Plant Gameplay

I've found some neat videos.
It seems when time is sped up, plants are not as sessile as we tend to think. If we could make this work gameplay wise it would be a truly unique feat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn9H8hbAAWQ&feature=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9MV5CgPgIQ

However I am sure this side of the game would have its limits. For example it would be very boring being grass or a lone tree, but a light-based competitive forest gameplay might just work in theory with a faster time scale. I would like to see this included.

Pezzalis wrote:

I've found some neat videos.
It seems when time is sped up, plants are not as sessile as we tend to think. If we could make this work gameplay wise it would be a truly unique feat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn9H8hbAAWQ&feature=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9MV5CgPgIQ

However I am sure this side of the game would have its limits. For example it would be very boring being grass or a lone tree, but a light-based competitive forest gameplay might just work in theory with a faster time scale. I would like to see this included.

Those videos are great, but remember that they are highly sped up. I think now that plant gameplay could be quite exciting, but only if sped up greatly. On another thread we're saying 60 or 80 minute generations with 8 days in them for animals. Perhaps plants could simply grow continuously (when possible) during those 60 or 80 minutes, to make the game more exciting. Another idea is for plant gameplay to include strategy mode, where you see your entire biome from above and try to conquer it and other biomes through strategic mutations and the control of individual growth.

With reproduction, I think we need to settle whether we'll transfer to the offspring or not like with creatures. If we do switch, it will be like creating a new slate, making lighting/watering conditions completely different. This can be good, forcing the player to suddenly change what they were working on with their previous plant, but it can also be bad. The player can be having somewhat of a challenge with their plant (which is good, otherwise it would be boring), when suddenly they switch to a new plant with much better conditions. I don't know about you, but I like a game where it gets progressively more difficult. Staying with the same plant the whole time provides this, switching to another can provide it, but will sometimes not. In my opinion, I think we should just stick with the one plant the entire generation, even if their lifespan is shorter than the 8 day year. Reproduction should be more of a need like light and water than a means of switching to the next plant.

I had a rough brainstorm of what could make an interesting plant gameplay.

What if at the start of every day/week/month in the generation, everything is in real time. You essentially give different branches/tendrils/support structures instructions on what to do. Aren't all organisms essentially constructed as nodes? If this is the case then instructions could be given to certain nodal points on the plant

Instructions could vary from growing towards light, growing in a certain direction, growing leaves or other photosynthetic structures, splitting in two, deepening roots, producing digestive fluids (carnivorous?), widening spread etc.

The amount of actions you can perform depends on how much energy you have stored as glucose in your chloroplasts which is relative to the amount of light you're plant attains over a certain period of time. More light = More Growth.
When you have mapped out your growth plan for the day (week/month - we need to work on time scales here), you click the big GROW button which puts everything at a very fast speed so you can visually see your plant carrying out its instructions.

Other Plants nearby will be doing the same and there may be competition if they are in close proximity. There may also be animals in your biome which target you as a source of food. Perhaps if your plant is capable of certain behaviors such as thigmonasty (Moving quickly to avoid touch) thigmotropism (Growing towards or away from a touch stimuli) then the game can snap back to real time and allow you to alter your plans as a counter strategy.

Perhaps certain behaviours can automate such instructions, such as phototropism (Growing towards light).

Towards the end of the generation you can produce reproductive structures. You must have enough energy to produce x amount of flowers/fruit/seeds, so attaining enough light in your species lifetime is vital.
If successfully completed then you are able to successfully contribute to the next generation.
If you do produce some reproductive structures but do not have the means of spread, sexual reproduction, or enough, then you may still contribute but there may be a detrimental effect in the next generation (Less of your species, less variety etc)


It still needs work and refinement but what do you think?

Pezzalis wrote:

I had a rough brainstorm of what could make an interesting plant gameplay.

What if at the start of every day/week/month in the generation, everything is in real time. You essentially give different branches/tendrils/support structures instructions on what to do. Aren't all organisms essentially constructed as nodes? If this is the case then instructions could be given to certain nodal points on the plant

Instructions could vary from growing towards light, growing in a certain direction, growing leaves or other photosynthetic structures, splitting in two, deepening roots, producing digestive fluids (carnivorous?), widening spread etc.

The amount of actions you can perform depends on how much energy you have stored as glucose in your chloroplasts which is relative to the amount of light you're plant attains over a certain period of time. More light = More Growth.
When you have mapped out your growth plan for the day (week/month - we need to work on time scales here), you click the big GROW button which puts everything at a very fast speed so you can visually see your plant carrying out its instructions.

Other Plants nearby will be doing the same and there may be competition if they are in close proximity. There may also be animals in your biome which target you as a source of food. Perhaps if your plant is capable of certain behaviors such as thigmonasty (Moving quickly to avoid touch) thigmotropism (Growing towards or away from a touch stimuli) then the game can snap back to real time and allow you to alter your plans as a counter strategy.

Perhaps certain behaviours can automate such instructions, such as phototropism (Growing towards light).

Towards the end of the generation you can produce reproductive structures. You must have enough energy to produce x amount of flowers/fruit/seeds, so attaining enough light in your species lifetime is vital.
If successfully completed then you are able to successfully contribute to the next generation.
If you do produce some reproductive structures but do not have the means of spread, sexual reproduction, or enough, then you may still contribute but there may be a detrimental effect in the next generation (Less of your species, less variety etc)


It still needs work and refinement but what do you think?

This sounds okay, but I think we should just stay with continuous growth instead of just watching it grow in spurts. Remember, time will be sped up already. You'll be watching your plant grow as you direct it. There will be more going on than just growing, you'll have to be gathering and distributing resources around the plant at the same time. Jumping in only on times when your plant is in crisis will make the gameplay much less engaging. Just having crises appear while handling other stuff is much more effective, like in the SimCity games. In SimCity, you could be working on developing on part of your city, when suddenly the giant UFO monster comes and starts destroying your city, so you'll have to take quick action to combat the damages it does before you can go back to normal gameplay. Likewise, you could be concentrating on growing your roots and collecting water, when suddenly an herbivore eats the part of the plant you had reserved for taking in sunlight. You'll suddenly have to concentrate on growing the smaller light collecting areas of your plant larger before you run out of sunlight.

However, the rest of this is basically what we already had in mind. Keeping everything growing as you play means you have to concentrate on more things at once, making it more challenging, and, in turn, more fun. You'll also have to grow some of the structures you mentioned to collect resources. I do like the idea of having the amount of change in the OE be smaller if your plant isn't successful at reproducing. Going off my previous post, I agree we should just have reproduction be at the end of the generation.

I'm liking this stuff guys.

The impression I'm getting from all of this conceptualizing, is that the interface for Sessile Gameplay would be somewhat of a combination between SimCity and the Spore Creature Editor. Where the Organism will be treated as a series of Nodes in which the player will choose what Organs grow out of them and what priority will be given to growing each individual Organ. Meanwhile underground the player will control the root system and try to feel around for water and nutrients in the soil. The player can also 'feel' where sunlight is hitting the plant and if there is any damage. Eventually the player will attempt to invest in Flowers/Mushrooms/OtherReproductiveOrgans and aim them (if possibly) to a location where the seeds might survive.

*Recap, at least from what I understand currently*

GamerXA wrote:

The impression I'm getting from all of this conceptualizing, is that the interface for Sessile Gameplay would be somewhat of a combination between SimCity and the Spore Creature Editor. Where the Organism will be treated as a series of Nodes in which the player will choose what Organs grow out of them and what priority will be given to growing each individual Organ. Meanwhile underground the player will control the root system and try to feel around for water and nutrients in the soil. The player can also 'feel' where sunlight is hitting the plant and if there is any damage. Eventually the player will attempt to invest in Flowers/Mushrooms/OtherReproductiveOrgans and aim them (if possibly) to a location where the seeds might survive.

*Recap, at least from what I understand currently*

Something like that.

Was plant gameplay ruled out back at the old forums, or earlier on? If so why? I think that this concept actually has a fair shot at being an engaging form of gameplay. I doubt plant/sessile sentience is achievable (maybe thats just me being closed minded) but perhaps as a mode to play either for fun or during God mode as a bonus, or a way to conceptualize how NPC sessile orgs behave.

Either way these are good ideas.

Pezzalis wrote:

Was plant gameplay ruled out back at the old forums, or earlier on? If so why? I think that this concept actually has a fair shot at being an engaging form of gameplay. I doubt plant/sessile sentience is achievable (maybe thats just me being closed minded) but perhaps as a mode to play either for fun or during God mode as a bonus, or a way to conceptualize how NPC sessile orgs behave.

Either way these are good ideas.

That's how I was thinking of it. Sure, when the game is finished I'll probably mostly play as a creature, but playing as a plant every once in awhile is a fun alternative. It's almost like an entirely different game within the game.

Now, for a topic we haven't fully addressed. How will the player control where the resources go in the plant? If we're going with parts of the plants being nodes, I think an easy way to divide up the plant would be just having each section be a node. Each node could have a stat system showing the levels of resources it has- perhaps showing up as a little window with bars when you hover the mouse over the node?

Now for moving resources around, I'm thinking of a sort of click-and-drag system. Each plant will have 4 basic resources if I'm not forgetting anything- air, water, sunlight, and nutrients from the soil. Instead of my little bar idea, maybe hovering over the node gives you four little icons representing each resource, with a ratio next to them showing how much of the resource the node has compared to the optimal level for the node.

For example, for light we could have a sun symbol, and perhaps a node requires 3 units of the light resource but only has two. So, for the light icon would be a sun with the ratio 2:3 next to it. Now, going on in this example, a neighboring node has the same requirement, but has 4 units, meaning it has one extra. So, the player could click the sun icon on the neighboring node and drag it over to the first node, transferring its resources.

The number of each resource a node requires could vary with what type of plant part the node is (leaf, stem, root, etc.) A node will loose resources when it uses them, probably just based on a timer. If a node has too much or too little of a resource, its health could decrease, and if the deviance from normal is to extreme it and any nodes growing out of it could die.

Also, the farther into the generation the plant is, the bigger it will be, meaning the player will have to manage more nodes, gradually increasing the difficulty. I know there's probably some points this concept leaves out, but what do you think?

Well light should be based on sunlight cast on leaves/photosynthetic structures within that section, it shouldn't be transferable? The rest sounds alright.

Pezzalis wrote:

Well light should be based on sunlight cast on leaves/photosynthetic structures within that section, it shouldn't be transferable? The rest sounds alright.

Well, plants use light to make food, don't they? So maybe have light just transfer directly to food? Or does it have to combine with one of the other resources to make food, adding a whole new dynamic to the game-combining resources to make new ones? That's one of the parts I knew I left out. Someone more knowledgeable in botany will have to sort this out.

tklarenb wrote:

Pezzalis wrote:

Well light should be based on sunlight cast on leaves/photosynthetic structures within that section, it shouldn't be transferable? The rest sounds alright.

Well, plants use light to make food, don't they? So maybe have light just transfer directly to food? Or does it have to combine with one of the other resources to make food, adding a whole new dynamic to the game-combining resources to make new ones? That's one of the parts I knew I left out. Someone more knowledgeable in botany will have to sort this out.

Just thought I'd chime in and say that I agree with Pezzalis entirely on this portion of the gameplay thus far. I'll chime in again if there's anything I disagree with, but so far.... awesome. =)

Plants synthesize glucose, one of the simplest sugars,by combining water and carbon dioxide with energy from light. A tree draws water (with some nutrients) upwards through the roots via xylem, and phloem tissue moves sugars (the sap of the plant) to other areas. The entire plant functions as a whole, that's why roots can grow, even though they have no light to get energy from.

~sciocont wrote:

Plants synthesize glucose, one of the simplest sugars,by combining water and carbon dioxide with energy from light. A tree draws water (with some nutrients) upwards through the roots via xylem, and phloem tissue moves sugars (the sap of the plant) to other areas. The entire plant functions as a whole, that's why roots can grow, even though they have no light to get energy from.

Thanks scio. I think my idea needs a bit of a redo. Resources could still be moved around with the method I mentioned, but they wouldn't all be required like I said earlier. Instead a certain number of each resource is needed to create the sugars, which is the required resource. So it would kind of function like a bunch of mines collecting resources, which are than sent to a factory creating the "goods" and than distributing them to "the people" or the parts of the plants that can't make the sugar themselves.

With this compared to real plants, I don't think the light resource should be able to move before being converted to sugar. The leaves would act as the "mines" for light energy and air while also functioning as the plant's factory. The roots would act as the mine for water and nutrients. We'd have the resources from the roots be "shipped" to the leaves to create the sugars, then distributed back through the rest of the plant.

Another question--are the nutrients from the soil a part of photosynthesizing? If not, they could be a sort of oddball resource, required by the plant like the sugar, only maybe not needed as much.

tklarenb wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Plants synthesize glucose, one of the simplest sugars,by combining water and carbon dioxide with energy from light. A tree draws water (with some nutrients) upwards through the roots via xylem, and phloem tissue moves sugars (the sap of the plant) to other areas. The entire plant functions as a whole, that's why roots can grow, even though they have no light to get energy from.

Thanks scio. I think my idea needs a bit of a redo. Resources could still be moved around with the method I mentioned, but they wouldn't all be required like I said earlier. Instead a certain number of each resource is needed to create the sugars, which is the required resource. So it would kind of function like a bunch of mines collecting resources, which are than sent to a factory creating the "goods" and than distributing them to "the people" or the parts of the plants that can't make the sugar themselves.

With this compared to real plants, I don't think the light resource should be able to move before being converted to sugar. The leaves would act as the "mines" for light energy and air while also functioning as the plant's factory. The roots would act as the mine for water and nutrients. We'd have the resources from the roots be "shipped" to the leaves to create the sugars, then distributed back through the rest of the plant.

Another question--are the nutrients from the soil a part of photosynthesizing? If not, they could be a sort of oddball resource, required by the plant like the sugar, only maybe not needed as much.

Siol nutrients are generally not used to create products in photosynthesis, but are completely essential to the plant, because it must use them in the manufacture of other chemicals, such as amino acids, phosphates, and nitrogen bases.

~sciocont wrote:

tklarenb wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Plants synthesize glucose, one of the simplest sugars,by combining water and carbon dioxide with energy from light. A tree draws water (with some nutrients) upwards through the roots via xylem, and phloem tissue moves sugars (the sap of the plant) to other areas. The entire plant functions as a whole, that's why roots can grow, even though they have no light to get energy from.

Thanks scio. I think my idea needs a bit of a redo. Resources could still be moved around with the method I mentioned, but they wouldn't all be required like I said earlier. Instead a certain number of each resource is needed to create the sugars, which is the required resource. So it would kind of function like a bunch of mines collecting resources, which are than sent to a factory creating the "goods" and than distributing them to "the people" or the parts of the plants that can't make the sugar themselves.

With this compared to real plants, I don't think the light resource should be able to move before being converted to sugar. The leaves would act as the "mines" for light energy and air while also functioning as the plant's factory. The roots would act as the mine for water and nutrients. We'd have the resources from the roots be "shipped" to the leaves to create the sugars, then distributed back through the rest of the plant.

Another question--are the nutrients from the soil a part of photosynthesizing? If not, they could be a sort of oddball resource, required by the plant like the sugar, only maybe not needed as much.

Siol nutrients are generally not used to create products in photosynthesis, but are completely essential to the plant, because it must use them in the manufacture of other chemicals, such as amino acids, phosphates, and nitrogen bases.

Okay, so nutrients will serve the same role as sugars--one of the required resources for the plant, it just doesn't have to be manufactured like the sugar.

Correct. We needn't list sugars as resources since the plant manufactures them.

~sciocont wrote:

Correct. We needn't list sugars as resources since the plant manufactures them.

But doesn't sugar have to be distributed around the plant?

On another note, I just made some concept art for the interface for plant gameplay. The image is shown with the stem selected.

https://2img.net/h/i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n513/tklarenb/Plantinterfaceconcept.png

tklarenb wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Correct. We needn't list sugars as resources since the plant manufactures them.

But doesn't sugar have to be distributed around the plant?

On another note, I just made some concept art for the interface for plant gameplay. The image is shown with the stem selected.

https://2img.net/h/i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n513/tklarenb/Plantinterfaceconcept.png

Looks good. I was thinking in terms of required resources for the entire plant, so disregard that. I've a good Idea for what plant gameplay could look like. We have to remember that you'll be seeing all other plants growing just as your plant is growing.

~sciocont wrote:

tklarenb wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Correct. We needn't list sugars as resources since the plant manufactures them.

But doesn't sugar have to be distributed around the plant?

On another note, I just made some concept art for the interface for plant gameplay. The image is shown with the stem selected.

https://2img.net/h/i1137.photobucket.com/albums/n513/tklarenb/Plantinterfaceconcept.png

Looks good. I was thinking in terms of required resources for the entire plant, so disregard that. I've a good Idea for what plant gameplay could look like. We have to remember that you'll be seeing all other plants growing just as your plant is growing.

I was basing it off of the idea from earlier about not seeing your surroundings, but it doesn't really matter to me.

Looking good so far, decided to have a go. I'm thinking that when you hover over nodes it gives you a flower shaped menu with an action on each 'petal'

Spoiler:

My concept

Pezzalis wrote:

Looking good so far, decided to have a go. I'm thinking that when you hover over nodes it gives you a flower shaped menu with an action on each 'petal'

Spoiler:

My concept

We could make the "flowers" shattered, and it would make the GUI go with the rest of the game. Love the idea.

One quick question- when an herbivore eats part of your plant, should we slow down time to normal organism speed so you can tell what happened?

Now, one concept we have not yet discussed is defense. Coverings such as thorns wouldn't work with the node concept, so they should probably be applied automatically to parts like stems and branches--the type of covering and where it is found on the plant would be chosen in the OE. Stuff like poison I feel would also be an automatic thing just chosen beforehand in the OE. Are there any defensive mechanisms of plants that could qualify as a full part to add during gameplay?

tklarenb wrote:

One quick question- when an herbivore eats part of your plant, should we slow down time to normal organism speed so you can tell what happened?

Now, one concept we have not yet discussed is defense. Coverings such as thorns wouldn't work with the node concept, so they should probably be applied automatically to parts like stems and branches--the type of covering and where it is found on the plant would be chosen in the OE. Stuff like poison I feel would also be an automatic thing just chosen beforehand in the OE. Are there any defensive mechanisms of plants that could qualify as a full part to add during gameplay?

There probably will be. As for the herbivore thing, I think slowing down time would be a good idea there.