Miscellaneous Bugs And Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread Thread

Spoiler:

So my idea is that you add metal-based lifeforms. And, here's how they would be different from organic lifeforms.

-Colors, metal-based lifeforms will have more extravagant colors that organics cant match. Bright fuchias, blues, or really dark versions -- almost iridescent or neon like. They would really play a part in that strange spore like world where nothing is really quite green, except maybe the copper, oxidizing in the atmosphere.

-Hotter suns, metalloids tend to run hotter than carbon based lifeforms. And favor regions where A.) there's no sunset or B.) Greenhouse effect runs a little hotter than on carbon based planets.

-No coal/crude present. Chemistry, and life history doesn't favor it.

-Habitable planets are rarer because the elements are rare. Their cells use heavier elements meaning that most of the planets that they inhabit, had rather violent pasts where massive supernovas had occurred, leaving behind a stronger concentration of heavier elemtents, and metals such as iron, tungston, molybdenim, and etc.


What do you think, or has this been mentioned before?

Indeed, it has been mentioned. We're trying to keep grounded in known chemistry for simplicity's sake, so it's not on the to-do list.

My idea... rejected.... for shame!!! Figures >.>

Ah, no hard feeling though;-)

Just hear me out. I know your not going to delve deep into chemistry, And I know you're probably not going to go deep into biology completely. I can help you some with chemistry if you'd like.. I am going into the field. However, just know that this game is work of fiction. And, heavy metals like lead, and gold... Have been mentioned. Cobalt is another good one too... It's ions can be complex enough for chemists to say ( plausible) and for commoners like your 13 year old sibling to say, cool metal life-forms. It's like "thrive's" take on transformers. Lol. Except there's no built in guns... And jet packs.

Several scifi works of fiction have played with this idea too, ever heard of the show called Fringe. Even the Discovery channel has touched on the subject of metal beings. I've heard of several mentionings of life having chemistry very different from ours... This could be it. It's plausible to several scientist out there.

Anyways ill shut-up about it. I tried searching this... But couldn't find it in here. I'll take it upon myself to think of how the inorganic life will work. Maybe come up with some theories of systems. It'll my contribution to your game... And maybe a future thread for those who thought of this same thing (it'll be more easily found, mention some complications what you of what I came up with and etc.)

I'll PM you when I'm finished, and you can tell me what you think. Ill try to keep it simple... and make it mirror a lot of your organic chem. has done. Even work around some complex ions that could work the same way as DNA and such. If anything, this could be a future add-on or something similar after you guys have a more finished game... With all the main features done.

How about organisms that reproduce by injecting venom into individuals of related species, like the vampires in "Twilight"? And maybe shapeshifting creatures, like in Joschua Knuppe's alternate evolution project, "Skuntabria". You can find it in his deviantART gallery. His username is ~Hyrotrioskjan. Maybe there could also be the option to give your creature a crystalized top layer to the epidermis that shimmers in the light of a star (not silicon, but diamonds). Does any of that seem feasible?

Not quite the same, but there are wasps and such that inject their eggs in caterpillars and such, it looks lthey are stinging them.--- don't know about the the dark fantasy twist you added, it is a scifi. Game with some semi-realistic or at least concepts that are grounded in real science.--- again I'm new here so... Someone else actually making the game will probly have better answer.

Crystallized creatures--- sounds like my yet to be accepted project :D. If i can develop a well thoughout, Simple yet realistic inorganic chemical cycle. I'm kinda studying chemistry so don't think this is just a lost cause because I present what I find and the makers reject it.
But yea inorganics will have vivid colors (like strong neon and iridescent qualities, most of what they are going to be made of are used as chemical indicators) lots of these complex ions I'm presenting have strong colorful qualities. And, they are ionic bonds so they may have shimmery crystal quality.

Otherwise, goodluck. I hope they like it ;-)

@jman- you're describing something akin to traumatic insemination, which is a cool idea to add. Sundu's wasps are called ichneumon wasps, and Darwin wrote a bit about them, relating tom the necessary suffering of organisms because of their niche.

@sundu, if you can come up with a really great way of incorporating non-carbon-based life in game, send it to me and we'll see about including it somewhere down the line. It has to be amazing, though.

~sciocont wrote:

@jman- you're describing something akin to traumatic insemination, which is a cool idea to add. Sundu's wasps are called ichneumon wasps, and Darwin wrote a bit about them, relating tom the necessary suffering of organisms because of their niche.

@sundu, if you can come up with a really great way of incorporating non-carbon-based life in game, send it to me and we'll see about including it somewhere down the line. It has to be amazing, though.

It's not technically traumatic insemination, because that requires both animals to be the same species. My idea was to have an individual of one species bite a member of a related species, injecting venom laced with a virus containing the genome of that species, turning the individual of the second species into a member of the first species. The sparkling thing involved microdiamonds embedded in the stratum corneum, which serve a dual purpose. One purpose is to reflect UV rays, the other as camouflage, allowing the organism to lie motionless on a dry riverbed, appearing as a pool of water in the distance. This would allow it to entice its prey ever closer until the perfect moment to strike. I also thought of adding sanguivory as a diet choice.

It's amazing how close to nature those concepts are. Did you know, we could see ultra-violet light if our eye wasn't designed to shield our light sensitive receptors from it. Actually that's why we have skin too, to protect ourselves from UV light... Darker people are better than fairer people. So I think micro-diamonds should be out -- simply because diamond require lots of heat and pressure to be made. Camoflodge and really effective camo, is already used in nature. So I'll bet they'll work on that too.

--- there are vampire bats..... And mosquitoes. So don't be surprised if they come up with parasitic, blood suckling creatures.

--- again, there are creatures that could inject their eggs so the victim effectly becomes the species that " empregnated them"

--- on another thought, it could be interesting tech. An alien species that uses viruses to help propagate their whole civilization. In other words, they invade, infect, and leave. Star Treck played with that idea... Enterprise--- and next gen both had episodes that had several crew members get infected and become mutated.

Sundu wrote:

It's amazing how close to nature those concepts are. Did you know, we could see ultra-violet light if our eye wasn't designed to shield our light sensitive receptors from it. Actually that's why we have skin too, to protect ourselves from UV light... Darker people are better than fairer people. So I think micro-diamonds should be out -- simply because diamond require lots of heat and pressure to be made. Camoflodge and really effective camo, is already used in nature. So I'll bet they'll work on that too.

--- there are vampire bats..... And mosquitoes. So don't be surprised if they come up with parasitic, blood suckling creatures.

--- again, there are creatures that could inject their eggs so the victim effectly becomes the species that " empregnated them"

--- on another thought, it could be interesting tech. An alien species that uses viruses to help propagate their whole civilization. In other words, they invade, infect, and leave. Star Treck played with that idea... Enterprise--- and next gen both had episodes that had several crew members get infected and become mutated.

How about naturally-occurring silica? The urticating hairs on a nettles are made of it. Or maybe tiny bioluminescent spots? Also, I want there to be predatory sanguivores as well as ectoparasitic ones.

Silica, plausible. One of the toughest grasses in the world, Currently invading swampland, uses silica tips on its roots to kill other plants. However, my only nock with silica is that is has been linked with cancer with us, a mammal. The stopped using silicon breast implants because of that. However other mammals/complex heterotrophs aren't known to get breast implants, so...;)

This, is a spore like game so im sure you can make giant bloodsucking beasts... If they add that as a food source. You have to keep in mind there is nothing special about blood. It's just how our body transports nutrients throughout our body. So the question is, it makes sense why a bat, leech, mosquito would only eat blood... But a big animal that can kill?--- we could eat blood if we wanted to. And, as in matter of fact, we do.

Which brings me to hunger... How will it work? Is there a thread on that?

On eating things:

When eating stuff, two main parts are main to the task: mouth and digestive system.

The first step when eating is geting the food inside your organism. Depending on the type of food, diferent types of mouths and teeths are needed. Plain teeths for hervivores, and sharp ones for carnivores. I believe you could potentially use claws or other apendities as a replacement for teeths, but i dont know if that could work well. Special kinds of tissue, like wood material at plants or bones need special kinds of mouths.

Second step is digesting the food. This can start at the mouth, with teeths maximizing surface area or saliva starting to digest food, as many animals do, like us humans or cows. This step could be skipped, like in case of (at least) some kind of snakes or ducks, who swallow the food entirelly and the stomach digest it entirelly. Once in the stomach, depending on the kind of stomach, diferent foods are digested better or worse. Diferent creatures are composed of diferent kinds of tissues, and each stomach has diferent percentages of digestion ratio. For example:

Cows:
-80% ratio when eating soft vegetable material (fruits)
-50% when eating medium-type vegetables (grass)
-5% when eating hard vegetable material (wood)
-50% when eating meat (but their mouth doesent allow them to injet it anyway, and will probably resoult in indigestion)

Humans:
-60% ratio when eating soft vegetables
-10% when eating medium type vegetables
-0% when eating hard vegetables
-60% when eating meat

Tigers:
-70% when eating meat
-0% when eating any vegetable

This is just a quick and dirty example. Stomachs could
Percentages means amount of food digested. For example, if a cow injests 100g of grass, it would assimilate 50g, and the remaining 50g will como out as "waste".

Of course, more types of tissues are needed. For example, bones, blood, sap or even the waste from other creatures.

If your creature specializes in blood digesting, you could be a blood sucking creature. Althrough you probably dont need to specialize at all, as blood has all nutrients alredy digested, so you only need to digest the red cells (wich isnt too hard) and get rid of white cells. You would need a special kind of mouth, though. That digestive system is actually good for you, as less complexity on digestive system means you can specialize more anywhere else, or that descendants are easier to produce. But i dont think that would work on a bigger creature.

For example, if you hunt a human ad suck its blood dry, you would need to kill it beforehand anyway, and you would gain about 5 kg of nutrients, but you would leave behind another 70 kg of perfectly good meat behind. If you specialize a bit at meat digesting, you could go from 5 kg of nutrients per kill, to 75 kg. Thats why there are no big animals that only eat blood.

But if you are a small creature, you can eat the blood withouth the host noticing, so you don't have to kill it, like mosquitos do, or about 3 species of bats.

Probably food will be easy. On the multicelular stage, food will be simplified to energy. Any action will consume energy. Eating will replenish it. When reproducing, some of your current energy is transfered to your descendant/s. Part of it to create its tissues, and some of it as initial reserves. Complexity on systems means it takes more energy to create and use them, althrough you can specialize them on efficiency too.

I hope this covers most of the eating stuff. And sorry for such a long long long long post.

Sundu wrote:

Silica, plausible. One of the toughest grasses in the world, Currently invading swampland, uses silica tips on its roots to kill other plants. However, my only nock with silica is that is has been linked with cancer with us, a mammal. The stopped using silicon breast implants because of that. However other mammals/complex heterotrophs aren't known to get breast implants, so...;)

This, is a spore like game so im sure you can make giant bloodsucking beasts... If they add that as a food source. You have to keep in mind there is nothing special about blood. It's just how our body transports nutrients throughout our body. So the question is, it makes sense why a bat, leech, mosquito would only eat blood... But a big animal that can kill?--- we could eat blood if we wanted to. And, as in matter of fact, we do.

Which brings me to hunger... How will it work? Is there a thread on that?

Drink. You drink liquids. Also, I don't think there is, but I'd say that the more complex of a digestive system you have, the less often you get hungry.

jman12351 wrote:

Sundu wrote:

Silica, plausible. One of the toughest grasses in the world, Currently invading swampland, uses silica tips on its roots to kill other plants. However, my only nock with silica is that is has been linked with cancer with us, a mammal. The stopped using silicon breast implants because of that. However other mammals/complex heterotrophs aren't known to get breast implants, so...;)

This, is a spore like game so im sure you can make giant bloodsucking beasts... If they add that as a food source. You have to keep in mind there is nothing special about blood. It's just how our body transports nutrients throughout our body. So the question is, it makes sense why a bat, leech, mosquito would only eat blood... But a big animal that can kill?--- we could eat blood if we wanted to. And, as in matter of fact, we do.

Which brings me to hunger... How will it work? Is there a thread on that?

Drink. You drink liquids. Also, I don't think there is, but I'd say that the more complex of a digestive system you have, the less often you get hungry.

Drink, eat... I was simply implying you metabolize blood.
I think he meant that more complex beings require more energy... I.E. mammal vs reptile. A reptile can go weeks without hunger... While mammals try to eat every day for the most part.

Quote :

I think he meant that more complex beings require more energy... I.E. mammal vs reptile. A reptile can go weeks without hunger... While mammals try to eat every day for the most part.

Mammals really aren't necessarily "more complex" than reptiles. People tend to think this because they are mammals, so there's a bit of bias. Mammals and reptiles just simply have different metabolic systems. Although it is true that the mammal system is a more recent evolutionary development, this doesn't mean it's more complex, or necessarily better. We need to focus on differences in evolutionary adaptation rather than overall complexity, which is difficult to define.

Also, it's best not to argue over little semantics ("eat vs drink") Everyone here know what they're talking about, so be sure to show respect and forgo these little squabbles.

Yes, you are right. In some way its a bit one sided to say something is more complex that something else.

But Mammals/Birds are more complex than reptiles. Mammals and birds are warm blooded, reptiles are not. This is invaluable when combating stuff like hyporthermia (which is a really bad threat to reptiles, as their body has no defense against it). And also reptiles are sluggish in the cold. It's like saying prokaryotes are equally as complex as eukaryotes, which is not true. Reptiles however eat less than mammals because they don't require as much energy. Their fat stores last longer.

Birds have a much more complex lung system than mammals, they can take more oxygen from air than we can.

However, complexity doesn't mean something is more adapted to a biome than something else. Complexity more refers to organisms "features" or "body parts". After all extremophiles are the only organisms that can live in the arctic ice or in a boiling hot spring--- and they are prokaryotes I believe.

Sundu wrote:

Yes, you are right. In some way its a bit one sided to say something is more complex that something else.

But Mammals/Birds are more complex than reptiles. Mammals and birds are warm blooded, reptiles are not. This is invaluable when combating stuff like hyporthermia (which is a really bad threat to reptiles, as their body has no defense against it). And also reptiles are sluggish in the cold. It's like saying prokaryotes are equally as complex as eukaryotes, which is not true. Reptiles however eat less than mammals because they don't require as much energy. Their fat stores last longer.

Birds have a much more complex lung system than mammals, they can take more oxygen from air than we can.

However, complexity doesn't mean something is more adapted to a biome than something else. Complexity more refers to organisms "features" or "body parts". After all extremophiles are the only organisms that can live in the arctic ice or in a boiling hot spring--- and they are prokaryotes I believe.

You are for the most part correct here, I just want to warn against assuming complexity is what drives or predicts fitness or evolution.

~sciocont wrote:

Sundu wrote:

Yes, you are right. In some way its a bit one sided to say something is more complex that something else.

But Mammals/Birds are more complex than reptiles. Mammals and birds are warm blooded, reptiles are not. This is invaluable when combating stuff like hyporthermia (which is a really bad threat to reptiles, as their body has no defense against it). And also reptiles are sluggish in the cold. It's like saying prokaryotes are equally as complex as eukaryotes, which is not true. Reptiles however eat less than mammals because they don't require as much energy. Their fat stores last longer.

Birds have a much more complex lung system than mammals, they can take more oxygen from air than we can.

However, complexity doesn't mean something is more adapted to a biome than something else. Complexity more refers to organisms "features" or "body parts". After all extremophiles are the only organisms that can live in the arctic ice or in a boiling hot spring--- and they are prokaryotes I believe.

You are for the most part correct here, I just want to warn against assuming complexity is what drives or predicts fitness or evolution.

I agree. Primitive mammals weren't as complex as non-avian Cretaceous dinosaurs, and look who didn't get finished off by a mass extinction. Every edit would have a drawback, I suppose, like making your organism's body larger to give it more health points (if we can't find anything better), but the body now costs more energy to be maintained, not to mention that you need to make your legs shorter and/or thicker to give the torso the extra support it now needs.

Sorry, got off-topic. javascript:emoticonp(':|')

I have seen one old camouflage thread, so i thinked it might be useful to make new, beacuse i have a lot of ideas and concepts about it (As example: camouflage of wild animals could cause you cant find that animal in early society stage, even if its good for eat.Camouflage would be used to hide from predators, or prey, and etc.) and other function concepts, types of it and etc.

Basically, it is a game long tech tree or perhaps a 'Biotree', that help the player further define and specialise their species towards their style of play.
It starts and the beginning of the game, where you have a few minor starting adaptation that add small perks to your cell, however, as you go along you get more and more perks that become available because you made choice A or choice B, for example: Choosing a perk early on that gives your cell a high rate of reproduction will gives your creature later on a high regeneration rate later, which then later on gives your creature an expendable limbs perk, where perhaps the crippling of limbs has little or no effect on your species, and that can give your space creature bioaugmentations, and so on and so forth.

I think it's a cool idea, but what about you?

Cobalt58 wrote:

Basically, it is a game long tech tree or perhaps a 'Biotree', that help the player further define and specialise their species towards their style of play.
It starts and the beginning of the game, where you have a few minor starting adaptation that add small perks to your cell, however, as you go along you get more and more perks that become available because you made choice A or choice B, for example: Choosing a perk early on that gives your cell a high rate of reproduction will gives your creature later on a high regeneration rate later, which then later on gives your creature an expendable limbs perk, where perhaps the crippling of limbs has little or no effect on your species, and that can give your space creature bioaugmentations, and so on and so forth.

I think it's a cool idea, but what about you?

It is a nice idea, but we're not going to gamify evolution to that extent.

~sciocont wrote:

Cobalt58 wrote:

Basically, it is a game long tech tree or perhaps a 'Biotree', that help the player further define and specialise their species towards their style of play.
It starts and the beginning of the game, where you have a few minor starting adaptation that add small perks to your cell, however, as you go along you get more and more perks that become available because you made choice A or choice B, for example: Choosing a perk early on that gives your cell a high rate of reproduction will gives your creature later on a high regeneration rate later, which then later on gives your creature an expendable limbs perk, where perhaps the crippling of limbs has little or no effect on your species, and that can give your space creature bioaugmentations, and so on and so forth.

I think it's a cool idea, but what about you?

It is a nice idea, but we're not going to gamify evolution to that extent.

aww, oh well at least it was considered

Have an idea:
Different habitats offer different parts available, for example, living in a jungle or rain forest habitat introduces new parts that allow better grip or jumping ability (:cat:) and a marsh environment introduces disease and poison resistance parts(:alien:).

Is this a good idea that can be implemented?

I've been reading around on some of the topics from new members, and one common thing that keeps recurring is the fact that it's quite hard to get started on the forum. I also looked at an old thread about implementing a website rather than a forum, and I've created a simple prototype:

Spoiler:

As Thrive gets nearer (well, nearer than it has been) to its first stage being completed, we'll obviously need somewhere for discoverers of the game to go that's not the forum, maybe if they just want to find out about the game without trawling through the confusing mass of topics that the forum currently is. I know there's the ModDB site, and while that's better than the forum, it's not ideal.

You'll obviously have better ideas for what the buttons and text should be than me, and it'll need hosting (as far as I can tell from the previous thread on a website, no one's got it yet). I did create this as an actual HTML document before exporting it as a PNG, so the links work (at least the links to sites already up - the forum, ModDB page and Thrive Facebook page), and change colour when the mouse hovers over them. The text is as close as I could get to the actual font used for the logo, and the button shapes are based on ~sciocont's shattered theme.

This may be another idea that's not needed now, or even ever, but I think we could attract a lot more people both to help us and get excited about the game. What do you all think?

Oliveriver wrote:

I've been reading around on some of the topics from new members, and one common thing that keeps recurring is the fact that it's quite hard to get started on the forum. I also looked at an old thread about implementing a website rather than a forum, and I've created a simple prototype:

Spoiler:

As Thrive gets nearer (well, nearer than it has been) to its first stage being completed, we'll obviously need somewhere for discoverers of the game to go that's not the forum, maybe if they just want to find out about the game without trawling through the confusing mass of topics that the forum currently is. I know there's the ModDB site, and while that's better than the forum, it's not ideal.

You'll obviously have better ideas for what the buttons and text should be than me, and it'll need hosting (as far as I can tell from the previous thread on a website, no one's got it yet). I did create this as an actual HTML document before exporting it as a PNG, so the links work (at least the links to sites already up - the forum, ModDB page and Thrive Facebook page), and change colour when the mouse hovers over them. The text is as close as I could get to the actual font used for the logo, and the button shapes are based on ~sciocont's shattered theme.

This may be another idea that's not needed now, or even ever, but I think we could attract a lot more people both to help us and get excited about the game. What do you all think?

I actually really like this idea. I'm really new, so my opinion doesn't matter much but I have some friends who would love a game like this, but their aren't the most technologically inclined as some and can be intimidated by forums that require a little bit of effort to actually find what you wanted. I think having a good website can show people that this is indeed an active and forward moving project. Just a few of my thoughts, I like it

Hi there,

Awesome work! Always good to see content being made. I totally agree with the fact that a website should be implemented to give a nice window to the huge amount of data that is the forum. I've said it earlier and been told there is already a site :

http://revolutionarygamesstudio.webs.com/

However, anyone would agree that it needs a refresh. I'm usually more a fan of standard and efficient layout but it's up to discussion. Your design could be used as a index or would be really nice as a menu in the game itself.

You seems to have good experience of website design and it would be a good idea to use your skill if you are interested on working on the website.