coloration/pigmentation

Wht about if you live in a dark enviroment then you lose all coloring or if you arent a very good at attacking somehting or defending you become clear? Just a side not what about being chameleon like, blending in with your envoriment? When this game is done it is going to be freaking awesome!!!!!!

I imagine we'll be having to discuss pigmentation soon, so we might as well open up the discussion here.
Some stuff will loose coloration if it lives in, say, a lightless cave, but stuff that has a transcendent or migratory niche probably won't, as it ventures outside.
Alternatively, you could be the color of the cave walls. But someone should discuss the advantages of loosing color in an environment where no one can see you anyway, because it's too early for me to think of them.

in my abilities thread i posted we have talked about camouflage but you do raise a good point with color of your creature. i think it should be relatively similar with the environment unless you migrate like ^^you said ^^ if you want to know more about the camouflage concept and what not look at my ability thread and add in put.

In addition, I need some chlorophyll help to determine what the colors of your surrounding foliage are... I'll be doing some data dive on that when I either have more time or we have more biomes and their tags parcelled up.

The ground rules for blending in versus not blending in are: If it is to a creature's advantage to be noticed, they will be brightly colored. If it is to their advantage to remain hidden, they will match the scenery.

sounds good

Coloration probably will be changed by the environment. That's a good thing to include in biomes, optimum coloration and a few paint jobs.

Anyone who wants to help me with plant color research can help me jump start this one.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Anyone who wants to help me with plant color research can help me jump start this one.

For camo, I have a vague idea. Different sections of an environment can have a "typical" section looked at, copied, and have the edges of different colors smoothed in order to be more...what's the word...easy to recreate? This pattern can then be reaplied to a creature if thier coat is supposed to blend in (note that this would be different than imitation of a log or a leaf).

^ So, on earth, you would probably end up with a lot of varying patterns and shades of brown, tawny, and green. My sadly neglected chlorophyll research seems to suggest that blue, purple and yellow would also be acceptable leaf colors, so other places you could have that too.
I like it - but we have to take those darn seasonal color shifts, such as those from the white of snow to the brown of mud, such as in the tundra. (Before anyone protests, water ice is clear and therefore looks white, and water ice is LAWK)

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

^ So, on earth, you would probably end up with a lot of varying patterns and shades of brown, tawny, and green. My sadly neglected chlorophyll research seems to suggest that blue, purple and yellow would also be acceptable leaf colors, so other places you could have that too.
I like it - but we have to take those darn seasonal color shifts, such as those from the white of snow to the brown of mud, such as in the tundra. (Before anyone protests, water ice is clear and therefore looks white, and water ice is LAWK)

Yep, and we see that brown and tawny-ish colors are fairly popular color choices here, so it works fairly well.

It seems that leaf color is not a popular color for larger animals to imitate. Herbavores seem to imitate colors that you would see when they are bedded down, while carnivores have more variety, often taking either the same route or the color (bears) and texture of the low plants (African big cats for example). This is not always the case though, such as for large animals like elephants, who may have certain colors to make up for their body's inability to take in or lose heat without aid.

Foliage color seems to be imitated more by animals that spend time in trees among the leaves.

Seasonal shifts in color would likely come from being in an environment where there is not enough food for everything to hibernate through the long winter. (LAWK? What does that mean?)

LAWK = Life As We Know it. (Calli fails at abbreviations - where did the thrive abbreviations dictionary go? That should probably go in, along with sucession...)
Seasonal shifts come in areas where the entire landscape looks different for a long time - You are right in that creatures which hibernate won't need to shift colors, but even in the arctic and antarctic tundra a great amount of things do not hibernate.
Also, we mustn't forget the creatures that are plant mimicks - mostly insects, but still.
No mammals that I know of are green, but many tropical birds and many reptiles are. I'm guessing that it might be partly chemical as well. Sloths can appear green, but that's just because their backs are moss gardens. They are not exactly rolling stones.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

LAWK = Life As We Know it. (Calli fails at abbreviations - where did the thrive abbreviations dictionary go? That should probably go in, along with sucession...)
Seasonal shifts come in areas where the entire landscape looks different for a long time - You are right in that creatures which hibernate won't need to shift colors, but even in the arctic and antarctic tundra a great amount of things do not hibernate.
Also, we mustn't forget the creatures that are plant mimicks - mostly insects, but still.
No mammals that I know of are green, but many tropical birds and many reptiles are. I'm guessing that it might be partly chemical as well. Sloths can appear green, but that's just because their backs are moss gardens. They are not exactly rolling stones.

I'm thinking that every biome should come with a "color pallet", which tells what colors are good for camo in the biome. This would of course be adjusted for the dominant autotroph color.

And if that counts as a subtle poke towards doing some research into that area, I will... once summer comes.

Ok, I think I've figured out how to do color-based camouflage.

1: Determine one base color for the locality of the creature
This is determined by taking the hexcode of the most prevalent color in the biome, which is determined by the color of the most prominent autotroph, or the ground color of the biome.

2: Determine the base color of the creature (basically done by smoothing color across the texture until it becomes one color [that goes for the first step as well]) Find this hexcode.

3: Subtract the hexcodes from each other. The difference determines how well camo'd the creature is, with a lower difference meaning better camouflage. A perfectly matched hexcode means a 0% chance of bring seen.

Alternatively, we could take around 20 random pixels from the biome, and around 20 random pixels from the creature, and see how well they match up. This would result in less well camouflaged creatures, but a more accurate reading of camo from different angles.

Also there is the problem of counter-shading, which this method really can't account for.

This same process could also work for Batesian mimicry, the hard part is deciding which animal to mimic.

Remember, this only works for textures, and does not take into account
a) reflectivity
b) whatever pixels it doesn't sample
c) movement
d) shape/pattern of texture
e) 3d shape of animal
I realize that this is not perfect, but I think it's a start.

Sounds like a fairly good idea, with a few tweaks. I think multiple checks may be required to tell an NPC what it dos and does not see, and what it should and should not eat. One would work how you say, and the other would compare the overall creature to another one, color and shape, and would then if it is "similar" enough, it would be "misidentified" as the other creature being imitated.

Hmmm... we may need something about autotroph shapes too. (I'm thinking of the stripe patterns of tigers, which supposedly blend in with the grass.)

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Hmmm... we may need something about autotroph shapes too. (I'm thinking of the stripe patterns of tigers, which supposedly blend in with the grass.)

Actually, the stripes break up their outline in dappled forest sunlight. Tigers don't generally spend a ton of time in grass.

Poisson wrote:

Sounds like a fairly good idea, with a few tweaks. I think multiple checks may be required to tell an NPC what it dos and does not see, and what it should and should not eat. One would work how you say, and the other would compare the overall creature to another one, color and shape, and would then if it is "similar" enough, it would be "misidentified" as the other creature being imitated.

That's for mimicry, right? (The eating part.)

Also, I didn't even think about things like scent camouflage, which are possible but much easier to do.

Sorry, I should have been more specific. Yes, that is what I was refering to, Scio.

Poisson wrote:

Sorry, I should have been more specific. Yes, that is what I was refering to, Scio.

Ok.
Camo is 1st priority, mimicry comes afterwards.