I got an idea

Hello guys I got an idea i saw a post about how to do sneak attacks if you know spore and if you create an animal and take a limb you can make the limb bigger what if in Thrive you can increase the muscle size of the animal like you have a limited amount of how much muscles a animal can distribute all over the body what i mean by that is you know you never have the SUPER predator with SUPER muscles thats because its biologicaly not possible what if you have a limit of how much muscles you can increase in the whole body like if you increase the jaw bones VERY much you get a Crocodile jaw or a Tyrannosaurus rex jaw that way its very reallistic and that way you cant have god like animals that can with a snap of there fingers make a entire species go extinct

Now another thing i saw was extinction someone said that extincion will be that if you kill all the animals of that kind you will make them extinct but that would result in other species dieing to and maybe your own aswell if 1 species goes extinct and the animals that feeds on them will go extinct aswell and on and on and on so will that happen or will it be something else because it isnt actually possible as an animal to kill a entire species

Army-Lion wrote:

Now another thing i saw was extinction someone said that extincion will be that if you kill all the animals of that kind you will make them extinct but that would result in other species dieing to and maybe your own aswell if 1 species goes extinct and the animals that feeds on them will go extinct aswell and on and on and on so will that happen or will it be something else because it isnt actually possible as an animal to kill a entire species

correct me if im wrong but i believe that this is covered in the game through niches. The code calculates through niche position what organisims feed of a certain position and if that goes extinct then it (not completely sure on this part) either mutates the animal (e.g. evolving to eat a different food source.), makes it rely on another food source more (so uneffected) or kills them off.

i will have a look through the wiki and see if i can find exact definitions.

thanks Lbrewer

And what about my other idea for the muscles to have a limit and you can increase like the muscles in the jaw to have like a t-rex jaw and here comes the thing if you put much muscles in the jaw somewhere from the body something else needs to be low on muscles.

I mean this is the most easiest way to make sure you dont have god animals.

Army-Lion wrote:

And what about my other idea for the muscles to have a limit and you can increase like the muscles in the jaw to have like a t-rex jaw and here comes the thing if you put much muscles in the jaw somewhere from the body something else needs to be low on muscles.

I mean this is the most easiest way to make sure you dont have god animals.

I don't think we need a muscle limit, because:

• Bigger muscles mean the organism needs more energy to move around the muscles.
  
• Bigger muscles require more energy to power them, there will be an ideal point after which the amount of energy required to use them becomes unobtainable. This is, in my opinion, the main reason it won't be possible.
  
• Heightened strength means the bones need to be stronger to avoid snapping, so even more energy intake is needed simply to hold the thing together.
  
• There is a point at which there simply is simply no reason to get bigger muscles, when it no longer makes life easier.

So an artificial limit isn't needed. If one was needed, you'd see the sort of things you describe in everyday life.

The Uteen wrote:

I don't think we need a muscle limit, because:

[list][*]Bigger muscles mean the organism needs more energy to move around the muscles.
[*]Bigger muscles require more energy to power them, there will be an ideal point after which the amount of energy required to use them becomes unobtainable. This is, in my opinion, the main reason it won't be possible.
[*]Heightened strength means the bones need to be stronger to avoid snapping, so even more energy intake is needed simply to hold the thing together.
[*]There is a point at which there simply is simply no reason to get bigger muscles, when it no longer makes life easier.

So an artificial limit isn't needed. If one was needed, you'd see the sort of things you describe in everyday life.

QFT

One of this game's aims is to be as close to science as is still fun, and when IRL has limits that sowrk just fine, why try to add different mechanics in?

The Uteen wrote:

I don't think we need a muscle limit, because:

• Bigger muscles mean the organism needs more energy to move around the muscles.
  
• Bigger muscles require more energy to power them, there will be an ideal point after which the amount of energy required to use them becomes unobtainable. This is, in my opinion, the main reason it won't be possible.
  
• Heightened strength means the bones need to be stronger to avoid snapping, so even more energy intake is needed simply to hold the thing together.
  
• There is a point at which there simply is simply no reason to get bigger muscles, when it no longer makes life easier.

So an artificial limit isn't needed. If one was needed, you'd see the sort of things you describe in everyday life.

You nailed that question on the head. Now I have one: In the editor it's allowed currently for the player to scale up muscles, but I wonder what the difference would be between scaling up a current muscle, or adding in a new one in the same place? Is there a reason that new muscles are discouraged in real life natural selection?

GhengopelALPHA wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

I don't think we need a muscle limit, because:

• Bigger muscles mean the organism needs more energy to move around the muscles.
  
• Bigger muscles require more energy to power them, there will be an ideal point after which the amount of energy required to use them becomes unobtainable. This is, in my opinion, the main reason it won't be possible.
  
• Heightened strength means the bones need to be stronger to avoid snapping, so even more energy intake is needed simply to hold the thing together.
  
• There is a point at which there simply is simply no reason to get bigger muscles, when it no longer makes life easier.

So an artificial limit isn't needed. If one was needed, you'd see the sort of things you describe in everyday life.

You nailed that question on the head. Now I have one: In the editor it's allowed currently for the player to scale up muscles, but I wonder what the difference would be between scaling up a current muscle, or adding in a new one in the same place? Is there a reason that new muscles are discouraged in real life natural selection?

It requires more materials to make a separation between the muscles, and leaves you with a crease that's doing nothing. In addition, sometimes the rubbing of one against another can cause irritation.

As Rex said, a single muscle is more effective that two or more muscles with the same total volume. On the other side, multiple muscles are much less prone to failures.

Commander Keen wrote:

As Rex said, a single muscle is more effective that two or more muscles with the same total volume. On the other side, multiple muscles are much less prone to failures.

Adding in another muscle would have a greater effect on the code describing the creature, so it is less efficient for the player to add strength by adding more muscles, since complexity is measured in the actual length of the code describing the creature.

Ahh, I got it. Keen's got a nice idea of a tradeoff if we allow individual muscles to fail, though. I kinda like the concept of that, but are we going to be simulating physical interactions and localized damage?

You know, Scio, we don't need to limit creatures by their complexity. Spore needed it to be able to stream the creatures through the server in runtime, but we don't have any server, thus we don't need any limit like this.

Localized damage was limited to whole body parts and organs, but the multiple muscle thing could be easily simulated just by increasing the bodypart's durability quite a bit.

GhengopelALPHA wrote:

Ahh, I got it. Keen's got a nice idea of a tradeoff if we allow individual muscles to fail, though. I kinda like the concept of that, but are we going to be simulating physical interactions and localized damage?

I believe so, it’s what our weapons’ damage system is dependant on. Each organ in the body will have its own ‘health’. The skin… I’m not sure how we’re doing that. There is a shard (our CC graphical interface, shards indicate status, act as buttons, and look good (See Scio’s sig design)) which will get the average damage of the creature and display it in a colour, and clicking will give you different areas’ damage.

EDIT: Confirmed by Keen, as I wrote this.

EDIT (Again): Ahh… 15 more posts and I’ll be joining the one-thousand club. Wow!

Commander Keen wrote:

You know, Scio, we don't need to limit creatures by their complexity. Spore needed it to be able to stream the creatures through the server in runtime, but we don't have any server, thus we don't need any limit like this.

Localized damage was limited to whole body parts and organs, but the multiple muscle thing could be easily simulated just by increasing the bodypart's durability quite a bit.

We limit by the change in complexity, not the overall complexity. Each mutation will allow you to change the length of the code by a certain percent.

~sciocont wrote:

Commander Keen wrote:

You know, Scio, we don't need to limit creatures by their complexity. Spore needed it to be able to stream the creatures through the server in runtime, but we don't have any server, thus we don't need any limit like this.

Localized damage was limited to whole body parts and organs, but the multiple muscle thing could be easily simulated just by increasing the bodypart's durability quite a bit.

We limit by the change in complexity, not the overall complexity. Each mutation will allow you to change the length of the code by a certain percent.

A duck and a rabbit are about as complex, but completely different. Surely it should just be a limit to the complexity of the change, rather than the change in the complexity?

Complexity isn't the issue here.

The way we want the OE set up is so that a universal code layout is provided. All Orgs use one style of code, which acts as their DNA. It lists how the organism is laid out, how it moves, sounds, acts, etc. When the player mutates, they access the editor, and, through their alterations, change the code. The game will compare the code from the previous organism with the new one, and if the percentage of code that is different is too high, it is not allowed.

All done.

Tenebrarum wrote:

Complexity isn't the issue here.

The way we want the OE set up is so that a universal code layout is provided. All Orgs use one style of code, which acts as their DNA. It lists how the organism is laid out, how it moves, sounds, acts, etc. When the player mutates, they access the editor, and, through their alterations, change the code. The game will compare the code from the previous organism with the new one, and if the percentage of code that is different is too high, it is not allowed.

All done.

QFT

You would have to change the code too much in between. Maybe I should have made it clearer. Actually, no I completely messed it up, it's not the length of the code, it's the number of changed characters.

All Right, you're scaring me, I can not agree what you think.

darkfallve wrote:

All Right, you're scaring me, I can not agree what you think.

Who are you responding to?

I dont like the percentage of code changed. If you change the right bit, you could get a muscle twice as big, or in a completely diferent place. just one bit. In contrast, making the nose a bit longer but not thicker could need a few hundred bytes. We need some other way of measuring how big changes are.

Daniferrito wrote:

I dont like the percentage of code changed. If you change the right bit, you could get a muscle twice as big, or in a completely diferent place. just one bit. In contrast, making the nose a bit longer but not thicker could need a few hundred bytes. We need some other way of measuring how big changes are.

Can you think of any specific way? Perhaps we just need to format the code in a manner such that changes are controlled, like by specifying that only the last decimal place or two in a measurement can be altered.

I think that we should go to a much higher level in order to see what changed. If you look at the lowest levels (the code), the only things you can extract from that are really not meaningfull. I would sugest something like percentages of changes.

For example:

We have a 10% of changes we are allowed.
We increase a muscle size by 2% (of the total mass of the creature), and reduce another muscle size by 3%. Now we a 5% alowed change left.

Of course, this idea needs lots of refining, but i think something similar could work. Anyway, my point here is that we should look at the changes from a meaningfull level.

Daniferrito wrote:

I think that we should go to a much higher level in order to see what changed. If you look at the lowest levels (the code), the only things you can extract from that are really not meaningfull. I would sugest something like percentages of changes.

For example:

We have a 10% of changes we are allowed.
We increase a muscle size by 2% (of the total mass of the creature), and reduce another muscle size by 3%. Now we a 5% alowed change left.

Of course, this idea needs lots of refining, but i think something similar could work. Anyway, my point here is that we should look at the changes from a meaningfull level.

Exactly, an organizational change. This is what I meant from the code changing perspective, that we would have each component of the organism have discrete parameters that could be modified. Essentially, every "part" put into an organism has values for size/strength/etc that auto-evo can manipulate to a certain degree, and that change will necessarily have other effects on the global functioning of the organism. If a femur is increased in length by 5%, movement speed also increases, but energy consumption increases as well.