Inactive Creature Definitions

[woodspeople]

Cervator edit 2015: Moved again, this time to Suggestions and marked Inactive as it has some thoughts we might want to carry forward to a creature system
(Note: Incubator header added by Cervator, and thread itself extracted from an earlier miinion thread - might read sort of funny, but the idea is that this is a good thread to use for top-level "what will we need to consider for all creatures?" design work. The "questions" approach might be refined later by the user of other tools, details pending)

Name: Creature Definitions
Summary: Top-level discussion on creatures and how to define them - what might they do, how might they work, etc
Scope: Engine (tho heavily focused on pure design)
Current Goal: Make more questions and later categorize, then provide answers. Also enhance the related design process
Phase: Design
Curator: woodspeople
Related: Miinions Core content concept (by overdhose)

We thought it might be useful to start compiling a list of "things you might want to know about a minion" for the purpose of thinking about minion-infrastructure metadata elements worth including early on. This is not a "wouldn't it be cool if" list; it is a "if you wanted to anticipate the most useful bits of metadata to include early on, how would you do that" list.

• How do you give the minion a task to perform? Hand it something? Click it? Open a GUI? Type a command? Smack it with something? Walk quietly up to it? Break the block it is standing on?
• How do you make it perform the task? Ask? Type something in the console? Click a button? Threaten? Demand? Hit? Give it a gift? Wait?
• What happens after you tell/ask the minion to perform the task? Does it do it right away? Do you have to wait a while? Does it stop doing it the moment you stop looking at it? Does it wander off unless you keep giving it things? Do you need to fence it in?
• If you put any distance between yourself and a minion, what happens? Does it keep doing what you asked it to do forever? Does it stop doing what you asked? Can it no longer hear you? Does it go away? Does it come looking for you? Does it die? Does it come and attack you? Does it just stand there waiting for you to come back?
• From how far away can you communicate with and supervise minions? Do you have to be in the same chunk? Do they have to be able to see you? Do you have to be three blocks away?
• If you ask one minion to do something, will any other minions nearby who have nothing to do help them or ignore them?
• If you please or displease one minion in some way, will they tell the other minions? Is there a reputation system? Will they swarm on you (for good or ill)?
• If you please or displease a minion of one type, will they tell minions of other types?
• Can you schedule the work of minions? Can you ask them to do something not just now, but upon the next sunrise, or after an hour has passed, or every day at 7 pm?
• Can you ask minions to hand off work to other minions? Can you ask one, say, to make a stick, and then hand it to another one who uses the stick to make a pickaxe, then hands it to another one who uses the pickaxe to mine? What are the limits on this sort of handing off?
• What does a minion need? On what schedule do they need it? What will happen if they don't get it? Will they stop working? Die? Run away? Attack you? Do something else? Bug you?
• If a minion needs something and gets too much of it, more than they need, what happens then? Do they die? Get drunk and turn out weirdly crafted items? Run away? Attack?
• Is it possible to set up simple rules among a group of minions, like "find another minion who needs an X, make one, and give it to them"? What kinds of rules can you set up? How can you check on whether the rules are working?
• What if you don't want a minion to do anything for you, but you want to do things for them? What can you do for them? What can't you do? What do they do if you don't want them to work? Nothing? Do they build houses with flower gardens? Do they walk around dropping bricks? Do they have little lives? Towns? Do they do anything?
• What categories of minion are there? Soldiers? Farmers? How many different types of activities can they engage in?
• Can a player look like minion? Can a player act like a minion? If a player does act like a minion, how do the other players find out?
• If a player wanted to trick another player into thinking they were a minion (the better to steal their stuff) how would they go about it?
• Do minions ever trade? With players? With each other? Do they have money? Do they have possessions? Do they wear nice clothes? Do they like things? Do they hoard things?
• Are there different levels of intelligence among minions? Do they range from human down to worm? How is this dealt with?
• Do different minions have different levels of skill? Can those skills improve over time?

Making lists like this can be very helpful when setting up open-ended systems because you can, first, brainstorm every crazy idea possible (and this is probably about ten percent of what we could come up with alone), then second, triage the crazy ideas into yes make possible, maybe make possible with an effort, and no make impossible for the time being. Then the list eventually boils down to a set of metadata that describes a minion. For example: distance from player, activities available, greed, liked/disliked items, intelligence level, money held, etc. Yes a lot of this is like DF, but that's the point, to figure out what will be like DF and what will not, or more precisely, what sorts of DF-like game modes the enginewill support.

Helpful? Continue?

 

[overdhose]

hehe nice list. Many ideas in it.

My basic idea was that miniions would be a rather raw tech demo of minions who can gather resources and build stuff, as that should be a big part of the gameplay. I think the current work will be usefull into providing some considerations to include early in the game, like you said, for that there is some basic functionality required, like pathinding. What you describe is already a full fledged ready to use system, that is a far away second or third step.

That being said, I asked Manus Lenoni what he thinks about it, and well I wasn't to surprised of his responses :

How do you give the minion a task to perform? Hand it something? Click it? Open a GUI? Type a command? Smack it with something? Walk quietly up to it? Break the block it is standing on?

Manus : "I point, they execute."

How do you make it perform the task? Ask? Type something in the console? Click a button? Threaten? Demand? Hit? Give it a gift? Wait?

Manus: "My pimp hand be way strong, I show them the back of it."

What happens after you tell/ask the minion to perform the task? Does it do it right away? Do you have to wait a while? Does it stop doing it the moment you stop looking at it? Does it wander off unless you keep giving it things? Do you need to fence it in?

Manus : "They'll do it right away if they know what's good for them!"

If you put any distance between yourself and a minion, what happens? Does it keep doing what you asked it to do forever? Does it stop doing what you asked? Can it no longer hear you? Does it go away? Does it come looking for you? Does it die? Does it come and attack you? Does it just stand there waiting for you to come back?

Manus : "Well if slapping it around isn't enough, we always have some nice torture chambers for the ones wandering off, and a nice jail for those who complain."

From how far away can you communicate with and supervise minions? Do you have to be in the same chunk? Do they have to be able to see you? Do you have to be three blocks away?
If you ask one minion to do something, will any other minions nearby who have nothing to do help them or ignore them?
Can you schedule the work of minions? Can you ask them to do something not just now, but upon the next sunrise, or after an hour has passed, or every day at 7 pm?

Manus : "They have the IQ of a glass of water, it's best to keep a close eye on them, they might see something shiny and forget the last slapping you gave them"

If you please or displease one minion in some way, will they tell the other minions? Is there a reputation system? Will they swarm on you (for good or ill)?

Manus : "I could always serve them a slapping combo"
*Manus Lenoni WINS, Flawless slapping! Slapalityyyyy! the minion goes back to work"

If you please or displease a minion of one type, will they tell minions of other types?

Manus : "I guess I could sacrifice a few of them to set an example"

What if you don't want a minion to do anything for you, but you want to do things for them? What can you do for them? What can't you do? What do they do if you don't want them to work? Nothing? Do they build houses with flower gardens? Do they walk around dropping bricks? Do they have little lives? Towns? Do they do anything?
Can a player look like minion? Can a player act like a minion? If a player does act like a minion, how do the other players find out?

Manus : "Say what? and flower gardens? ewww, gross man. If you look like a minion, you'll get slapped like one, that I can guarantee."

What categories of minion are there? Soldiers? Farmers? How many different types of activities can they engage in?
Are there different levels of intelligence among minions? Do they range from human down to worm? How is this dealt with?
Do different minions have different levels of skill? Can those skills improve over time?

Manus : "Well, elevating their IQ up from that glass of water will be hard enough, teaching them 1 trick and have them become better will be tricky enough. Now SIT!"

Do minions ever trade? With players? With each other? Do they have money? Do they have possessions? Do they wear nice clothes? Do they like things? Do they hoard things?

Manus : "Well yes off course."
Minion : "For you, Master..."

 

[overdhose]

Damn you, now that whole combo slapping got stuck in my head. And visions of minions playing cards after defeating a floating hand, while it regenerates.

 

[overdhose]

quick note : Another nice thing to have would be flags, in different colors, to set the patrol points visually in the world. A flagable block could be used to indacate a location with actions. Clicking them could instruct a minion to start following the flag path and act according.

 

[eleazzaar]

I agree with the direction of overdose's serious post.

I.E. you control the minions indirectly by placing flags, markers, signs and/or defining zones.

Woodspeople's questions tend to assume an RTS-type direct control, very limited initiative sort of minion interaction. That sort of method, may be OK, when you have a very small number of minions, or when you are a disembodied hand hovering over a pretty flat world.
But I think it would be annoying and frustrating running all around a 3D village in person constantly giving orders to a more than handful of minions. I would like to be able to do a bit of exploring and come back and find the village/fortress still functioning.

I think indirect control would fit better, unless you are making a small squad combat mod. Though it would require better minion AI. The most natural method of indirect control for a 3D voxel game where the player is a character: is not command line, or nested menus, but altering the 3D world

Some ideas:

• * if you want a minion to specialize you give it the appropriate tool/weapon/equipment/armor.
  * if you want minions to build a wall, you don't select minions, and give them commands to place each block. Rather you define where a wall needs to go, with blueprints or special marker blocks, and minions who aren't doing something more important will pitch in.
  * if you want minions to make something, build or blueprint to be built the appropriate workshops, workbenches, whatever. There should probably be a way to define a specific workstation as only for the production of item X.
  * Minions should be competent enough to run at least simple villages on their own.
  * Minions should probably have a hierarchy of needs. If they are starving, or exhausted, they will take care of that. If an invader or monster shows up preservation of life comes first. A minion that's satisfied, rested, and safe from monsters will probably come build that wall you defined.
  * if you want some sort of assembly line construction, you make it happen by building an efficient assembly line.
  * if you want a minion to be a look-out, you craft a telescope and place it in a good location.
  * to help control minion traffic, minions would prefer to walk on certain materials. If you build paths, they will tend to go where you want.

 

[woodspeople]

First: begging your pardon, overdhose, for seeming to disregard your miniion thing which sounds very cool. We haven't seen it yet but hope to play with it in our next video if that's all right with you. It is so very important to get something out there people can play with in order to find out what works !!

Your answers to the minion questions are funny, interesting and ... not at all the answers I would give (as we previously explored). This is a very good thing! You could say that these discussions are not important, that they are mod-level and should be left alone for later. You could say that all properties of minions could be handled flexibly by having a RegisterProperty method and leave it at that. True, but sometimes you realize that some functionality is so universal the engine should cover it. For example say it is decided that the "distance to player" thing is so great that it should be available at the engine level for all mods to use (and is, say, updated once every second). Meaning, all the mods should not have to re-invent the same wheel. Or that the flag-placing thing is so great that it should be available to all, as a foundational ability to work with minions. (I like it

Eleazzaar (are you impressed that I memorized the spelling of your name), if my questions are limited that's because they are just a start and should be increased in number by all involved. However, it is not helpful to add answers to questions, just questions. Let me explain the exercise again. By coming up with lots of questions - to which the answers will, must, vary - we can see what sorts of very-low-level properties and functionalities should be built into the minion system at the engine level, and which can be left for mods/modes to implement over and over. For example, in MC there is no base power system, so all the mods have come up with their own systems to simulate generated, stored and used power. This was a mess until the mods began to coordinate, and things like Forge came about, which is sort of an engine on top of the engine. TS can be smarter and think about things like that up front. That's kind of what I was getting at. What would help - if we agree this effort is useful at all, which we may not - is not more answers but more questions, like "How can you get minions to do something without interacting with them directly?"

 

[woodspeople]

A few more questions:

• How is a minion born (spawned)? Where and when and how do they appear? Does the player have to do anything, directly or indirectly, to make them appear, or to make it more likely?
• Can the player summon a minion, that is, call them from one location to another? Teleport them? Banish them? Move them around?
• How does a minion sleep? Do they get tired? When and where and under what conditions do they sleep?
• Health? Disease? Infection? Contagion? Injury? Healing? Mental health?
• How does a minion die? What happens? How do the other minions react? Do they blame the player? Do they console the player? Do they work harder to make up for the loss?
• Do minions migrate? Do they find another master more interesting and leave? Can they be stolen? Can they join a cult?
• Do minions reproduce? What conditions are required? How many genders are required?
• Do minions have gender? What does that mean?
• How do baby minions grow up? Do they appear fully grown? If not, how do their needs differ as they grow?
• Do minions ever protect each other, as a parent would a child?
• Do minions ever form alliances, where they agree to help each other? Do they form organizations? Do they engage in warfare?

 

[eleazzaar]

Eleazzaar (are you impressed that I memorized the spelling of your name)

Feel free to abbreviate/shorten, if it's a pain. I'll answer to anything recognizable

if my questions are limited that's because they are just a start and should be increased in number by all involved. However, it is not helpful to add answers to questions, just questions. Let me explain the exercise again. By coming up with lots of questions - to which the answers will, must, vary...

Apparently, i'm not participating in your exercise, if no answers are ever allowed. I've no wish to hinder your exercise, but i think it is more profitable to try to answer interesting questions. Some may have more than one good answer, but you won't find out until people try answering.

EDIT:
P.S. I'm pretty sure overdose's long post is a dungeon keeper parody.

 

[Cervator]

Great stuff going on in here, love it! So much of it I'll have trouble answering individually, so my collective answer is a resounding "Yes!"

This definitely helps come up with ideas for what we need to define behind the scenes, which is really what's next, along with further improvements on the model support side of things.

Everything is getting so very very interesting

For a little more detail I concur on mostly indirect control, where you as the player do things to "attract" appropriate creatures to tasks at hand. At least that for a bulk approach to work, which maybe there'll be a few more direct options available for small-scale stuff.

The blueprint I keep thinking about are multi-block constructs like that - placed in the world by the player, then they generate tasks or jobs for available minions - very similar to DF. Workshops etc same way. Love the idea of placing things in the world that'll then be an encouragement for stuff to take place.

 

[woodspeople]

i think it is more profitable to try to answer interesting questions. Some may have more than one good answer, but you won't find out until people try answering.

You can't answer questions that have not been thought of! The most important thing at first is to keep expanding the list of questions until nobody can think of any more to add. After nobody can think of any more questions to ask, then it makes sense to start answering them.

And then, I propose that no question be allowed to have only one answer, because multiple modes/mods should answer the question differently. So if in one mode you place a blueprint and wait for a minion to notice it, in another you use your wand of something to call up a minion and insert the blueprint into its grimy hand, or breed minions to produce new ones that can do what you want. Or if in one mode minions come into existence randomly based on biome, in another minions are boiled up in test tubes, and in another minions ripen in maturation chambers. The point is to figure out what an engine that supports minion creation and management needs to support a variety of modes and mods and snippets people use to put together a gaming experience.

Not sure if I'm (a) not explaining this well, (b) confused or (c) just plain wrong in suggesting this approach.

 

[woodspeople]

More questions:

• What is the difference between a minion, a pet, and a robot?
• Can minions have minions? How many levels down could that go?
• Do minions ever carry things for their masters? What is the chance a carrying minion will make off with things entrusted to them?
• Are the names of minions typed in the Minion typeface? (should be)
• If minions can be made of things like dirt, is there any chance they will devolve into dirt again?
• How might a player gauge how trustworthy a minion is? A minion meter?
• What about minion revolts? Would they ever happen? How would they happen? What if a player wanted to sneak into another player's minion army and start a fifth-column movement? How would they go about doing that?
• Is minion religion worth thinking about? Could the player appear god-like to minions? What would it take to do this?
• If minions are attracted to certain kinds of blocks, how are those kinds of blocks specified? What exactly happens when such blocks are placed?
• Could there be "gotcha" minions, in that what they might do for the player seems wonderful at first, only there are certain poorly-documented side effects that only become apparent later, and it's hard to get out of the minion-holding state?
• Are there contracts between players and minions? Are there minionhood laws? Who enforces them? What happens when the laws are broken? Could there ever be minion ombudsmen, who negotiate for the rights of minions against players? Minion unions? Minion labor laws?
• Could a player play in a mode in which their goal is to liberate, empower, even possibly arm, the minions of another player, in order to win against them? What would that be like?
• Are minions pleasant? Beautiful? Ugly? Irritating? Do they have moods? Do they have mood swings?
• Do minions get depressed, anxious, paranoid, phobic, stressed, psychotic, catatonic? When and why, and what happens then?
• What happens if one player on a multi-player server has hundreds of minions, another has three, and yet another has none? How are their gaming experiences different?

for the moment I like my approach of easily achivable goals

This "exercise" is not meant to conflict or compete with that work or to place any demands on it; it is only meant (and well-meant) to help engine builders think about what needs to be supported at the lowest levels. Hoping this is helpful, I will keep generating questions until somebody tells me to stop or overwhelms my questions with so many more questions until there is nothing left to explore.

 

[woodspeople]

More:

• Are minions ever perfectionists? Could they possibly be given a task and refuse to stop doing it until it is perfect? Could they come up with tasks they were not asked to do but which they insist on doing because they just "have to" be done, like polishing a steel door for hours, or writing long lists of minion-related questions?
• Are minions ever such blazing perfectionists that they destroy their own work because it doesn't meet with their insane quality standards? Conversely, are they ever such lazy bums that they do sloppy jobs and turn them in half done because "that's good enough, right?"
• How distractable are minions? What if they are doing a task and another one comes up that is more interesting? Do they abandon what they were doing and all rush to do the more interesting thing?
• Are minions ever grossed out? Are there some tasks they find so distasteful that they will not do them even if bribed or threatened? Might the things that gross them out be hard to guess at? Maybe they find bricks disgusting, but love to wade in manure? (And would it be fun to find that all out?)
• Do minions ever bite off more than they can chew? If you ask them to build a wall ten blocks high, do they say "oh no I'll build one FIFTY blocks high!" and then get so mired that they can't finish? Conversely, do they think they can't do anything, and when you ask them to build a wall ten blocks high say "ooooooh too high, how about three blocks?"
• Do minions ever criticize your master-hood? Do they know better than you how to command them? Do they never let off making little "suggestions for improvement"?
• Do minions develop obsessions and start sneaking off to work on them, like mining for diamonds (and lying about it) when they are supposed to be building a monument to their master?

 

[woodspeople]

More:

• Do minions fall in love? With whom? Other minions? Masters/mistresses? Blocks of dirt? What happens then?
• Do minions like to read and study? Do they like to learn new skills and gain knowledge? How does that work?
• Do minions like to travel, see the world, meet new people? What happens if they do or don't? What happens if you want them to and they don't want to, or if you don't want them to and they do?
• Do minions ever "snap" and after years of loyal servitude suddenly "go postal"? Are there any indications this might happen?
• How do you get rid of minions you don't want?
• Do minions tell stories about things that happen to them? Do they "tattle" on things their master wishes they hadn't done? Is there any way to influence or change or stop these stories from being told?
• What is the history of minionhood in the world? What are the creation myths under which the system operates?
• How does the player learn about different types of minions and about particular minions? Is this information reliable?
• Is there some way to review complicated statistical data on the efficiency of one's minion holdings? Can you download information to a spreadsheet? Can you view graphs and measure the impacts of new commands on the operation? Can players trade such information and learn from each other how to build minion empires more efficiently?

If requested, will stop.

 

[Cervator]

I love the questions and don't want to lose them - they'd make great reading for expanding your mind of the potential we could do with a minion system like that, and I still hope to see that as the core of the game

That said, I think it would be a tricky thing to "finish" as you'd hit a point of diminishing returns that might be hard to spot, where you have to start looking over older question blocks to see if you already asked something. It might be an idea to group the questions by category and put them on a nice wiki page - maybe after we go Xenforo soon

Then if we have somebody interested in actually answering / implementing questions in a category then they can try to focus on that area rather than attempting to try to contain all the questions, which would be tricky. Even answering the questions is partial implementation, especially with some thoughts on how something could be implemented. More questions can be added as they're found / thought of. I think that would be an invaluable resource.

Sort of goes with my hunting earlier of "how do we write a creature definition file" - each question category matches a category of properties, maybe backed by a template (peaceful, aggressive, enlightened, etc). So I'd say keep asking, but also start grouping and going deeper

Oh, and as for the current implementation: Overdhose - any chance you missed marking one or more new files for adding to Git? The whole package import org.terasology.logic.pathfinder is missing (AStarPathfinder not found)

 

[overdhose]

jumping more guns, related closely to the other world portals and finite worlds :

Minion types could be world dependant. You find new minion types by exploring other world which might contain a new type of minion. In an infinite world you could create tribes scattered through the world. But you see the prob I have with that is that :
in multiplayer, as everyone has access to the same surroundings, everyone has access to the same resources.

If you have portals leading to worlds other haven't, you might have a type minion noone else has, creating some individuality. We could all start with access to a basic tutorial world with basic tutorial minions which you get to keep to start. Then depending on research, location, position of the moon and what not, you create a portal and off you go. Some worlds could be useless, some could be minion inhabited, some could be resource worlds.

As for how to tame or what you wonna call it, a dungeon keeper style dungeon takeover could be a take on things. If you conquer their dungeon heart, you get a dungeon spawning nest similar to the colored nests of minions in overlord. Depending on your own dungeon / town whatever you play with, you can hold X amount of nests, and upgrade them for more minions to live in etc, so you don't have an unlimited stock of minion types or minions themselves.

that actually all ties together quite decently (I think) into some game I'd like to play... but the path there is long still.
You'd have to research minions of a given type to discover upgrades related to them. Similar minion types might still belong to different families, giving other bonuses (pref and suff like on items, but applied to minions)

And then of course the ever elusive and hard to obtain / beat legendary Bullfrog minions.

Possible gameplay elements tied into that : possessing a very sadistic and powerfull type of minions who are quite useless, besides for supervising torture chambers / jails, keeping other minion types from revolting to easly VS mistresses who like to be tortured for fun and scare others through it.
Very demanding minions that are only interested in upgrading their own complicated nest, but excell at intelligence /research /magic.
Big and gluttonous minions, ideal for hauling.
Nature minions who like to farm or breed animals (and then eat them).
Indiana jones minions who go off exploring known minion worlds in search of artifacts.
Chuck Norris minions who go and beat the knowledge out of minions in their homeworld.
prankster minions who cause mischief but keep moral up that way.

Depending on what minion combination you decide on, your approach and speciality would be different.
One could make a combo of minions to create an armor assembly line.
One could specialize in minion research.
All could make up a dungeon town / gulld in multiplayer .

Could try to teach prankster minions to run a shop and see how that works out for you heh


I really liked dungeon keeper, specially because it was based on some cartoon evil. So to me that's a mechanic I'd really like to recreate. Another key feature was minion diversity, and maintaining a balance between keeping them fed, trained, and from fighting each other. And then their was that notion of fear, fear from being slapped, fear from being thrown in jail, fear from getting thrown in jail together with an annoyed horned reaper who could go chuck norris on you, and fear of being tortured. I see an UI with an excel sheet representing your dungeon /town stats as if it was an avatar,

 

[eleazzaar]

Should this topic be split? It's kinda confusing to have future minion speculation and current beginning minion implementation all mixed together.

And at the risk of answering some of woodperson's interesting questions, the next step might be to take the features/behavior/gameplay implied by the questions, and craft it into a prioritized list. The list would have headings ranging from top priority: "Foundational Minion behavior" to "Low Priority, marginally useful ideas", or "Interesting, but extremely complicated". Or something along those lines.

 

[metouto]

OK ... some days I am slower than other so, today I have a question ....

Could not the word "miniions" be replaced in woodspeople's list of questions with let's say "player" (or any other creature) and the same questions ask of it to more define who or what or how the player came to be where or who or what he/she is at the start of a game or even during the game ????


now, please forgive me if this has already been ask or if I have missed something in reading all post or if it does not apply like I said ..... some days I am slower than other

 

[woodspeople]

Last list, thought of last night while falling asleep and imperfectly remembered this morning. Yes it should be separated from the at-the-moment stuff. I hope the utility of this is apparent; I should not be the only one generating questions; my questions should begin to dwindle soon.

• If a player has ten minions, and they are all of the same type, and they are all doing the same thing, are they all doing it for the same reasons? Can their motivations differ?
• If motivations can differ among minions of the same type, how does the player know what will motivate one minion to work for them? Is there some way to tell visually, or by behavior? Are there blatant or subtle cues? Or do they have to figure it out by trial and error?
• What is a "type" of minion? Are they distinguished by visual appearance? By behavior? By sounds? By location? By response? How are types created and by whom?
• If a player has several minions, do they ever compete with each other for the favor of the player? Do they ever, for example, steal tasks from each other they consider more prestigious or more likely to lead to reward?
• If a minion is in danger, do other minions gather around and help them? Like, for example, if a minion fell into a pit, would the other minions build ladders to help them out? Conversely, would the other minions in a group gather round to kill the weakened minion, as some animals do?
• Might some minions refuse to work alongside or in collaboration with some other minions? Might they recognize distinctions among themselves that the player cannot see? How would that work?
• Can minions be bred to produce new type of minion? If so are there mutations? Do the children of minions act like their parents? How does that work?
• Are minions "programmed" or aren't they, and what does that mean? If they are not programmed, what is done to them?
• When the player is far from one or a group of minions, how can the player check on them to see what they are up to? Could there be a "minioncam" that shows what they are doing or seeing? Could it have several "channels" so that the player can look at 4 or 9 or 16 minion views at once? What would that be like?
• Can minions be bought and sold? Are they "disposable people" or do they have rights? Do they defend their rights?
• Can minions ever minionize players? Can a player ever find themselves caught up in, say, a contract with a minion in which they have incurred obligations they can't get out of? What happens then?
• Are minions always the same day in, day out, and in different times of year? Are there any "special" times when they act differently, either more friendly or more hostile? Are there "blood moons" or "wait until I have my coffee" mornings? Are there signs this is happening, or does the player have to learn about it by experience? Do individual minions vary in this temporal fluctuation or all they all the same?
• Does aberrant behavior spread throughout the minion population? Can minions catch fads, phobias, obsessions from each other? Could, say, a player's minions gradually become enamored with secretly mining for jewels and hoarding them, the problem growing until it takes up all work done by the "village" or "crew"?
• Conversely, can desired behavior spread through a minion population? Can the player "educate" or "indoctrinate" minions, perhaps through campaigns of influence? Could handing out pamphlets on "exemplary ogglebog behavior" influence the way ogglebogs behave? Could these improvements spread from one encampment to another?
• Do minions innovate? Do they invent? Do they get ideas? Do they make discoveries the player does not originate? For example, might they discover a way to more efficiently burn some fuel in a redesigned furnace? Might these innovations diffuse throughout the minion population? Might there be things the player (or more than one player working together) could do to help such innovation along?
• In a multi-player world, can players share groups of minions? Can they manage them together and by doing this cause them to reach new levels of efficiency, innovation, happiness, peace? Could player use this to boss other players and make minions of them?
• Can players make minions of other players? Does this happen by contract? Can it happen by force? How would that play out?

 

[Cervator]

I'm pretty much reading it as "any creature" - as all the questions are interesting IMHO for any prospective creature type or player

That might be a little wide, but useful if you want to think in those terms. Well, maybe non-intelligent animals would differ.

And yeah, we might want to split threads or organize on a wiki page instead. Or heck, even a Gist on GitHub. Somewhere easy for organizing that we won't risk losing or forgetting.

 

[ironchefpython]

Can miniions sleep/eat/fight/burn/blend/fold/spindle/mutilate/fart/dream/explode/convert
/invent/burp/proselytize/fly/swim/genocide/dance/believe/buffalo/alienate/disparage
/compromise/invade/despair/question/decompose/create/disbelieve/murder/enlighten.... ?

Uhh... sure? How are your mod development skills?