Aggressive animals
Norton
Join Date: 2005-01-13 Member: 35264Members
Join Date: 2005-01-13 Member: 35264Members
I feel like this game would be really unique if there were no aggressive animals. I saw that you want to make animals and not monsters, and that there won't be any combat, but as soon as I started playing the game I got attacked by multiple different things. Almost every game out there has fighting as the core gameplay, and I'd really appreciate a game that decided to just not worry about that. In real life, the most interesting and enjoyable things are never fighting, so why is it in every game?
I love the exploring and the idea of building new and useful tools for exploration and discovery. I want to be able to interact with the animals in ways that aren't running from them or killing them. Maybe introducing new species to cause biomes to change, or following a school of fish to a new location. Building an underwater base and terraforming the area to make it grow resources and look nice. There have got to be options other than being eaten.
A good example I think is minecraft. The game was really fun and original and even everyone's girlfriends could play, but the combat was dismal and really didn't add much. My girlfriend was having a lot of fun playing subnautica today, but as soon as she encountered anything dangerous it kind of ruined it for her because she gets anxious about fighting in games. I think there is potential to hit a new demographic of more casual players if you can find slower paced relaxed ways to progress. She really enjoyed collecting the mushrooms and making flippers.
There are 100000 games for killing things, lets have one where you try to nurture life, or at least peacefully co-exist with it.
I love the exploring and the idea of building new and useful tools for exploration and discovery. I want to be able to interact with the animals in ways that aren't running from them or killing them. Maybe introducing new species to cause biomes to change, or following a school of fish to a new location. Building an underwater base and terraforming the area to make it grow resources and look nice. There have got to be options other than being eaten.
A good example I think is minecraft. The game was really fun and original and even everyone's girlfriends could play, but the combat was dismal and really didn't add much. My girlfriend was having a lot of fun playing subnautica today, but as soon as she encountered anything dangerous it kind of ruined it for her because she gets anxious about fighting in games. I think there is potential to hit a new demographic of more casual players if you can find slower paced relaxed ways to progress. She really enjoyed collecting the mushrooms and making flippers.
There are 100000 games for killing things, lets have one where you try to nurture life, or at least peacefully co-exist with it.
Comments
Nope.
Oxygen depletion, getting lost, running out of fuel?? There are other ways to add tension to a game. Chess doesn't need tension to be a good game, and neither does minecraft. There are survival horror games like amnesia that specialize in tension, so go play that if you need tension so badly. Why does every game need to have you being killed by a monster?
I guess a peaceful mode would be a nice compromise.
You could also read up on bear behaviour in forests far from civilization (because they don't encounter human hunters, you can often walk right up to them without being mauled - they are not aggressive towards humans if they haven't been taught to be so.)
Basically, animals that have never seen humans are almost never frightened by them, so they are mostly indifferent. There are people who dive with sharks and get to pet them, and they can even be eager to be petted - if you pet one, spectating sharks will sometimes come over to you for some petting
There's also people who live with bears, they can play with their pubs while their mother is watching.. Again, if you don't teach an animal to be afraid of us, they aren't (these bears live way out in a forest, where there aren't any humans hunting them.
So what I'm getting at is that the interactions the player makes with the animals should change their behaviour dramatically.
There's plenty of examples of such examples, birds on the Galapagos islands are not afraid of humans either.
These situations all have one thing in common, and that is that they're never hunted by humans - these are the cases that the developers should look at when designing the animals behaviours.
With some predators, other things factor into it, an example would be with sharks, they don't eat human flesh (it is not nearly fat enough), but what compels them to bite then? Many know the answer to this, it's the shape of a human and the way we move (we look like a hurt seal when swimming in the surface) The sharks that 'attack' are most likely not sure about what you are, so they bite you once to find out (sometimes these bites can be quite lethal, there's not really much use for finer muscle control of a sharks jaw, you know) what you are made of.
If a great white wanted to kill you, and eat you, it would attack you from beneath, it would hit you with lethal force - it would not be the bite that killed you, but the impact. You would be eaten whole in the blink of an eye, you wouldn't even know that it was there, you'd be dead before that would be apparent.
Establish a food chain, compare the animals to humans (shape, movement, flesh structure) If we are somehow similar to an animals prey/hunter, they will act accordingly, otherwise they will be indifferent until the player has either hunted them or helped them in some way (like if you feed a school of fish, they would create a sort of symbiosis with you (in their perspective)) It's kind of like having a pet, they stay with you because you give them food, and over time you build a sort of relationship that goes beyond just food.
On top of that, you would need to have design papers over the behaviour of the animals, if they hunt at night, animals would either be more frightened by you, or attack you (poor visibility in real life is often a factor in why humans get bitten by a shark)
While you would not simulate ALL of this, you'd have to have a serious design document in order to simplify it, so that it seems real.
This is the reason why animals of certain types are always just aggressive towards the player all the time, it's much easier to create, it doesn't require the whole part of decision making, it's just if player seen then attack basically.
If you want to get into serious behaviour programming like this, you could try talking with Introversion Software, they have a pretty nice needs based system to model the individual prisoners behaviour. While they are not real AI, they do some clever decision making.
I might just be dreaming though, while it is certainly possible to pull off, it would take a while to do, it's mostly unknown waters right now, so there's not many examples to pull clever ideas from, like with inventory systems
Sorry about my wall of text, I don't expect you to read all of it, I can't even be assed to read through it again to see if I made any mistakes, haha
Obstacles make things matter. A really important resource that you needed feels more rewarding if you've had to surpass multiple obstacles in order to get it. The plans we have for the DNA extraction of creature abilities matters more when aggressive creatures are in the game. Sure, it's interesting to inject yourself with the camouflage ability you were able to extract, but why do you need to? Well, to get past the aggressive creature guarding an area that you are trying to get through.
Sure, we can have obstacles without creatures, and we do - we have oxygen depletion, we have fuel / battery power, we will probably have pressure. We will have environmental hazards such as falling rocks. But there is only so much you can do with that, before it begins to feel too repetitive.
Right now, the two aggressive animals in the game (that work), are crashers, which can be avoided by 'sneaking' and the stalkers can be avoided by just not going too close to them.
I don't know if you are familiar with it, but the game Miasmata was an indie game about collecting plants on an island and trying to make medicines to cure your disease. I really enjoyed the first half as you try to explore and figure out the lay of the land and where the certain flowers grow. However, once you start making progress, a monster shows up and relentlessly chases you for the rest of the game. I eventually quit playing because I was having to run back to a house every 5 minutes because of the monster.
The primary problem here is that what you want is an incredibly niche thing, that the vast majority of people disagree with. People like obstacles, and while I do not want the animals to be monsters, hell, I made the thread which you referenced in the OP, I still see the need for this as a part of the game.
Actually I don't think my desires are that niche. Candy Crush and The Sims come to mind. Also, I wasn't referencing any threads in the OP.
Anyway, Candy Crush and The Sims are not comparable to Subnautica, so that point is mute.
Oh, I thought that was from a blog post, didn't remember it was from the forum, sorry.
Candy Crush and the Sims are very different from Subnautica I agree, but you can't just hand wave them away and say they have no relevance. The point was that casual games that aren't high intensity are played by a huge number of people.
An area like Safe Shallows, which is the area the player starts in, is going to be relatively empty of dangerous creatures, with maybe the exception of the Crash fish, but those will be rare and kept mainly to caves. That will contrast with something like the Lavazone area we are planning on adding, which will have a feeling of constant peril, between all the environmental hazards (erupting lava, toppling towers of cooling magma, as some examples) and the dangerous creatures that live there. But that area is further out in the world and very deep, and will take a while for the player to reach there.
The beauty of the open world approach of our game is that the player is generally not forced to go to those dangerous areas, or to have to swim through a group of dangerous creatures. There will be plenty to explore and do, without having to put yourself in constant danger, though you may not be able to get all the resources necessary to advance far up the tech tree without some risk.
for example getting a predator near its nest: https://youtube.com/watch?v=2nYr3jKx5yI
Having the right amount of triggers is the key.
I wouldn't describe chess as lacking tension. However, Minecraft is a fantastic example as it has multiple modes that are supposed to range from tense to free flowing creativity. This allows for everyone to be happy without loss of quality on either side. This method does work well.
The game somewhat felt like a farming simulating so to speak, with no real care for your surroundings beyond loot collection. Conflict and a sense of danger from the environment, in any way, becomes a large motivator and helps make the player feel like he is actually there, and like Cory said it can create amazing decisions and interlocking mechanics
Given the amount of immersion this game is aiming for, I feel like it would be very weird to be underwater and not encounter danger - let alone on an alien planet!
Part of exploring and discovering should come with a sense of mystery and caution when traversing such alien depths.
I think the trick is that there should be danger, tension and conflict but it shouldn't be relentless. Knowing where danger lurks and being able to avoid it (and not chase you down) will help.
I also think we can solve this the Minecraft way with a game mode that strips out damage or attacking completely.
...seriously though.
I can see why people play minecraft in peaceful mode.
For the building.
..and this
SO We can surmise there needs to be sufficient game-play out of trying to survive evil alien sea-lerks-creatures for their to be any sort of peaceful mode to be viable.
Any suggestions on that part? maybe Food-chain reconstruction?
Nice sssssssssub you've got there, it would be a sssssssshame if sssssssomething happened to itssssssssssssssssSSSSSSSSSSSS :-\"