|
|
Tides?
Nov 21, 2015 21:30:00 GMT
Post by timetraveler22 on Nov 21, 2015 21:30:00 GMT
I mentioned this before in the Thrive subreddit, but I'd like to mention it again. Tidal influences. It would be a factor to the development of your creature, and others around it. Like the mudskipper in our own Earth, they depend on the tides receding to beach microbes in the sand which becomes easy pickings for the mudskippers to munch on, and they retreat as the tide rolls in since large aquatic predators can now reach them. It can be implemented from late the microbial stage, and last to the early aware stage before your creature explores new parts of the planet. This way, tide influences can only appear in your area where you'll have to survive near the shoreline and then stop once the tides won't be a big influence to you and your species. And it can then be localized to a single spot(or follow you) so that it won't be a big deal when it comes to running the game and crashing on you since it wouldn't have trouble reading all the tides on all the planets.
|
|
|
|
Tides?
Nov 22, 2015 6:59:01 GMT
Post by Moopli on Nov 22, 2015 6:59:01 GMT
I like tides, and I can think of a few good ways to do them semi-realistically (it's an interesting programming problem), though I guess you have a good point in that they don't have to be perfectly realistically timed with the nodes and antinodes or whatever, as long as there's a tidal cycle if you're at a suitable shore.
The point you mention tangentially about not simulating tides everywhere (ie only simulating tides if you are at a shoreline) is, of course, important -- if we have tides we would not simulate their passage everywhere even in the most realistic case, we would only include a global tide map as part of the game state, and use that tide map in some calculations when running an evolutionary generation for a patch of shoreline.
It's one more heavy simulation step per evolutionary generation if we try to do it semi-realistically, of course, but it wouldn't have to run every frame so there's little concern about performing real-time, and it would probably still be cheaper than all the rendering operations. The math is just harder.
|
|
