What Creatures/Aliens and other life forms would you like to see?

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    Creatures/aliens have as most of us know have been confirmed to be added at some time in the future.What I want to know is what type of aliens you guys want to be battling. Maybe living evolving robot life forms? or maybe you really want to battle some type of stupid ogres or maybe you want human like sheep?

    Notice:when telling us what creature/alien you want please describe it and maybe give it a bit of background story.

    Really interested in what you guys come up with :D
    -Kondroid
     
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    Pretty sure they're going to be procedurally generated.
    I don't know that procedurally generated is the right way to state it. Randomly generated would be more accurate. But enough of being picky!!

    The aliens will be randomly generated from (I presume) a base set of textures that will be connected together to get all sorts of strange creatures. You can see the base of the work in the "Starmade/data/models" folder. There is a base texture for a couple of pieces of a spidery-looking alien.
     

    Winterhome

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    I don't know that procedurally generated is the right way to state it. Randomly generated would be more accurate. But enough of being picky!!

    The aliens will be randomly generated from (I presume) a base set of textures that will be connected together to get all sorts of strange creatures. You can see the base of the work in the "Starmade/data/models" folder. There is a base texture for a couple of pieces of a spidery-looking alien.
    Well, depends on if the base parts can attach base parts, like centipede segments, etc.
    Would be great to see aliens that're more horrifying than the normal stuff, just on account of being on a silly level of random generation :P
     
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    In some form or another, I'd hope for the possibility of small purple space squids being generated.

    I played Corneroids before Star Made, that's why.
     
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    Id like to see magnetized toroidal life forms. They are a semi-sentient non organic life form, which consists of a toroid of ferrous materials with a self oscillating magnetic field holding it together. there "mind" is stored within the magnetic field, and they are capable of attacking space stations/ships to harvest or ingest the ferrous and metallic compounds found within. They would attack with a field effect similar to the impulse, and would be capable of traveling at varying speeds depending on size. Larger ones would be faster then smaller ones, and they would be capable of growing by consuming metals. After death, they would leave behind a shell consisting of organic materials(flesh?) with a lattice of metal skeleton, and various crystals.

    So a description of it: It would appear to be a donut like toroid life form(space dwelling only) which would range from the size of a small space ship to the size of a decent asteroid, consisting of a organic inner core with hull latticed through it, acting as a skeleton. Its exterior would be hull(basic hull) or another block type perhaps, arranged in scale like plates between which the under lying organic material could be seen. Some of the plates would have random ice crystal like out growths. The flesh would be purple, similar to that which is found on the purple alien planets.
     
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    something like the swarm of starcraft or tyranides. Giant waves of creatures the whole server had to fight of. Slowly devouring more and more sectors if not stopped :D
     

    Winterhome

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    other civilizations

    to bring peace, unite cultures

    it would be interesting if there were traders flying around from shop to shop, dynamic economics (like in X3)
    Cubic man's burden, bring civilization to the uneducated savages at all costs.
     
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    Oooo... I like this thread. I like this thread a lot. Keep the ideas coming! I'll be keeping an eye on the thread and taking any good ideas into account. (Tempted to sticky it, even.)

    I don't know that procedurally generated is the right way to state it. Randomly generated would be more accurate. But enough of being picky!!

    The aliens will be randomly generated from (I presume) a base set of textures that will be connected together to get all sorts of strange creatures. You can see the base of the work in the "Starmade/data/models" folder. There is a base texture for a couple of pieces of a spidery-looking alien.
    "Randomly generated" is, without a doubt, false. While there will be random components to add variety, true randomness would mean there is no method or pattern used to select what goes where and why. Even any full procedural generation which is meant to be different every time (such as procedural landscape/universe generation that is different for every person/world) starts from a (pseudo)random "seed", an essentially random number which is fed into the algorithms and procedures - the equations that will define the result - giving different results due to the input of a different seed.

    Really, though, "procedural" is a gaming industry buzzword. People have a lot of opinions or expectations on what it means, when it is really a fairly simple concept that has been widely applied for a long time. People often use it when they really mean "procedural mesh generation", "procedural animation generation" or something similar, which are specific and specialized kinds of procedural generation. Even then, procedural mesh generation is most often the alteration of meshes that already exist, not completely creating the meshes from scratch. (Though there HAVE been examples of completely generating meshes from scratch using equations. For more on that, check out .kkrieger, which is truly impressive, an interesting little experimental first-person shooter that is only 96 kb.)

    Exactly how much procedure will be involved in generating Fauna (AKA animals/creatures) is not fully determined yet. However, you will not see a frog in a swimsuit on an ice planet with temperatures consistently below freezing, nor would you see a polar bear or a penguin on a dry desert planet with extraordinarily high temperatures during the day. (Well, it's unlikely that you'd see Fauna that directly replicate real-world animals, but you get my point.)

    On a cold planet, expect to see Fauna that are adapted to the cold environment that planet would theoretically have, while on an arid planet, expect to see Fauna that are adapted to the low humidity and fluctuating temperatures that a planet like that would have. This is a kind of procedural generation, though not the kind of procedural mesh or animation generation that has been attached to the buzzword.

    As always, no promises on details!
    In some form or another, I'd hope for the possibility of small purple space squids being generated.

    I played Corneroids before Star Made, that's why.
    No promises, but I DO love squid.
    Id like to see magnetized toroidal life forms. They are a semi-sentient non organic life form, which consists of a toroid of ferrous materials with a self oscillating magnetic field holding it together. there "mind" is stored within the magnetic field, and they are capable of attacking space stations/ships to harvest or ingest the ferrous and metallic compounds found within. They would attack with a field effect similar to the impulse, and would be capable of traveling at varying speeds depending on size. Larger ones would be faster then smaller ones, and they would be capable of growing by consuming metals....
    Slylandro probe from Star Control? Well, at least that's what comes to mind.
     
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    well if we should give ideas here is another.

    As it is now you can go everywhere in space. So to make the room a little more cramped the game could have a level system. So that creatures and pirates get more menacing the further you go from the spawn.

    Oh and I would love to see creatures who live in space/asteroids

    Giant creatures shooting biolasers at you that is what I want :D

     
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    Winterhome

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    I'd like to see "Realistic" alien life. That is, alien life that doesn't have any kind of equivalence to Earth creatures.

    How do they communicate? Sound? Light? Other kinds of radiation? Touch? Some sort of sense we can't even imagine?

    How do they eat? Mouth? Proboscis? Do they wrap around and absorb their victim? Maybe they occasionally send tendrils down into the ground to absorb minerals?

    Are they cold blooded or warm blooded? Do they even have blood? If they don't have blood, and they're cold-bodied, does that mean they can survive in environments that would freeze other things to death or in environments that would heat and burn other things to death?

    These are the kinds of questions we need to ask.
    Aliens are not Earth life. They can potentially be similar to Earth life in some aspects, but the chances of that are astronomical.




    For the time being, I suggest randomizing general shapes and placement of general features, and adding more specific looking details. Locomotion needs to have an ending support point that's directly above, below, or on the center of mass, if it's an in-gravity critter, or if it's a zero-G creature, its center of thrust would be either pushing or pulling the center of mass. Heads, if any, are placed in a location based upon the choice of communication style, and mouths are placed in a position that isn't interrupted by the locomotion method. Arms are placed to defend the creature, to use tools, or to bring food to the mouth of the creature, depending upon its disposition.


    If a flying gasbag creature were to be generated, for instance...

    Central body would be directly below an adjustable size gas bag, which could potentially also serve as a flashing light based communication method. The mouth would be on the bottom of the creature, along with some small manipulation arms. If it's intelligent, those manipulation arms (no telling how many there are) would theoretically be able to hold weapons of some sort.


    The possibilities are endless, but I really don't want us to be pidgeonholed into the ideas of alien life presented by soft Sci-Fi like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or Star Trek.
     
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    Oooo... I like this thread. I like this thread a lot. Keep the ideas coming! I'll be keeping an eye on the thread and taking any good ideas into account. (Tempted to sticky it, even.)

    Slylandro probe from Star Control? Well, at least that's what comes to mind.
    I googled that, not quite. These are space born fuana themselves. They dont originate from any planet, nor are they even capable of landing on one. I guess that is a similarity between themselves and the slylandro themselves, seeing as they inhabit a gas giant. These are pseudo sentient. They do replicate, but they arent gathering information for anyone. I suppose since they are smarter then the average animal, they would be capable of sharing information with eachother, and if you could figure out how to communicate with them they would probably be willing to share information with you as well. Unlike the slylandro probes, there population numbers would be limited by the fact that they are aware(at an instinctive level) that over producing would limit the growth capability of individual organisms.
     
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    Omni

    I stand corrected. That's how I understood it was happening, but your explanation makes sense.

    Just to clarify, then, is there going to be specific creatures or a colllection of body "parts" which are then randomly or semi-randomly combined?
    Or maybe I'm getting the completely wrong perspective from this.
     
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    Omni , you promised me a Friendly Space Whale / Space Leviathan in the first dev stream (and by promise, you said you were warming to the idea). Amirite?

    Anyway, that's what I want. Aside from the "procedurally generated" creatures I want larger, more specific creatures that roam space slowly and freely and maybe drop some unique or rare blocks and resources. Or maybe they can still be generated in the way you have set out, but from a smaller selection pool of traits - and are always huge.

    The traits on my list for "Space Leviathan" (which I will use as a colloquial term for giant, more specific deep space dwellers):
    • Sizes: Large - Gigantic (Corvette sized - Cruiser sized?)
    • Body shapes: Shark-like, whale-like, squid-like, serpent-like
    • Articulated skeletons for turning and movement
    • Pods, that may include baby sized Space Leviathan and Bull Leviathan; numbers depending on average size
    --------------------

    As an aside to the Space Leviathan, there needs to be a food source. Of course there would be carnivorous, maybe even Geophagous (rock and non-organic material eaters) leviathan, but omnivores and herbivores as well. The main problem is that there is no way for herbivorous leviathan to feed, as there is no foliage in deep space. The solution would be to create "deep space flora", perhaps a plant that grows on asteroids and resembles a root system of sorts. There would be different variations for each type of rock or earth block, all coming from the same seed block. The seed block would create a new "trunk" or "foliage" block every x amount of time. The trunk or foliage block type would depend on the asteroid of planet source block (different trunk and foliage blocks for different environments). The placement of new block would be determined by the distance from the source seed, the proximity to other seeds, and the type of earth it was placed on.

    For a few examples: you have a lone asteroid out in space. On that asteroid is a single seed block surrounded by 5 "Purple Rock Stuff". The seed would grow a trunk block up, grow trunk blocks around that trunk block to form a core, and then grow long thin trunk blocks out from that core which hug the asteroid closely. Along those thin trunk blocks sporadic foliage blocks would form.

    In another example, you have a green planet. There are numerous seeds close to eachother, all of them placed on top of a single "grass patch" block. The seeds would grow a trunk blocks straight up for a few blocks, realizing there are lots of other seed block nearby. When they are 3-5 blocks high, they sprout lots of foliage out far - thereby creating a kind of forest. In stark contrast to this is the same planet with only a single seed block. The seed block would grow up very high, sprouting lots of trunk blocks out to create branches.

    The ones you find in space growing on asteroids, the foliage of those could be consumed by herbivore Space Leviathan. I've probably thought about this waaay too much, but I reckon it would create a very lively universe when tied in with the planned creature system. It would add further variation to planets and asteroids, making each one feel unique. Imagine: procedurally generated planets with procedurally generated flora, home to unique fauna.
     
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