Pathing out Mutants and Mutating Wildlife Arcs

[pisskop]

Are you saying that theres insufficient blob to even mutate the little critters, like bats, into some new lifeform. Not even if it were a form of accelerated evolution?

[i2amroy]

Are you saying that theres insufficient blob to even mutate the little critters, like bats, into some new lifeform. Not even if it were a form of accelerated evolution?

The blob doesn’t do “accelerated evolution”, the blob does “massive rewrites of the physical structure without changing the ‘code’ beneath it”, i.e. your mutation changes aren’t stored in your DNA, they’re stored in the blob “infecting” your body. That’s the reason why you can “undo” mutations as the player back to your baseline; it isn’t until you hit a mutation threshold that the changes have accumulated to the point where your baseline actually starts to shift permanently. Cases like giant insects and zombies are slightly different cases in the respect that they’ve warped the laws of physics enough that the only thing really keeping them up and moving is the blob at that point; even if you were somehow able to remove the massively large percentage of them that is the blob infestation it would just kill them rather than causing them to “turn back”, just like you would die if we removed a bunch of your internal organs.

In animals that are normally too small for the blob (like cats) but not small enough that the blob radically warps them (like insects) you could probably see some very small mutations occurring in very small quantities over large periods of time due to the fact that they do still have a little bit of blob in them, which would very slowly begin to accumulate changes to their baseline and speed up the process, but you’re not going to be seeing cat people mutating up in any sort of timeline that the player is going to be present on (or heck, even cat people at all; since the blob is somewhat responsive to the environment you’d be much more likely to see cats with extra limbs/etc. than you would be seeing them somehow “evolve” towards a human paradigm). I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing some very small changes beginning to show up on a very large timescale, but we’re talking about the type of time length (years) where you begin to ask if any players actually are gonna make it this far or if at this point regular old housecats are still gonna be alive in any sort of sensible numbers that the player is still encountering them.

[pisskop]

Well, that sounds like I havent broken any rules yet :o

All of my animal/insect mutations have been relatively tasteful. We’re throwing around ideas here though.

[i2amroy]

Yeah, I’m not against the idea as a whole (in fact I think it’s definitely a cool idea and should be implemented); I just wanted to get the information out there that a handful of the smaller creatures (like cats, ravens, chipmunks, etc.) are probably gonna be things that should end up more in your “extinct” category or basically unchanging before you went and came up with some cool idea of “a flaming death raven but is totally balanced by X” or whatever only to have it get shot down.

Also something that might be worth considering for ideas is “what would this creature be exposed to?”. The blob does a fair bit of just random mutations, but a heavy driver of the more extreme ones is the environment that the creature is exposed to (shocker zeds develop from people with electric sources like bionics in their bodies, burning zeds can cause changes, heck, even radiation mutations is just the blob panicing a bit and trying out random things to deal with a much less obvious source of danger than most).

[scorpion451]

That “the blob doesn’t affect anything small except for really small stuff because…um…reasons.” bit of the lore is mostly a hand-wave for why there weren’t zombie cats and mutant squirrels running around, so if such things were to be added, it can just be thrown out the window.

[i2amroy]

That “the blob doesn’t affect anything small except for really small stuff because…um…reasons.” bit of the lore is mostly a hand-wave for why there weren’t zombie cats and mutant squirrels running around, so if such things were to be added, it can just be thrown out the window.

Except it’s lore that’s already been written into the game through things like science lab notes. I mean technically any piece of lore is changeable, but lore inertia states that the more solidified something is already the more cool something has to be to change it (and the fact that personally I like having something that shows some of the blob limitations in-play, so unless you have something really cool I know I’d be voting against changing it).

[pisskop]

I can agree that the idea that they cant mutate any small organic meat-based life as a bit silly. especially if they can enbiggen ants.

,{
“type” : “MONSTER”,
“id” : “mon_coyote_small”,
“name”: “dwarf coyote”,
“species”:“MAMMAL”,
“default_faction”:“small_animal”,
“symbol”:“d”,
“color”:“brown”,
“size”:“SMALL”,
“material”:“flesh”,
“diff”:12,
“aggression”:0,
“morale”:25,
“speed”:150,
“melee_skill”:6,
“melee_dice”:1,
“melee_dice_sides”:3,
“melee_cut”:6,
“melee_damage” : [{“damage_type” : “stab”, “amount” : 6}],
“dodge”:5,
“armor_bash”:1,
“armor_cut”:0,
“vision_day”:40,
“vision_night”:5,
“hp”:22,
“death_function”:“NORMAL”,
“special_attacks”:[[“GRAB”, 40],
{
“type” : “bite”,
“cooldown” : 40,
“accuracy” : 8,
“armor_multiplier” : 0.65
}],
“description”:“The downward pressure on the canines has produced smaller and smaller versions. These live in social communities and can be usually seen tenaciously hunting for moles; dragging them out of their tunnels with paws and elongated teeth. It has also been known to aggressively raid campgrounds.”,
“flags”:[“SEES”, “HEARS”, “SMELLS”, “ANIMAL”, “WARM”, “FUR”, “HIT_AND_RUN”, “KEENNOSE”, “BLEED”, “BONES”, “SWARMS”, “GROUP_MORALE”],
“anger_triggers”:[“FRIEND_ATTACKED”, “PLAYER_WEAK”, “MEAT”, “FIRE”, “FIRE”],
“fear_triggers”: [“HURT”, “PLAYER_CLOSE”, “FRIEND_DIED”],
“placate_triggers”:[“MEAT”],
“categories”:[“WILDLIFE”]
}

^^ but com’on, its the cutest little sabertooth mutant ever. >.<

pedit: one thing I do fancy is the idea that the intelligence of the animal determines the intelligence of the zombie. Or at least he complexity of the brain of the critter determines the general ability of the zombie.

[pisskop]

Bees need beeing

Bombus bohemicus

Tis a good way to make flavors

This nasty lass Fakes the chemical signiture of a host hive, bitchslaps the reigning queen around, eats her eggs and throws out her babies, and then keeps the old queen alive while she makes a new one.

This loss of dominance is likely tied to the loss of dominance by the host queen in cases where she survived invasion and remained in the nest,[14] though the nature of this association is not understood. This loss of dominance is characterized by the maturation of worker ovaries as they become reproductively active.[2] The invasive queen is not necessarily killed after dominance is lost, but may remain in the hive, either incubating host cocoons or sitting inactively beside the comb.[14]

:o

[pisskop]

Apple Orchids \o/

[Wojtek94]

Is is possible to create the world with NPC and mutated wildlife? Without any zombies and strange monsters etc. Sorry for small off-topic

[pisskop]

Yes, there should be a wildlife only mod, that removes all the excess creatures such as zombies and et al. Basically the scenerio becomes that a virus killed everything.

[pisskop]

So Im thinking that I could add moose, bears, etc with various stats. Id make them all share the name ‘[creature]’, and the description would mention something about it being scraggly in appearance, or mottled, or vigorous.

Then, I make the stronger ones slightly rarer than the weaker ones, and as the game progresses the weaker ones become rarer.

In this way Id make strong bears that did respectable damage. Id likely make them glass cannons of sorts.