have been thinking about how animals pose certain traits or abilities . when i say abilities i mean camouflage or flight i don't mean that super roar from spore, what i'm getting to is that there should be a certain key you hit to use your ability. like lets just say my creature is lion type big cat that hides in the grass and has grass colored fur to blend in and when i hit the key lets just say its "6" and it would automatically make my creature stop and assume a pouncing position. that would be nice this "ability" can be a lot of different things like a spitting cobra shooting its venom or a creature making itself look like another like the mimic octopus. some abilities should be passive like artificial light. and some should be prepared like camouflage

For activatable camo (like in octopi/octopodes) I think that a simple on/off switch, where off leaves you as is and on causes you to shift in color/texture/both as you move over different surfaces. Depending on the significance of the changes (did you just become slightly lighter in color or did you change the texture and pattern of your entire body?) it will tire you out slightly, as more complex como should be more difficult to pull off.

You're talking about key bindings, something you find on many games under keyboard settings, and I'm sure abilities will be bindable.

But... I don't think we'll have graphical buttons to use these abilities, it would clutter up the screen. Just pointing that out.

Chromatophore camoflage (re: octopus) should not tire you out, or it won't be evolutionarily viable. Not to mention, it takes about as much energy as blinking. It might mean that you have to wander across the seafloor slower or you'll still be anemone-pink when swimming in front of a brown coral, however.

Other things, such as cheetah-style sprinting should, however. We need to think realistically about whether it's an active or passive strategy, and how much energy it actually would take, instead of treating this like pokemon cards and saying "Thriveosaur looses 10 energy by preforming 'hide.'" < I'm rather a fan of realism...

However, this does bring up an interesting question: for a behavior such as hiding, with one clear outcome but a variety of factors contributing to it (speed of motion, skin color, height, type of terrain, etc.) where do we draw the distinctions between what the player has to do manually, what a "hide mode" would do for you automatically, and how the environmental factors and such play into it? It's actually a very complex problem.

yea i'm was trying to get to that you would suspect your creature to be silent when hiding there are...now. i mean everything evolves genetically, physicality, and mentally after many times of hunting and failing because your creature is making to much noise if you can address the problem if can be fixed over time. also i thought of another ability most creature should be able to have this ability digging but i mean if my creature is some ambush dessert creature with really good eyes sight it would be nice to have a trait thats where my creature digs down ( probably near one oft he only watering holes for miles)
and its head is sandy and hard to notice and waits for the other creature to come by and get a drink of water and SNAP my creature jumps out ( this would be best with a type of poison) and attacks the creature and kills it and eats it.

Thank you Calli, I was just trying to think of a reason that such camo would not evolve on everything and that was the first thing to come to mind. Thank's for the fix.

To some degree, the reason octopus/chameleon camo wouldn't evolve everywhere is that it is a complicated system which won't happen unless it's very beneficial. It may not be muscularily tiring, but it involves a very long string of adaptations compared to say, being brown all the time.

Passive camo is really quite common - tiger stripes, green and brown beetles, etc. Outstanding coloration comes in when it is to a creature's advantage to be seen - such as poisonous frogs or peacocks. Some species will trade in with brightly colored males, who are supposed to be seen as they compete for females (peacocks and many other birds) and drabber colored females, who blend in better while sitting on a nest or whatever.