SHARED characteristics in ECOSYSTEMS and VIBRANCY based on CLIMATE

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TL;DR - Creatures should have SOME basic shared characteristics (majority have mandibles VS. or majority are liquivores) and should have appearances at least partially based on their living environments.

I know that Starbound isn't a hyperrealistic game and that that is not its intention, but that is not the point I am trying to make. I am saying that more unity within creatures per ecosystem would really give the game some greater level of atmospheric unity, which would really help players be immersed rather than scouring nearly deathly planets to find oddly colorful Peacock-like creatures that stand out like clowns at a funeral.

So, where do I start.

Basically, from what I've seen of the randomly generated creatures (which are amazing to say the least), I'm a little concerned about something I like to call the "SPORE Schizophrenic Ecosystem Syndrome", where, like in the game Spore, the creatures inhabiting a planet or ecosystem seem to have absolutely no shared traits and have seemingly random and unrelated characteristics and features, dependent to no degree on the environment they're set in.

In my opinion, something this would really give a planet a sense of unity, especially in its biological aspects, would be a discernible level of similarity between all the creatures on the planet.

If you look at almost any animal on Earth, you'll notice that they all follow the same basic body plan that originated with a worm-like creature early in evolutionary history. This has created a sort of universal set of shared characteristics that can be seen in the majority of large creatures on Earth.

Examples.

On Earth, all land vertebrae all seem to be composed of a tube connected on both ends, one with a mouth and the other a cloaca or anus with bilateral symmetry.






As you can see, there are a number of big similarities that can be seen amongst the majority of these larger creatures. Mouths rather than probosces, four legs in general, eyes for primary senses and a basic structure that does not necessarily need to be the only way life can successfully develop.

Next example.

My favorite fictional planet, Darwin IV (From Wayne Douglas Barlowe's book, "Expedition"), demonstrates a fictional ecosystem with a clear set of shared characteristics. I'm sure you'll find these creatures rather interesting. And yes, in general, there are reasons for the ways that they look.




As you can see, there are a multitude of shared characteristics unique to this wonderful planet. A preference for sonar instead of light vision, odd numbers of legs (as shown in the last image, the "Gyrosprinter" has somehow fused its legs together in a need for speed. it would seem the DNA of these creatures is rather open to mutations of this type.) as well as liquivore probosces in place of mandibles all across the board. Some creatures seem to rest on large "sliders", and with... larger creatures such as the "Groveback" (the gigantic creature in image 4, that small thing next to it is the size of a T-Rex) there is also an apparent preference for... size. Well, more like allowance. If I recall correctly the gravity on this planet is slightly lower, and the Groveback should be a lot less dense than, say, your average dinosaur. Also, the flying creature in image 2 is not flying using the flapping of wings. It uses the equivalent of an organic ramjet engine. Is that cool or what? Anyway, most flying creatures on this planet use this kind of method of flight rather than the flapping of wings. There are also creatures who actually float in the air, colossal ones that use bladders full of gas to float in the dense airs of Darwin IV.

So, that's about all I need to say for now. I'm sorry if I went a bit overboard, and I kind of doubt many will actually read through this whole thing. If you did, I applaud you. You have some patience. I made this in part just because I love Darwin IV so much, but yeah. Thanks for reading, if you did.

 

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So basically each planet, rather than generating completely randomly, generates wildlife according to certain rules?

For instance, if it's looking for predators, and the first one it generates has two mouths set one on top of the other and hunts by spitting poison, it's more likely that other predators will sport a similar twin-mouthed design and spitting habit, albeit with the values (potentially radically) changed? As an example, building off the previous, one creature, instead of having dual mouths, might instead have a single mouth and a set of extendable pharyngeal jaws (think the secondary tongue-mouth of a Xenomorph), and might utilize poison gas instead of spit?

Am I understanding you right?

 

Yes! You're understanding wonderfully!

It is essentially that alongside with rules that relate somewhat the creatures to the living environments that they're in as well!

Thank you for responding to my thread!

 

Okay. Y'know, this idea is pretty good. I like the idea of life on a particular world having a 'theme' to it, with similarities that hint that the planet has had an evolutionary history, rather than consisting of numerous life forms that bear no real similarity to one another.

It shouldn't be too hard to implement, too - just would require a change in the way creatures on planets are populated and randomly generated.

As for creatures being adapted to their environments, that shouldn't be too hard. You just have to adjust the spawning algorithms to take into account planetary climate, and weight the possible features that a creature can spawn with according to its climate. Some examples below:

• High Temperature: On hot worlds, creatures tend towards scales or smooth skin, may have frills that serve to radiate excess heat (think Dimetrodon), and may have adaptations like burrowing or climbing to seek shade in trees.
• Low Temperature: On cold worlds, creatures tend towards long fur or internal heat generation, and will either burrow to conserve warmth or remain active during a greater portion of the day.
• High Gravity: On high-gravity worlds, fliers are fewer and further between, and most creatures tend to be smaller but more dense.
• Low Gravity: On low gravity worlds, fliers are more common, and other creatures tend to be larger and less dense.
• Atmosphere Composition: Higher oxygen levels mean larger creatures, lower oxygen levels means smaller ones (replace 'oxygen' with the gas of your choice if the local creatures breathe something else).
• Hydration: Rainy worlds tend to have huge trees and more of them, dry worlds have more grasslands, prairies, and deserts and fewer large plants overall.

 

Great idea.

 

I think that things should or could operate on "traits", slightly reflecting the real-world nature of genetics. For example, because we don't want our creatures necessarily hindered in how creative they can be (we'd otherwise end up with a rather predictable and mechanical system of generation), and we also want to take advantage of this whole procedural generation thing, I think there should be a (worldwide?) trait that actually determines how radically different creatures can be from each other, meaning that some planets may have more bizarrely varied creatures than others.

This came to mind.

This would ensure that not only would you have planets with unified themes, but also the potential to explore what it may look like to have more eclectic appearing ecosystems.

I wish I had more to say, but I'm a little stumped as to how to expand on what's already been said. Perhaps I will also list some environment-to-characteristic associations like you had.

 

This is something that crossed my mind, but I wasn't quite sure how to put it into words.

Even on Earth, there's numerous branches of life that diverged very early in their evolutionary histories, leading to a wide variety of creatures here. Having each planet have a specific value for how much variance can occur in living creatures would allow you to reflect planets that had cataclysms in their evolutionary history. For instance, life on Earth would be even more eclectic than it is today if the Permian-Triassic extinction event hadn't wiped out an average of 83% of all animal species on Earth at the time.

The more cataclysmic extinction events in a planet's history, the lower the variance in traits on the creatures that can appear on that planet. This is because more species are descended from common ancestors (the survivors of those cataclysmic extinctions) and thus have more similarity. A planet with very few cataclysmic extinctions will have a wider and more varied abundance of life on its surface.

 

Somehow, this makes me picture Pandora, from James Cameron's Avatar. Even though the heavy prevalence of life isn't necessarily the same thing as having few cataclysmic extinctions.



Perhaps it should be how prosperous a planet is that causes variety? The same way that rain-forests seem to give us the worlds' most exotic things?

Because we don't want to make the generation systems too complex and esoteric, I would recommend that we do not make the reasons for why certain creatures will generate certain ways to be too complex and doctorate-like. The goal is for the generation to visually and aesthetically make sense, not make scientific and historical sense. That's not to say that adding scientific basis to some of the generation is a bad thing, it's quite original and intelligent. I'm just afraid of making it overly complex for the developers.

 

I love this

 

I'm liking this idea so far, has thought behind it and I would actually enjoy seeing this put into the game!
+1!

 

I thought again about what you were saying right here, and I actually think this specific example makes a lot of sense. Forget (in part) what I said about diversity = rainforest climates. We do not want to limit diversity to a single biome, that would be silly. Though maybe we could add the possibly annoying complex and stacking variable where rainforests heighten the chances of enabling the trait which enables higher variety. (Alongside planets that just don't get hit by meteors. Ever.)

We just have to make sure that what we're coming up here is incomplex enough to be actually... possible? (Don't worry though, I'm quite sure we can and are doing just that.)

 

The idea we're proposing is very simple.

What it would require is a bit more complex. Here's my best guess as to what would would be needed to implement this.

1. The creature generator would need some way to tell whether a given creature is similar or different from one that already exists. A tag system is a possibility - a creature that has more tags matching another creature is more similar. What tags a creature is generated with is dependent on the body parts, body configuration, and abilities it's generated with. Dwarf Fortress already uses a system like this.
2. The creature generator needs to give certain tags preference when generating creatures for a particular biome. Creatures should spawn with parts tagged as appropriate for particular biomes. For instance, in a desert, creatures should spawn with a greater percentage of parts tagged "Desert Appropriate".
3. The creature generator needs to size creatures according to the local gravity, temperature, and availability of breathable gas. Hot worlds, worlds with low gravity, and worlds with ample breathable gas spawn bigger, less-dense creatures. Low temperatures, less breathable air, and high gravity tends to produce smaller creatures.
4. A variable needs to be set, either per planet or per biome, that tells the system how many tags can be different before a creature is disallowed. For instance a biome with a bio-diversity of 5 could have creatures that are different by up to five tags. If any creature is generated that's more than five tags different from an existing creature, it's disallowed and re-rolled. The first creature, or maybe the first couple of creatures generated, are exempt from the bio-diversity variable. They reflect the 'baseline' that the bio-diversity variable operates off of.
5. The biome generator has to be able to set the bio-diversity variable intelligently according to biome. Deserts are going to support less variety than jungles, since there's less life overall there.

So, there would need to be significant changes to the creature generator (in addition to generating creatures appropriate to the difficulty level, or with certain features that are necessary to survive on the planet), and a few additions and changes to the biome generator in order to support the creature generator.

Might be a tall order, but depending on how flexible that area of code is, it might not be too hard. Most of these things are additions, added on to the existing code, and probably won't require them to change the existing code aside from making room.

 

Don't forget the possibility of outliers. I don't think it should be directly "too many different tags" to disallow. Think there should be a (low chance) random roll that could "permit" certain abnormals?

Damn, you're really kicking this off with the conceptualization. You really know your stuff, don't you?

Tagging is a good idea, but all ideas should be considered, I think. It just comes down to coming up with them.

 

Wow I really love this idea... this is like what someone above said about James Cameron's Avatar, where all the creatures in that world had an extra set of eyes ears or limbs. It really ties the whole planet environment together. Im pretty sure they are separating animals through biomes, like you wouldn't find a desert animal in a winter wonderland of flying penguins. You know what would also be cool going along with the theme, is if any of the natives adapted to the creatures on the planet. Like if most creatures on that planet spew poisonous gas as a defensive mechanic, the villagers all wear gas masks when hunting.

The only problem I see with this idea of things adapting to another or evolving would be that anything extremely peculiar would have to be more scripted instead of randomly generated.

But I love this idea!!!

 

That's a fantastic idea!

You see, that's why I wanted to have random "exceptions" and maybe a sort of variable that controlled how frequently such things would occur.

Thank you!

ON A SIDE NOTE:

I really thought this topic had lost its steam when nobody liked or posted in it for a couple days!
For a while I've been getting a really cool number of likes and posts in my topic, giving me 2-3 alerts a day. Each like really put a smile on my face, because it meant a person actually went to my topic, read through the massive wall of text, and actually wanted to actively help make this happen!

I wasn't sure what to add, I knew I had to at some point, so I've been checking my alerts every day or so to see if I've gotten any new likes or posts and to see if I could come up with something new to add, but then suddenly:

HOLY CRAP



TEN AT ONCE, OH GOD.

Take note that I've only activated "quotes" and "likes" in my Alerts thing.

I'm glad to see people like the idea!

 

Have a couple more. I just realized that, despite liking the idea, I never bothered to actually click the like button.

I do agree with outliers potentially occurring. In fact, on worlds with particularly complex ecosystems, one or two creatures could be generated as 'outliers' and then have a second ecosystem built around them by using the biodiversity system we've discussed. This way you can have things like vertebrates (and variants of vertebrates) and insects (and variants of insects) on one world, much like Earth.

Of course, this might be a bit too much work, too many monster spawns for one world, but still on worlds that have high spawn rates and are labelled as being life-rich with complex ecosystems, it could provide much-needed variety.

 

On onehand it would be neat to see a planet of the mandibles. On the other.. isn't that kind of limiting the verity?
I mean, we have no idea what set of strange forces may cause evolution to produce on an alien world. It could be something that looks diffrent mearly is in symbiosis with something else and looks like one creature.. like jellyfish, that breaks the mold. However ultimately I think stifling the number of parts the creator can pull from in anyway is a bad idea, outside of basic land sea and air subsets. It just would result in the chances of hitting something youve seen happening before more often.. like mandible planet twenty nine because it picked mandibles again.

 

That is such a cool idea! I may start posting quotes of concepts that stand out in the original post if this discussion gets long enough.

There are many ways "mandibles" can present themselves. Jaws, pincers, gnashing teeth, beaks. Anything that involves the grinding and consumption of food through a primary chute.

Of course, however, new and absurd types of "consumption" families are completely important!

I'm not saying that creatures should be limited - that's a bad idea. They merely need to look unified in a sense. And by no means does that require them to be boring or repetitive. You just have to, as you said, think outside of the box.

You bring up a very potent issue. But I think the idea still works. I'm quite sure that there are more than one of each "type" of organ.

This is worthy of discussion.

 

Admittedly, it would narrow the variety a bit. But also consider that it would add verisimilitude. A 'mandible planet' would only occur on worlds where biodiversity is set very low for all the biomes in it. On most worlds, elevating the biodiversity would get more varied creatures.

A world with a complex ecosystem and with very, very high biodiversity would have an eclectic variety of creatures, subject to the limits of spawning. Increasing the variety of life on a world is as simple as increasing a number (increasing planetwide biodiversity), ticking a checkbox (for complex ecosystems), and then setting another number (how many creatures to apply the biodiversity algorithm to). All of these values could be randomized, per world, or even per-biome.

Let me give you a simple example of the system I've suggested in action. I've spoilered it in the interest of space.

World A
Biodiversity: 2
Ecosystems aren't complex

1. First creature generated in the ground category is a biped with large teeth and a pot belly, that attacks by biting.
   • Second creature in the ground category is a biped with large teeth, is slim, and and attacks with stunning screams.
   • Third creature in the ground category is a quadruped with large teeth, a pot belly, and attacks by charging.
   • Fourth creature in the ground category is a biped with no teeth, a pot belly, and attacks by hurling rocks.
2. First creature generated in the air category is a balloon-like creature that emits poison clouds.
   • Second creature in the air category is randomly determined to be an outlier. It's a four-winged bird-like creature that attacks by diving and stabbing with its beak.
   • Third creature in the air category is a balloon-like creature that emits lightning.
   • Fourth creature in the air category is a tentacled balloon that secretes poison on a touch.
3. First creature generated in the sea category is an eel with two heads, attacking with electric shocks.
   • Second creature in the sea category is a long, slender fish with two heads, attacks by biting.
   • Third creature in the sea category is an eel with one head, and attacks by clouding the water with poisonous ink.
   • Fourth creature in the sea category is an eel with one head and is covered in thorns, and attacks by thrashing at close range.

Notice that each of the categories, even at a very low biodiversity and without a complex ecosystem, produced a fairly wide variety of creatures, and yet they've all got similarities, like they descended from common ancestors.

Now let's look at a rather complex world...

World B
Biodiversity: 5
Has Complex Ecosystems
Sub-Ecosystems to generate: 2

Sub-Ecosystem #1

1. First creature in the ground category is a green spotted tripedal hopping creature with long ears and a high jump, that attacks by landing on victims with an underbelly spike.
   • Second creature in the ground category is a yellow striped tripedal crawling creature with long horns and a high jump, that attacks by swiping at prey with its claws.
   • Third creature in the ground category is a green translucent quadruped walking creature with long ears and no jump to speak of, that attacks by self-destructing.
   • Fourth creature in the ground category is a black spotted tripedal teleporting creature with large fangs, a moderate jump, and a nasty bite
2. First creature in the air category is a yellow-green fluttering insect-creature, with four antennae, that makes a hissing noise and has no attack.
   • Second creature in the air category is a blue-green sleek insect-creature, with two antennae, that is dead silent and has a poisonous bite.
   • Third creature in the air category is a yellow-green burly multi-winged insect, with two-antennae, that produces threatening clicks and attacks by attempting to flatten prey beneath it.
   • Fourth creature in the air category is a red-brown hefty jet-bug, with no antennae, that makes a hissing noise and leaves dangerous sonic-booms in its wake.
3. First creature in the sea category is large-jawed silvery fish, with lobed fins, high speed, a large tail, a vicious bite, and the ability to spawn miniature versions of itself when it dies.
   • Second creature in the sea category is a needle-jawed silvery fish, with only a tail fin, slow speed, a large tail, a blood-sucking bite, and can teleport away if you're looking at it.
   • Third creature in the sea category is a baleen-mouthed black whale, with lobed fins, slow speed, a large tail, a painful rush attack, and the ability to spawn miniature versions of itself when it dies.
   • Fourth creature in the sea category is a large-jawed green manta, with broad, winglike fins, slow speed, a poisonous tail-sting, and the ability to spawn miniature versions of itself when it dies.

Sub-Ecosystem 2 (NOTE: I copypasted World A's ecosystem here because this post took a very long time to put together and real-life intervened before I could come up with an entirely original ecosystem. Sorry!)

1. First creature generated in the ground category is a biped with large teeth and a pot belly, that attacks by biting.
   • Second creature in the ground category is a biped with large teeth, is slim, and and attacks with stunning screams.
   • Third creature in the ground category is a quadruped with large teeth, a pot belly, and attacks by charging.
   • Fourth creature in the ground category is a biped with no teeth, a pot belly, and attacks by hurling rocks.
2. First creature generated in the air category is a balloon-like creature that emits poison clouds.
   • Second creature in the air category is randomly determined to be an outlier. It's a four-winged bird-like creature that attacks by diving and stabbing with its beak.
   • Third creature in the air category is a balloon-like creature that emits lightning.
   • Fourth creature in the air category is a tentacled balloon that secretes poison on a touch.
3. First creature generated in the sea category is an eel with two heads, attacking with electric shocks.
   • Second creature in the sea category is a long, slender fish with two heads, attacks by biting.
   • Third creature in the sea category is an eel with one head, and attacks by clouding the water with poisonous ink.
   • Fourth creature in the sea category is an eel with one head and is covered in thorns, and attacks by thrashing at close range.

See how varied the second ecosystem is? With a couple changed values, it doubled the number of possible creatures you can encounter on that world, and made it so that there's very little similarity between the creatures of any given category. Yet there's just enough similarity to suggest that some of these critters might've had a common ancestor some time in the distant past, like the tripeds or insects in sub-ecosystem A.

Admittedly, this is a simplification of the whole system, and I can't say for sure how the Monster Generator already works. It might require higher biodiversity amounts to get significantly different creatures, depending on how many aspects the creature generator randomizes. Still, it should be enough to get an idea of how I envisioned it working.