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Post by mcdevil on Oct 4, 2016 19:36:50 GMT
Sheep is right, but your suggestion works just as well at a lower level. In the case of mouths, rather than picking a mouth we'll likely have you develop a custom mouth design over many evolutions. What starts out as a tube connecting the gut to the exterior might later gain a bunch of basic grinding teeth to create a grinding surface (peristaltic swallowing motions would become grinding motions); or maybe what was once an appendage for moving food into the mouth would gain a grinding surface and become something like a snail's radula. Later, as you develop bone-like structures (could be bone, could be cartilage, chitin, etc) then there's something for the proto-teeth to anchor on and you could develop jaws. Or maybe you don't develop a grinding surface, and develop mouthparts (eg, chitinous mouthparts like an insect) which cut your food up, or you puke on your food to pre-digest it, etc. As for digestive efficiency, we're going to have it divided into multiple factors, and food will be divided into different types of nutrition even beyond just plant vs meat. Eg, you can chew fat easily but can't chew tough meat, or you can digest bone marrow but can't break open the bone, etc. Wow, this sounds really cool. The diagram I made was meant to serve merely as an example, but a similar system can be used for pretty much every body part. The idea was that there'd be a branching-tree upgrade system. Mouths was just an example.
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Post by mcdevil on Oct 4, 2016 13:12:39 GMT
Hi folks. I have a few ideas for a system to unlock new parts. Let's look at a little diagram I've thrown together in Photoshop in 5 minutes: As you can see, my idea uses a "tree"-like system. Rather than have your critter dig up bones to unlock new parts (tedious and unrealistic), like in Spore, I'd rather have something like an upgrade system. The idea is, you get a certain amount of points, every time you reproduce, like in cell stage. You use these points to "buy" a new part (in this example, a mouth). However, rather than freely unlocking any part whatsoever, you can only choose one of two or three possible options, depending on where on the diagram you are. The higher the level of the part you unlock, the better stats it will have (damage, etc). You can also move freely between different categories, in this case, between herbivore, omnivore and carnivore, although that transition would be gradual, simulating how evolution itself is gradual in the real world. This way, it feels like your creature really is evolving towards something else and your choices in the game, affect which path you can take. You won't be able to unlock each and every part on your first playthrough, therefore this also increases replayability. On the right side of the diagram, there is an efficiency arrow, which goes towards either eating plants, or meat. The idea is that the closer you get towards each end of that arrow, the more efficient your creature will be at getting nutrients from either source. Mouths that are at the plants end of the efficiency arrow, extract a higher amount of nutrients from plants, than mouths which are closer to the middle. Same goes for meat and in the case of omnivores, the mouths won't be too particularly efficient at eating either thing, but you have the access to a more diverse range of food sources. This would also be affected by the levelling system. Here's an example: A level 1 herbivore mouth from the bottom of this diagram, has 0% meat eating efficiency (meaning you can't eat meat, as you'd absorb 0% of the nutrients in whatever you are consuming), but has 50% efficiency at consuming plant matter (meaning you get 50% of the total nutrients in whatever plant you're eating). The level two mouth would have 70% plant eating efficiency, allowing you to get 70% of the nutrients and the highest level one, would have 100%. In terms of omnivores, you have access to either source, but aren't particularly effective at eating any, with only minor bonuses, depending on where you are on the efficiency meter: The top-most level 1 omnivore mouth would have, say 30% meat eating efficiency and 20% plant eating efficiency, while the bottom one would have its stats reversed. These stats would also increase as you unlock higher level parts, but would not exceed 50% efficiency. So, what do you guys think?
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