The_Wayward_Admiral
Spacefaring
The_Real_Slim_Shady
Atrox drew this awesome image of the Keldori!
Posts: 1,011 
|
Post by The_Wayward_Admiral on Mar 26, 2016 13:23:00 GMT
On the dev forum tjwhale is doing some amazing work on the coding behind Thrive's solar system creation. It looks like it's well on its way to being a wonderful foundation of future environmental mechanics, and in general is something everyone should check out. A list of concerns about solar system variables were brought up in the thread, and no one addressed concern number 5. 5 enquires as to the importance of moons in so far as a planet's pre-space organisms are concerned. I had to write a report in high school about just such a thing and I was hoping to be of some use: 1) Moons are responsible for almost all light available during nighttime hours. With multiple moons, it's likely that there would be more light during the night, assuming all had fairly high albedo and such, meaning that nocturnal vision would be different and it might even be viable for single celled photosynthesizers to operate efficiently during the night. 2) Moons control tides. Earth's moon actually prevented complete cooling for a few million years as it caused massive tidal flows of lava. Of course day-to-day our moon also influences oceanic tides, and these are very important to life's evolution. A hypothesis exists that suggests arthropods first developed the ability to breath air because the strong tides of the era made a creature's time on coastal land a high and somewhat unpredictable possibility. Multiple or no moons would mean very strange things for the tides (and would do things to planetary wobble that I couldn't even imagine). 3) Moons act as shields against asteroid bombardment. Earth's moon is very big, and it has absorbed a great deal of asteroid impacts. Moons attract space objects and prevent them from impacting planets (although the moon has probably saved us from well under half of the objects coming our way). Multiple moons would perhaps collect more asteroids, which is both good and bad. These objects would not then go on to obliterate life, but also would not deposit metallic ores, water, or organic molecules. |
|
|
|
Post by elementalred on Mar 26, 2016 18:01:59 GMT
Btw, I have also seen that there would be a parameter to turn on/off LAWK so you could have thermoplasts in the Microbe stage, but would it also affect further stages?
|
|
|
|
Post by Atrox on Mar 26, 2016 18:22:16 GMT
Interesting. So the number of moons around a planet would also affect the frequency of natural disasters. EDIT: Also assuming these asteroids did carry essential resources and they all crashed on the moons, the native species might quickly set up a planet cracking industry  |
|
|
|
Post by Atrox on Mar 26, 2016 18:32:05 GMT
Btw, I have also seen that there would be a parameter to turn on/off LAWK so you could have thermoplasts in the Microbe stage, but would it also affect further stages? There would be plants that get energy from heat instead of light. It'd honestly be really similar to Earth. You wouldn't see things like plants growing in desert areas or on volcanoes because the fertility of the soil would be pretty poor. Everywhere the light touches would have some form of warmth. One major difference I can guess would occur is that most plant life would be concentrated along the equator and it'd thin out the closer to the poles you get. The planet would look like it was wearing a green belt maybe  If an animal contained thermoplasts they might adopt a behavior similar to some reptiles, where they bask in the sun for a good portion of the day before doing whatever it is animals do. I'm still vouching for "electroplasts." There already are bacteria that consume electrons for energy, I don't see why a eukaryote couldn't form an endosymbiotic relationship with electric bacteria. Electricity eating plants. That'd be awesome. |
|
|
|
Post by alexthe666 on Mar 27, 2016 5:31:41 GMT
Electricity eating plants. That'd be awesome. You get what I mean. Electricity consuming organisms could be big trouble for some advanced civilizations. |
|
|
|
Post by Atrox on Mar 27, 2016 5:40:06 GMT
It could but that's why you prepare for them.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deutsches Afrikakorps on Mar 27, 2016 11:03:29 GMT
Question, will we get exotic planets, and therefore exotic species? Lava planets with huge firestorms/lava storms with special lava/heat resistant species, toxic gasses/liquid planets, etc etc?
|
|
The_Wayward_Admiral
Spacefaring
The_Real_Slim_Shady
Atrox drew this awesome image of the Keldori!
Posts: 1,011
|
Post by The_Wayward_Admiral on Mar 27, 2016 13:03:55 GMT
Deutsches Afrikakorps I believe it will be possible to have remarkably alien planets (it looks like the simulation will even allow for planets to be rendered uninhabitable by greenhouse gasses and oxygen that the player will produce) which will all hopefully force players to branch out and make really cool alien creatures to Thrive in the adverse conditions. I don't know if lava will be an option, given how the player starts as a eukaryote well past the Hadean, but there's always modding, and probably a few disasters that would result in lava. As always 0f course, I could also be wrong
|
|
|
|
Post by tjwhale on Mar 27, 2016 20:26:16 GMT
The_Wayward_AdmiralA) I'm now listening to the real slim shady because it's mentioned in your profile, I haven't listened to it in ages, real blast from the past. B) Interesting points. That is helpful, thanks. Can you think of how this would affect the microbe stage at all? So to go through your points 1) More light at night. I don't think there's going to be day and night cycles for the microbe stage. At least I doubt it. Or even seasons for that matter. Like a really long swimming around session would be like 1 hour and that's not really enough to notice any of these effects. I suppose if people feel strongly about it then there could be day and night (like a 3 minute day followed by a 3 minute night, for example) but what would this affect? Basically Photosynthesizers slow down / shut down if you are in a surface level patch. In all deep patches nothing changes. In terms of earth wikipedia says the max amount of moonlight is 0.26 lux (I'd totally never heard of that unit before) and direct sunlight is 32,000 - 100,000. So the amount is negligible. 2) I don't think tides would really affect microbes, are there any ways they would that we need to model? There might be patches which are of a "tide pool" biome so maybe they wouldn't be allowed on planets with no moon. 3) Less asteroids. Interesting. I suppose it depends on how asteroids are calculated in the first place. So if your system just gets a "this is how many asteroids are flying around" number drawn at random then does it matter that you can draw a moon at random to cut this number in half? If you want less asteroids we could just let people have a slider for amount of asteroids. Anyway yeah moons do need to be generated at some point. I guess it's easy to say "moon yes or no?" as a random choice and then let it reduce asteroid strikes. As nick pointed out moons are good for rendering in the running around stages.
|
|
The_Wayward_Admiral
Spacefaring
The_Real_Slim_Shady
Atrox drew this awesome image of the Keldori!
Posts: 1,011
|
Post by The_Wayward_Admiral on Mar 27, 2016 20:32:14 GMT
tjwhale Yes, the slim shady thing came up during the shoutbox happening. I had a similar listening experience immediately following it. I think you're correct on every point, and this will have almost no impact on the microbe stage, but I think it will be appreciable in the multicellular/aware stages.
|
|
RoboTrannic
Spacefaring
haunting deviantart
Posts: 1,005
|
Post by RoboTrannic on Mar 27, 2016 20:35:10 GMT
maybe these types of planets could be tied to a special difficulty called "true survior"
|
|
|
|
Post by tjwhale on Mar 27, 2016 22:11:09 GMT
maybe these types of planets could be tied to a special difficulty called "true survior" I think hard mode will mean "like in reality, you might just get wiped out by a disaster beyond your control". It's gonna suck if you're at the end of the industrial stage when it happens. It's going to rule when you get your first hard mode species to ascension. |
|
|
|
Post by lowry on Apr 14, 2016 14:57:49 GMT
Will there be anything in place to say that a moon can't fly outa orbit of its host world before the species reaches space stage? I know the chances are slim but it would be kinda sucky...
|
|
|
|
Post by Atrox on Apr 14, 2016 15:10:45 GMT
Well there's gravity Also tjwhale I'm hoping there are no set difficulties. I was hearing talk of many toggleable options and I quite like the idea of a fluid difficulty setting. |
|
|
|
Post by tjwhale on Apr 14, 2016 15:58:07 GMT
Well there's gravity Also tjwhale I'm hoping there are no set difficulties. I was hearing talk of many toggleable options and I quite like the idea of a fluid difficulty setting. I have no idea how this is all going to work out. I'm not sure anyone does. I certainly can't speak for anyone but myself in this respect. IMO I agree with you, probably what we will end up doing is offering just a massive number of variables to the player and let them do a super custom job. So like "%age chance of asteroid strike" will just be a slider and you can move it to wherever you like. Loads of things could be set like this. There will obviously need to be a few presets, like a creative mode (no threats), easy mode (relaxing game) and hardcore (Asteroid strikes for breakfast, lunch and dinner) but I think the best thing is to offer as much customizability as possible to the player. That way we have the highest chance of pleasing everyone. I can't really see an advantage to locking variables where the player can't change them. Some people will want it super brutal, others nice and easy. If we can offer both then why not? However this hasn't been very deeply discussed and whoever ends up making the options menu will probably decide |
|
|
|
Post by early0000 on Apr 15, 2016 3:50:26 GMT
A) cause I'm slim shady yes I'm the real shady all you other slim shadys just imitating so won't the real slim shady please stand up and put one of those fingers on each hand up and be proud to be out of you mind and out of control one more time loud as you can loud as it goes. I Belgiuming love that song
B) I think instead of just picking easy medium or hard it would be better to just have a slider where at one end it is like creative and the other end all Belgium breaks loose.
C) another very scary but real possibility is the collision of moons. Some of the smaller moons (i.e. Mars' moon Phobos) tend to get closer and closer to the planet they orbit. It has been predicted that Phobos will like crash into Mars one day. Such a collision would wipe out all life on the planet except for maybe a handful of very lucky microbes.
|
|
|
|
Post by lowry on Apr 15, 2016 23:55:47 GMT
tjwhale, hi I can't help but wonder if you're developing solar systems, will their be a chance for having two thriving worlds close to each other? Or even in a highly unlikely/implausible orbiting scenario? Is this possible? Or just factored out...
|
|
|
|
Post by tjwhale on Apr 16, 2016 14:24:59 GMT
tjwhale , hi I can't help but wonder if you're developing solar systems, will their be a chance for having two thriving worlds close to each other? Or even in a highly unlikely/implausible orbiting scenario? Is this possible? Or just factored out... Interesting question. Right now I'm only working on enough for the first few stages. So we'll know what type of star you are orbiting and what gasses are in the atmosphere etc. But we won't know what other planets are in the solar system with you. When it comes to the space stage I don't think there is any reason why you couldn't have two planets with life in the same system. You could even have two moons of a gas giant which both have life, why not? In general, and this is a long, long way off, we will need something like the Drake equation to work out how much life to put in the galaxy besides yourself. It could be controllable so you could have life everywhere or life very rare I guess. |
|
|
|
Post by lowry on Apr 16, 2016 15:24:56 GMT
Has calculations for climates or rock types been started yet? Or are you focusing on the solar system as a whole before the nitty gritty on planets? Because I find climate calculations super fun :'D
|
|
|
|
Post by tjwhale on Apr 17, 2016 9:34:22 GMT
Yeah the climate calculations are mostly done! You can input which gasses you have in your atmosphere (CO2, Oxygen and Water) and the distance from the sun and how hot the sun is and it will tell you the temperature of your planet. It uses a radiative balance model (so heat in is balanced by heat out). If you're interested in how it works have a look at my first post in this thread. Moopli then added loads of cool stuff about weather which won't matter so much until you can get out onto the land. So yeah we're pretty far along with it. As for rock types right now there's only compounds. The microbes aren't really using anything from the rocks (they're mostly organic) so there's not going to be a lot of rock in the microbe stage. There probably won't be much until at least tribal or society. |
|
