Animals and races

[GoldenDragon]

Hello!

When it's time scripting the NPCs into the game, I think that we need some NPCs to script into the game .

So, post ideas of creatures that you think will be good in the Terasology game.

 

[Cervator]

This is a more useful topic as we're close to needing to put NPCs in the world. It somewhat depends on the flavor picked over at viewtopic.php?f=4&t=260 - where I'm favoring vanilla fantasy for starting out (with a solid interest in adding some steampunk mechanics later)

Note that we don't really need a list of standard animals and races - elves, wolves, sheep, zombies etc will show up as soon as it makes sense that somebody with time available makes the effort to put them in. That further depends on https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/issues/128, https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/issues/212, and https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/issues/213

So I'd suggest rather than listing which creatures we want, we instead focus on what we want to know about them. What sort of data and behavior makes up a creature, and how do we intelligently store and manage that data?

 

[GoldenDragon]

So, a wolf for example can maybe spawn and hunt etc. in groups (5 characters for example). If there should be tamable pets I think it should be tameble. Maybe you need some bone or a toy to tame it for example. Is this what you are looking for?

EDIT: Maybe we could set 2-5 characters as an example instead of 5 characters.

 

[Cervator]

Yep, sort of.

Tameable = true/false might be too narrow (see the discussion over in the world theme thread). Needing a very exact item might be too narrow. Who is trying to tame the animal, and do they look friendly? Is the animal in a shape where it'd be receptive? What food types might the animal consume? Etc

Spawn in packs - yep, you might want a list with weighted probabilities like so:

spawn.number = [1:1, 2:2, 3:5, 4:5, 5:4, 6, 7:2, 8:1]

That would be read as "number in pack:weighted probability" - so packs of 3 and 4 would be the most common (weight of 5 each, out of 23, so 21.74% chance for either). Solo wolves would be rare (1/23 or 4.35%), as would large packs of 8

 

[metouto]

I have a question and don't know where to ask it .....

You are talking about animals and races here and my question is ..... at the beginning of the game, when this all get set, will the player have the option of what he/she would like to be as a player ...... Orc, elf, Dawes, wolf ????

 

[glasz]

Some animals could have only a "decorative" function : birds in the sky, lizards running on the stones etc... They wouldnt have much of an utility in game, but would add to the "reality" of the world.

 

[Cervator]

Yeah I like the idea of ambiance mobs

Metouto: Exactly who the player is hasn't really been decided yet. We don't technically need to until multiplayer, as you don't look at yourself much in single player (although IIRC we do have a camera function to allow that) so you don't really need a model yet. Any gameplay attached to what you are also is a little ways off.

 

[metouto]

Ok .... thanks

 

[GoldenDragon]

Solo wolves would be rare

Can you make solo wolwes stronger? Then you can find rare challenging solo wolves.

EDIT: Maybe they should have another color? Like a little more blue than the other wolves for example.

 

[Cervator]

Sure, but again that's waaaay in the future

 

[Stuthulhu]

GoldenDragon, I believe the point Cervator is, rather kindly, trying to make, is that you are dealing with magnification x 1000 while we are still assembling the bits and pieces of magnification x1.

We could eventually come up with wolves that speak in backwards swahili, and wolves that tell riddles, and wolves that breathe fire, and wolves that wear top hats and monocles. This could even mean you eventually meet a lighly orange shaded difficult backwards Swahili riddle telling firebreathing monocled wolf with top hat loot. However, that stuff doesn't make much sense to define now.

When there is a setup to begin creating a bestiary, this sort of post would be more effective. Right now, however, it makes more sense to come up with the sort of information that everything will have in common that will be used to define these creatures.

What do creatures do? How are they defined? What drives their behavior? Saying "lets have wolves" and then "lets have bigger wolves" and then "let's have bigger wolves that are kind of blue" achieves little, since we can easily fill a thousand pages with that and be no where closer to actually designing a product.

 

[woodspeople]

Actually, in my experience, describing neat detailed things we could do IS useful at a very early stage.

My favorite way of building a simulation is to first brainstorm lots and lots of crazy things I would like to do, a fantasy wish list. Once that list starts to wrap around itself and repeat, I look at the list and see what low-level properties and capabilities would be required to make at least some portion of the ideas come to life. I did this with my tree growth simulator, by compiling an "amazing trees" list first, then looking at what it would take to make a proportion of those things happen. Sometimes the only way to get at "the sort of information that everything will have in common that will be used to define these creatures" is to go through some brainstorming first.

One idea would be to build a design wiki - meaning, a wiki of ideas about what could be. This is distinct from a wiki of what is, and it would be made collaboratively with the understanding that not many of the ideas might ACTUALLY be made. It would just be a structured collaborative wish list that would drive definition and base parameterization.

One of the great things about a diverse group like we have here is that we can generate a nice wide variety of wish-list items. If everybody contributed a wish list of things they'd like to play with (with the understanding that it wouldn't mean any of them were guaranteed to happen), it would help to form definitions.

 

[Cervator]

I agree that concrete ideas are good for brainstorming and making sure you build a system that can support it down the road. However, that's where I'd say you should go for some of the more unusual cases, interesting cases, fringe cases, as they'll test the system you're trying to design, while pretty much automatically being able to support mundane stuff like wolves

I've been asking a few people behind the scenes to imagine how we'd define creatures and cultures sufficiently to describe some archetypes, like the steampunk faction + nature faction from over in the World Theme thread. Or alternatively pre-Columbus native indians along with industrial revolution europeans. We need a "language" able to define both sides at once, completely enough to imbue such contrast in-game.

I don't think making simple lists of creatures will accomplish that. I think listing interesting creatures and their traits will help quite nicely. I'd be all over those sorts of wishlists

 

[woodspeople]

Oh yes that's what I meant. No point making a wish list if you don't say WHY you wish for any of it. The traits are what you are after, not the names. You could call them gooblets or mobleys, as long as you say that the gooblets are interesting because they chase you until you chase them, and the mobleys are interesting because they love you more the more you hit them. Or something. It's the traits you want. In fact I would say that just saying "wolves would be neat" would be disqualified from such a list, because it doesn't provide fuel to the engine.

 

[ironchefpython]

the mobleys are interesting because they love you more the more you hit them.

Is everything all right at home?

 

[woodspeople]

depends on what you mean by "all right" :twisted:

 

[SuperSnark]

This may be too detailed as well, but ... should we start with general "classes" of beasts? For example:

1. Ambient creature - This class is decorative. Player interaction may only consist of the ability to scatter small groups. They cannot be killed (maybe?) or harvested. Birds, fish, bugs, frogs, floating airborne jellyfish, tribes of tiny, living, fungus people, etc.

2. Hostile creature - This class is a nuisance or barrier to the player. They are hostile to player contact either based on an aggro threshold (provoked level, radius, or line of sight). It serves to annoy the player or attempt to kill the player. These may exist alone or in packs. Sharks, lions, wolves, radioactive pigmy trolls, ghosts, zombies, etc. Perhaps some only spawn at night or during certain time periods.

3. Domestic Resource - This class of creature can be "used" by the player. Farm animals or game animals. Cows, pigs, chickens, deer. Tofurkeys ... for the vegetarians. Sentient tofu with "plumage" would be hilarious. Harvesting may vary based on the player's chosen culture (spirit energy vs. meat; milk/eggs vs. meat).

4. Domestic Pets - This class of creature could follow the player around. Fetch items, or act as protection for the player, or just as a "companion". Dogs, cats, flying gerbils (flurbils).


I don't think we're considering creatures for transportation right? No riding on horses or dragon backs? If so, maybe another Domestic-Transport category.

 

[Cervator]

I think categories like that are a good idea as they give us some general setups to aim for. Whether everything should be put in a "hard set" basket like that I dunno. It might be that there are traits that relate to domestication and a threshold by which a particular player can tame an animal or not (which may change over time). Likewise a trait to help determine whether a creature would be hostile to some other creature it encounters (so wolves wouldn't attack each other, would attack some smaller creatures for food, might attack some players but depending on who/what the player is)

Some groupings certainly will differ in the traits they even have tho, like sentient vs. non-sentient, as well as the ambient creature example you mention

 

[eleazzaar]

Over here, i posted some thoughts about how non-humanoid "critter type minions would mesh better with the gameplay.

Attaches are some concrete examples of "critter" minions. The style is perhaps too low poly and the textures are probably too flat-- but that made the sketches go a lot faster -- i'm a 2d not 3d artist.

The purple one is arguably more of a "pet" than a minion. At least he doesn't have hands to hold tools, but "pet" -> "minion" is probably a continuum.

Personally, i would want a variety of minions, with different skills, strengths, & needs.

Somewhere somebody mentioned, drawing the face on a flat plane, instead of building it with geometry. That sounds like a great idea, because they you can easily change the expression, and thus "read" how the critter feels -- like the red wolf eyes in mine craft. It then shouldn't be too hard to make a bunch of faces with each expression, and randomly give each face to a different minion-- but that's probably getting too far ahead-- anyway, the expressive part of the face is always a flat side here.

 

[Cervator]

Very nice! And pretty cute too

I like the style and agree that those would be great for keeping the "semi-organized" ("minor"?) races away from being too human.

At the same time I have a bad tendency to like just about everything

And yeah, the thing about drawing faces rather than using geometry has merit. Trick is, we need to pick a style, a flavor, to the overall creature and world design, and that'll then exclude other potential. At least for the base/core. And I don't know what we should pick, so much potential all over