Creature research and exploitation
Lulzes
Join Date: 2017-07-25 Member: 232050Members
Join Date: 2017-07-25 Member: 232050Members
I think I already mentioned an idea about giving the creatures more AI, in terms of population, migration and predation. I've been thinking along those lines, and this is probably a bit pie-in-the-sky, but let an old gamer dream!
So, the game already has varied flora, some of which are harvestable; we know the Stalkers are already programmed to interact with metal salvage, so it should be trivial to program other fish/creatures to interact with the flora in the same way. One of things that slightly breaks immersion for me is that apart from the "shoals" of fish (which is nothing more than an animation), the other fish don't seem to interact with each other or the environment apart from a basic predator/prey event. In nature, fish would naturally form shoals around food and as a deterrence against predation; I think it might be quite easy to mimic this in the game by simply giving each species a diet.
The herbivores would tend to congregate around certain flora, and the predators around the shoals. All species would have to have another behaviour built in, e.g. returning to a home patch, finding a secondary food, or like the Stalkers, sharpening their teeth on something - this would stop all the fish migrating to one place, give predators a chance to catch lone targets, or let prey have a break.
Now add to this the fact that most creatures already have a number of sounds, e.g. an attack sound, an idle sound and a hunting sound. These seem to be already linked to animations, so it shouldn't be hard if you watch each creature to work out which activity they are engaged in by what sound they are making. This all sounds a bit David Attenborough, doesn't it? Wouldn't it be cool if you could have a research tool that recorded these sounds, and if you then correclty assigned the behaviour to the sound, you could unlock the ability to mimic that species' calls? You could have a research station at your base that collated all the information from the device, plus you could collect data about diet, and build up a dossier on each species. With each species you fully research, you gain the ability to manage your interactions with them in the wild.
Well, all the work that's already been put into the DNA system probably makes this idea a bit pointless, but whatever
So, the game already has varied flora, some of which are harvestable; we know the Stalkers are already programmed to interact with metal salvage, so it should be trivial to program other fish/creatures to interact with the flora in the same way. One of things that slightly breaks immersion for me is that apart from the "shoals" of fish (which is nothing more than an animation), the other fish don't seem to interact with each other or the environment apart from a basic predator/prey event. In nature, fish would naturally form shoals around food and as a deterrence against predation; I think it might be quite easy to mimic this in the game by simply giving each species a diet.
The herbivores would tend to congregate around certain flora, and the predators around the shoals. All species would have to have another behaviour built in, e.g. returning to a home patch, finding a secondary food, or like the Stalkers, sharpening their teeth on something - this would stop all the fish migrating to one place, give predators a chance to catch lone targets, or let prey have a break.
Now add to this the fact that most creatures already have a number of sounds, e.g. an attack sound, an idle sound and a hunting sound. These seem to be already linked to animations, so it shouldn't be hard if you watch each creature to work out which activity they are engaged in by what sound they are making. This all sounds a bit David Attenborough, doesn't it? Wouldn't it be cool if you could have a research tool that recorded these sounds, and if you then correclty assigned the behaviour to the sound, you could unlock the ability to mimic that species' calls? You could have a research station at your base that collated all the information from the device, plus you could collect data about diet, and build up a dossier on each species. With each species you fully research, you gain the ability to manage your interactions with them in the wild.
Well, all the work that's already been put into the DNA system probably makes this idea a bit pointless, but whatever
Comments
unfortunately even my powerful rig can't deal with 1,000 peepers in a single zone, so like the boomerangs have these fake shoals, peepers should also be included in that.
Keeping the safe shallows safe wouldn't be too difficult if the spawns are set up correctly. Just have the predators for the smaller fish be relatively small and afraid of the player and run away if the player attacks them. If the occasional larger predator wanders in (this happens already with the Stalkers) then have them be neutral towards the player unless provoked.
For performance, just replace a fish school with a cluster of actual fish when the player gets close enough to interact with them and despawn the fish back into an animation once the player moves away. If you want to get fancy, track the fish schools as entities as they move across the environment with data on how many fish are present.
I don't see how my idea changes the Safe Shallows at all. Instead of 100 wandering solo fish, you'd get 100 fish in 3-4 shoals. Stalkers already wander into the Safe Shallows, there would be no difference with them. Other predators wouldn't migrate into the Safe Shallows because their diet doesn't include Peepers, plus they have a plentiful stock of what they do eat close to hand.
Why do you think there'd have to be 1000 Peepers for this to work? All I'm suggesting is that we take the fish that are already there, and make them group around their food sources more.