the differences from eating a tree or the cow dog thing with 2 heads or both

i have been think about digestion and killing thing but what about after your kill it or pick the apple what you eat will customize you ,i mean will you eat the trees of your planet or you eat the giant crabs the size of dogs. i don't know what you will choose carnivore, omnivore or herbivore there all different and they have there set backs and there advantages ( as seen on earth)




CARNIVORES
setbacks-
only eats meat (steak)
more times then not you will have to kill your food ( they will scavenge given the chance though)
has to follow best food source where ever or starve
( or adapt)
advantages-
since having to kill prey a large portion of the time
more suited for combat than herbivores ( some times)
gains more protein from eating the meat
good ones can adapt with a lot of weaponry or gain a lot of skills and become dominate over an areas
(think snakes there everywhere or crocodiles)
not a complex digestive system of that of herbivores




OMNIVORES
setbacks-
tricky digestive system
grazing is not nutritious enough and can't break certain hard shell organism or hunt often enough end in loss of energy instead of a gain in energy
has to get "easy" things to eat
advantages-
large food choices ( either the steak or the apple)
if done right (like humans) can be really successful
creature


HERBIVORES
set backs-
only eats the plants (apples)
its main food source can be in danger by a lot of things
( think weather and other animals like locusts )
might not be able to receive protein form some plants
times might change ( turn to winter)
might stick to one food ( selective feeding)
complex digestive system( breaks down plants to food)
advantages-
eats stuff that is hight in vitamins
not hunting needed for there food
can evolve strong defenses against predators






ok thats the rough copy of my pros and cons list of which group your creature will fall in too. i know there are also insectivores, and carnivorous plants etc. and since this game is being made for you to go on you own path your probably going to break out of these 3 groups but this is just a rough copy and to get the thread started about what your creature eats just to get the ball rolling so mike is out

I think the major factor here is size and energy consumption/prduction.

There are autotrophs (make their own energy, like plants from sunlight). They produce all their own energy from a given source (Light, chemicals, heat). The more they get, the bigger they get, but that depends on their species and environment (IE a Redwood in a forest will grow taller than a bit of grass in a field)

There are heterotrophs which use other species to get energy, mostly by consumption.
There are primary consumers which eat the autotrophs. These are basically herbivores. They get all their energy from eating autotrophs and expend this energy on movement, growth etc (A lot is lost via heat in respiration).

There are secondary consumers which eat primary consumers. They get all their energy from eating primary consumers, which get all their energy from eating producers. Because the primary consumers expend some of their energy on growth, movement etc the secondary consumers will not receive as much energy from their food as the primary consumers do.

It is for this reason that carnivores on earth tend to be much smaller than the herbivores. It is also why there is not commonly a long chain of carnivores eating other carnivores as they will not receive much energy from doing so. They do not attain as much energy as herbivores and thus are not able to expend as much on growth whilst herbivores that can benefit from being larger than carnivores.

And heres that same post again in earthly english:

Spoiler:

Gracias a Pezzalis. ^ For future reference what he says, except the energy chain goes like this.

Producers = 1,000 units*
Primary Consumers = 100 units
Secondary Consumers =10 units
Tertiary Consumers = 1 units

This is why you don't get full-on quatrenary consumers. You get tertiary consumers that will also eat other tertiary consumers, but this is not their primary source of nourishment. We also have an energy level of somewehere between 100 and 10 units for omnivores (which are generally not tertiary consumers - the bear is an exception to this rule) depending on the percentage of diet which is plant and which is animal, and which can change by individual and conditions.

* Hypothetical units don't mean anything when applied to the game as yet.

For sake of implementation,

The compound suggestion I made (yeah ok it was a while ago) would fit this well.

You could make it so that if an animal dies, its proteins would convert into a different kind that may or may not be digestible by the current animal.

You would then have to evolve a specific stomach to eat dead animals, all because of this one rule.

@OP Specialized stomachs are the key.


We could also implement it such that animals would also only physically contain 10% of the engergy they've eaten. Thus, the food energy tree works just like that.

roadkillguy wrote:

For sake of implementation,

The compound suggestion I made (yeah ok it was a while ago) would fit this well.

You could make it so that if an animal dies, its proteins would convert into a different kind that may or may not be digestible by the current animal.

You would then have to evolve a specific stomach to eat dead animals, all because of this one rule.

@OP Specialized stomachs are the key.


We could also implement it such that animals would also only physically contain 10% of the engergy they've eaten. Thus, the food energy tree works just like that.

That sounds really good, roadkill. Like really good. And simple. Making it even more good.

it would nice to see a vulture creature in an ecosystem every once in a while to make the realism fit in

US_of_Alaska wrote:

roadkillguy wrote:

For sake of implementation,

The compound suggestion I made (yeah ok it was a while ago) would fit this well.

You could make it so that if an animal dies, its proteins would convert into a different kind that may or may not be digestible by the current animal.

You would then have to evolve a specific stomach to eat dead animals, all because of this one rule.

@OP Specialized stomachs are the key.


We could also implement it such that animals would also only physically contain 10% of the engergy they've eaten. Thus, the food energy tree works just like that.

That sounds really good, roadkill. Like really good. And simple. Making it even more good.

Sounds good, we can include a stomach specially made to digest rotting meat.

Calli approves of vultures and decomposition bugs. *nod*

Or, specifically designed to digest a specific compound. A stomach would have an efficiency for all proteins and sugars from 0.0-1.0 . We would let the player know what they're eating and they could choose to digest one more efficiently. We could impose a maximum sum of 2.0 or something to keep the stomach from becoming too advanced.

we would have to have some difference in eating a rotten cow dog thing to eating a freshly kill one. we should make categories of what we would consider animals that have died like the time and what not and to show the rot

1 FIRST STAGE
freshly killed or still alive (no rot)
hunter can eat with no worry about tainted meat at all
90% hunter 10% scavenger interested in the meat


2 SECOND STAGE
a few hours after death ( some rot, depends on environment)
most hunters can eat
80% hunter 20% scavenger


3 THIRD STAGE
at least 12 to 16 hours after death ( definite rot ,again depends on environment)
a relative okay number of hunters can eat some might get sick
50% hunter 50% scavenger interested in the meat


4 FOURTH STAGE
1 to 2 days after death ( rotting a lot, again depends on environment)
not many hunters can eat with out getting sick
35% hunters 65% scavengers interested in the meat

5 FIFTH STAGE
4 to 8 days after death ( rot is present every where, in most natural environment)
zero to very few hinters can eat without dying shortly afterwards from germs
5% hunters 95 scavengers interested in the meat

okay hunters equal the predators that kill the game and they wouldn't go after some
super rotten animal unless there starving and how would we prepare are creature for this? because if we just eat rotten meat after rotten meat are creature will get sick or worse. and i put it may be different for some environment because if a corpse was in the rain forest it will be gone quicker than if it was in empty desert. so that my rough copy of
the 5 stages of decay add changes if you want use mind as a spring board over and out

roadkillguy wrote:

Or, specifically designed to digest a specific compound. A stomach would have an efficiency for all proteins and sugars from 0.0-1.0 . We would let the player know what they're eating and they could choose to digest one more efficiently. We could impose a maximum sum of 2.0 or something to keep the stomach from becoming too advanced.

This seems a bit complex- could you explain further?
@Mike- that really looks good.

also around fifth or fourth stage we should put some sign beside the rot that the creature/player knows the meat is past the point of meat and if eaten will likely get sick. i was looking up about vultures and there stomach acid is extremely strong and serves two purposes the main and obvious one is to digest the meat before the bacteria infects them, and second and i really like this one there self defense tactic is to vomit and there acid is is strong it may burn the attack or the smell is usually enough to drive the attack away as well

mike roberts wrote:

also around fifth or fourth stage we should put some sign beside the rot that the creature/player knows the meat is past the point of meat and if eaten will likely get sick. i was looking up about vultures and there stomach acid is extremely strong and serves two purposes the main and obvious one is to digest the meat before the bacteria infects them, and second and i really like this one there self defense tactic is to vomit and there acid is is strong it may burn the attack or the smell is usually enough to drive the attack away as well

Well done in the research department. Vultures will often vomit on a potential threat not just to scare them away, but to empty themselves so that they can escape. They often eat so much that it is difficult for them to fly away.

My idea is to over time update the amounts of of "protein" using a simple linear model, or possibly an exponential model.

p1 = 50 - .7*t; (with a minimum of 0)
p2 = .7*t; (with a maximum of 50)

(I've chosen .7 arbitrarily. This would be used for tuning.)

Where p1 is the original kind of protein, p2 is the converted protein, and t is the time in hours.

Thus, the protein amounts will slowly convert.

An exponential version would be like this:

p1 = 50*(1/2)^t;
p2 = 50 - p1;

Thus, the protein amount will exponentially convert (like a half life) with protein1 halfing in amount every hour. (I like this way better)



My theory for the specialized digestion is as such.

A stomach has a digestion value for every protein (sugars too, but we'll just look at proteins for now).

dv1 = 0.9
dv2 = 0.4
dv3 = 0.1
dv4 = 0.05
dv5 = 0.05

When your animal eats something (like another animal), we look at the proteins that make up what you just ate.

We would then get the proteins from the equations above (if it's dead)
p1 = 35 (the animal must have been dead for 21.43 hours (linear model))
p2 = 15
p3 = 0
p4 = 0
p5 = 0

we convert the proteins into energy by multiplying and taking the sum:

.9*35 = 31.5
.4*15 = 13.5
.1*0 = 0
.05*0 = 0
.05*0 = 0

With a grand total of 45.. arbitrary energy points.

The idea is you can add to one digestion value and increase your efficiency with that particular digestible item.

Basically, customizable "enzymes" specific to different types of organic matter? (carbohydrates, simple sugar, protein etc.) Excellent.

Seems good to me

Ahhhh yes... enzymes.

mike roberts wrote:

also around fifth or fourth stage we should put some sign beside the rot that the creature/player knows the meat is past the point of meat and if eaten will likely get sick. i was looking up about vultures and there stomach acid is extremely strong and serves two purposes the main and obvious one is to digest the meat before the bacteria infects them, and second and i really like this one there self defense tactic is to vomit and there acid is is strong it may burn the attack or the smell is usually enough to drive the attack away as well

My idea for smell (first two posts on the page) had an indication of how rotten stuff is, with a cycle of colours. It's what makes smell important. So no indication of rotting other than sight and smell, please. And the smell of stomach acid should register as toxic, which, indeed, should drive nose-wearing attackers away.

Smell... Well, knowing the state of rot would be highly useful, though smell is also a defensive thing - you can smell your predators coming, etc.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Smell... Well, knowing the state of rot would be highly useful, though smell is also a defensive thing - you can smell your predators coming, etc.

Yes, but edibility is the main purpose of smell.

A quick google search yields this.

It's fairly interesting, and seems to fit with my idea of compounds.

The only issue seems to be letting the player know what's good and what's bad.


Maybe we could precalculate which compounds are good and which are bad based on your current abilities.. and which are predators and which are prey (which may be also good)

You could hint the edge of the screen with a particular color based on what you're smelling, and how well you can smell.

We also might have the list of good, bad, and predator in your animal's dna. That way you'd have to evolve it. How should that fit into pezzalis' system?

we don't have to program the chemicals is the beauty of it. We just have to program that there is a range in which certain things can be smelled - dead stuff will be smellier than living predators/prey.

We could skew the necessary circle into an egg shape to account for wind direction, and it is possible that we could have some sort of trail for tracking prey. All we need is a handful of basic smell categories, and each creature depending on their predators/prey gets their own little file with a reference as to what falls under each category.

Ok, i think we need to categorize smell according to complimentary color scales. This way, you will know what is good or bad and what it is. It's basically Uteen's idea switched around a bit.

Members of your own species:

Unhealthy:Healthy

Food:

Good:Bad

Other:

Dangerous:Safe

Unsure

This is basically optimized for human color reception- blue is the least appetizing color, red is associated with sickness (danger, too, but purple goes well with fear), green is universal for good, fertile, etc.

Supposedly, red makes you hungry. And the redder the meat is, the fresher we percieve it (which is why they take great care in the meatpacking industry to keep it red.)

*Sneaks off.*

I don't know, I would always pick blue over orange Also there's the long tradition of giving enemies red in the gaming industry, most people will associate red with danger, purple could work well with ill friends I think.