Proceduraly Generated Fauna

[Edymnion]

With new, better planets on the way, we're going to need new, better creatures to inhabit them. Making lots of creatures by hand, enough to create any real semblance of diversity, is going to be extremely laborious and time consuming. So, why not take a page from Spore's book and create mix and match monsters?

Given how blocky we humans are in game, it should be fairly easy to make equally blocky animal bodies/limbs/etc that can be mixed and matched. Wouldn't need overly many different parts to create a pretty wide range of potential outcomes either. We could then create a simple base AI for each creature with imperatives based off of the parts it is made up of.

For a simple example set of parts:

Heads
Carnivore - Eats meat, makes creature move towards other species and attack them for food
Herbivore - Eats plants, makes creature move towards a random flora type in it's region and attack the block for food.
Omnivore - Eats meat and plants, can randomly target just about anything.

Bodies
Quadruped - Walks on all fours, makes base creature fast
Biped - Walks on two legs, makes base creature stronger
Centaur - Six limbs, two sets of legs and one set of arms, is fast and strong (but not as fast/strong as the other two)

Limbs
Clawed - Makes the creature more aggressive
Hooved - Makes the creature less aggressive
Fins - Only spawns in water
Wings - Flies

Accessories
Armored - Increases HP
Spines - Increases damage dealt
Spitter - Gives ranged attack
Humps - Requires less food
Lean - Requires more food

Just with those few options, there are 180 different possible combinations. And we can make up some base skin styles that can have multiple pallet swaps without affecting anything but color for even more. Just adding Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, White, and Black versions of the above would result in over a thousand different creatures. Add in textures like Furry, Scaled, Smooth, Spotted, and Striped and it becomes nearly 5,500 different creatures.

Then have a simple base AI that picks random actions for the creature to take, with the odds of it selecting any given option being adjusted by what its made of. Motivations could be as simple as "Wander around", "Move towards food", "Eat", "Move towards/away from members of own species", "Move towards/away from members of other species", "Attack nearest other species/player", etc.

So a Herbivore head, quadraped, hooved, humped creature might be more likely to move towards members of it's own species, away from other species, it would eat plants, and be fairly low on the aggression meter. Means it would likely form herds on it's own and wander around peacefully eating grass unless you tried to walk up to it, in which case it will probably run away. Without anyone having to specifically write an AI layout for that behavior.

Could take the same approach to making them drop loot when killed. Armored things would be more likely to drop things to make armor out of. Spitters would be more likely to drop things to make ranged weapons out of. Etc.

Combine that with some player equipment, and suddenly not only do you have a universe full of diverse creatures, you've got a universe where people are exploring and hunting down specific combinations to try and get the best ones for whatever kind of drops they want. Add in a simple breeding system, and suddenly you've got ranching as people go out to find the best animals and raise them to farm their drops.

 

[The_Onion]

ugh, this is one of the reasons why im so bummed out reading schines responses about planets. Seeing these cool, unique creatures wandering on their tiny planets would be like visiting a rundown petting zoo. The whole experience being more depressing than fun..

 

[aRottenKomquat]

I think procedural creatures would be too hard to do well. No Man's Sky fell prey to that. Where's that video of the trailer versus the actual game, where the trailer showed all these epic creatures and the actual gameplay footage showed some nonsensical retarded bipedal dinosaur thingy?

Rather, I think a large stockpile of predetermined fauna would be good enough. I'd rather see 20 or 30 hand-built creatures done well than a bunch of random stuff stuck together. Especially if their likelihood of spawn, and spawn regions limited to specific planet types or even within a range of systems in the galaxy can all be tweaked by server admins.

But your list of traits is a good start towards hand-crafting some creatures IMO.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

Where's that video of the trailer versus the actual game, where the trailer showed all these epic creatures and the actual gameplay footage showed some nonsensical retarded bipedal dinosaur thingy?

I think I saw that one, and that was not an inherent failure of the system, it was the NMS dev failing to realize that certain parts need to be excluded from selection based on other parts.

Effectively, NMS didn't bother with weighted parts, (and thus ignored half of the tool that is "procedural generation") so that, say, a T-Rex head (at T-rex size) doesn't spawn on the body of a Minnow (at Minnow size)
Anyone that actually comprehended "procedural generation" knew you had to have exclusions in, otherwise you'd end up with total derp.

 

[Edymnion]

ugh, this is one of the reasons why im so bummed out reading schines responses about planets. Seeing these cool, unique creatures wandering on their tiny planets would be like visiting a rundown petting zoo. The whole experience being more depressing than fun..

This is assuming that they are following through on their promises of MUCH bigger planets in the future.
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Anyone that actually comprehended "procedural generation" knew you had to have exclusions in, otherwise you'd end up with total derp.

Yup, could even weight which parts get selected based on other parts. Give it a higher likelyhood that claws would spawn on carnivores, for example.

 

[Sachys]

Have you not seen the desert hoppers?

 

[Haalon]

I never understand reasons of that obsession with fauna, flora, npc, etc.
Starmade is all about ships, and fauna is completely unrelated to them. So, why do we need these procedurally generated jerks if they will be just moving decorations?

 

[Edymnion]

I never understand reasons of that obsession with fauna, flora, npc, etc.
Starmade is all about ships, and fauna is completely unrelated to them. So, why do we need these procedurally generated jerks if they will be just moving decorations?

Because if the game is nothing but ships and stations, its not going to last very long because it'll be very one dimensional.

 

[Haalon]

Because if the game is nothing but ships and stations, its not going to last very long because it'll be very one dimensional.

That's not so easy. Lots of games are one-dimensional, but last long. CS, Dota, chess - are all one dimensional, but they surely last long - because they are rich, diverse in their narrow dimension.

 

[El_Poulpy]

I never understand reasons of that obsession with fauna, flora, npc, etc.
Starmade is all about ships, and fauna is completely unrelated to them. So, why do we need these procedurally generated jerks if they will be just moving decorations?

In starmade you are supposed to have the possibility to build empires. how are you supposed to build an empire if you don't have people to rule upon and use to raise an army that pilot your fleets and with tamed dangerous fauna board enemies ships ?

 

[Haalon]

how are you supposed to build an empire if you don't have people to rule upon and use to raise an army that pilot your fleets and with tamed dangerous fauna board enemies ships ?

We already have retarded AI. And there is no difference between the fleet controlled by an AI and the fleet controlled by NPC controlled by an AI.
You know, I am not against proper fauna and npc implementation, I just find it not that important.

 

[Lord_Greyscale]

Ah, you don't find it important you say? That's fine then. Please leave the conversation about fauna to those that do care about fauna.

There are a lot of us that want fauna in the game, largely because it helps planets feel like planets instead of "particularly rounded asteroids with some gravity".

 

[El_Poulpy]

We already have retarded AI. And there is no difference between the fleet controlled by an AI and the fleet controlled by NPC controlled by an AI.

There is a difference, with only AI to neutralize a fleet you must destroy the ships, with NPC to neutralize the fleet you can just kill all the NPC on board an take the ships ( boarding becomes a viable solution)

You know, I am not against proper fauna and npc implementation, I just find it not that important.

i know, i just presented an example of use of fauna and NPC under the form of a rhetorical question. Maybe the way i said it was ambiguous and sounded a little too aggressive but it wasn't on purpose.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

I never understand reasons of that obsession with fauna, flora, npc, etc.
Starmade is all about ships, and fauna is completely unrelated to them. So, why do we need these procedurally generated jerks if they will be just moving decorations?

To me, it will make the universe feel much more alive. But I agree that they should not just be decoration, but that they be used as a new type of organic resource.

 

[jayman38]

To add to the original suggestion, you could have a lot more variety if you replace "body types" with "body segments".
1. 1 head or spine or hump (top connection; head at the front segment, something else on every segment that comes after...), 2 legs (first segment of a quadreped)
2. 1 head or spine or hump, 2 arms or fins or wings, 2 legs (standard biped if only one segment, or the first segment of a centaur, or the first segment of a were-centipede...)
3. 1 head or spine or hump, 2 arms (without legs these could be clawed legs, wings, or fins. however, normal "arms" would need to be excluded, unless you wanted creatures that are knuckle-walkers)
4. Segment connectors (these are flexing "spine sections" that basically connect two adjacent instances of the other three types of body segments, so that the legs on a quadreped aren't too close together, for instance.) (This could be as simple as placing a logic pipe between segments and texturing it with the color of the animal.)

Tails would be a whole other part type, separate from body segments, with its own behavior modifiers. (E.g. A spiked tail could add a point to the aggressiveness and/or strength.)

Speed and strength could be a function of the different limbs attached. (E.g. arms increase strength, legs and wings and fins increase speed and a bit of strength. Arm type (clawed, grasping, spiked, bladed) would alter aggressiveness.) (Flier if wing-count >= other limbs, swimmer if fin-count >= other limbs)

You could get a good mix of body types by reducing the chance of each segment. (E.g. 100% for the first segment, 50% chance of having a second segment, 25% chance of having a third, 12% chance of a fourth, and so on....) It could be a linear reduction, but it probably needs to be a logarithmic reduction, so that you almost never have a beast with 15 segments....

 

[jontyfreack]

im pretty sure Saber can say something about this, seeing as he has talked about it several times in the streams that a lot of people need to watch because it has all the up-to-date information.

 

[nightrune]

Pretty sure we just need animated pipes that wonder the universe.

 

[The Judge]

Given how blocky we humans are in game, it should be fairly easy to make equally blocky animal bodies/limbs/etc that can be mixed and matched.

Modelling a simple player character and making a randomly generated creature system are two completely different things, and it won't contribute anything to gameplay.

 

[EricBlank]

I think we can get away with having a list of schema-made critters like spore did (to my knowledge the only thing in that game that was actually procedurally generated was the local terrain on a planet. even critters animations fit a few archetypes that depended on number of limbs) and a system that modifies these to create something kinda unique by rotating in different body components where applicable from a list the developers create to be applicable for that body type, and then their actual behavior and attributes are directly procedurally generated, maybe influenced by the body put frankly who cares if it is? Going with your system of heads + bodies + limbs should work for that.

Say, schema makes a cow. It has a head and neck, four legs maybe with feet, an upper and lower body, and a tail. It has very simple animations, like the sort of "leg peg swings forward, then back" stuff that minecraft has. Simple animations for simple forms for a simple graphical style. When the game decided to put a cow on a planet, it might exchange its body parts for models that look a little different, but which are verified by the staff to look okay in combination.

 

[Edymnion]

Modelling a simple player character and making a randomly generated creature system are two completely different things

You missed the point. The models are simple and blocky, which means no extra measures need be taken to blend model pieces together. Simply switch pieces out and don't worry about seams or the like, because the simple format means it isn't an issue.

it won't contribute anything to gameplay.

Okay, well by that line of reasoning lets list some other things that don't contribute anything to gameplay:

Colored hulls
Wedges/Slabs
Colored lights
Colored missiles/beams/thrusters
Decorative anything (computers, pipes, etc)

Guess we better remove everything that isn't a solid grey cube then, because they don't add anything to gameplay. -_-