Zombears, Antlered Horrors and the Design Outline

[StopSignal]

I was meaning static, sorry. The Z-Hostile and Ultra Killer things static, and the normal creatures dinamic.

[FrankyPlaysGames]

That’s what I assumed you had meant, I like that idea a bit more, but perhaps add normal bears to the static spawn portion as well. Fuck those things.

[Eric]

[quote=“FrankyPlaysGames, post:9, topic:8836”]But then zombears and antlered horrors WOULD spawn in your bases and stuff. Perhaps they should work off one another, killing more zombears increases the spawn of normal bears and vice versa, same thing with antlered horrors etc.
Kinda like your purging the fucked up woods. Another way would to make a location that somehow has a lot of fucked up animals.
Animal testing facility anyone?[/quote]

What about a “Dead Forest”?

A forest full of dead trees and zombified animals, with radiation (and maybe wreckage too, to make entering them worth it) all over the place.

[FrankyPlaysGames]

[quote=“Eric, post:12, topic:8836”]What about a “Dead Forest”?

A forest full of dead trees and zombified animals, with radiation (and maybe wreckage too, to make entering them worth it) all over the place.[/quote]
That’s stupid Eric. Completely awful and unoriginal. Not totally cool at all. Wouldn’t even exist in the real life. Dead trees? Pfft. I thought you were better than that. An extra forest tile? I think we have enough dude. Forests and swamps, just like in real life. You totally didn’t one-up my idea. I have a thread about mine, where is yours?

I’m being sarcastic

[StopSignal]

I hope you are being sarcastic, Frank.
Anyways, places where the goo totally hitted could be really cool! Specially around nether portals.

[FrankyPlaysGames]

Yeah I’m being sarcastic. I love that idea so much I’m a little jealous I didn’t think of it myself.

[Burnt_Earth]

Just seconding the static spawn of awful hostile creatures, dynamic spawn of everything else. Forests should still have a lot of moderately dangerous creatures like wolves, regular bears and swamp creatures should be everywhere in swamps.

That said, I think it’d be neat if the odd dangerous creature could rarely dynamically spawn, too, to kinda simulate the jabberwocks and Zombears wandering into your neck of the woods every so often and justify boarding up your windows.

[KA101]

Thing is, you get zed critters when a critter dies and nothing takes care of the corpse. Old-age or non-predator-caused-injury, IOW. So zed critters kinda need to become more common over time. This could be handled by making off-camera (outside the reality bubble) critters make a save v. Zombie every so often, but whether that’s feasible to program is another question.

Non-threatening/carnivorous critters, though, should become less common by the same token: increased predation as predators functionally DON’T die off thanks to rezzing. :-/

Critter replenishment should be a thing too, yeah.

[John_Candlebury]

I say that if we wanted to take biome evolution seriously, Earth would more or less degenerate into giant insect country, its quite likely that giant insect scavengers would completely eat more or less every zombie in the planet (things are not looking that hot for the blob unless it manages to turn every zombie into a brute or hulk) and even then ants could realistically topple the bigger zeds just like they do with spiders and other insects IRL.

Current triffids would likely not fare much better against giant ants (neither would normal forests)

Leaving more or less only the fungus as the serious threat to our dimension.

So I think its better to say screw realistic biome simulation and just land a balance between zombie animals normal animals and interdimensional critters that is fun. I personally like the idea of having dead zones that are infested with zombie animals and have more normal forest retain more or less normal pre cataclysm spawn lists, with the very occasional odd stuff thrown in.

[Burnt_Earth]

[quote=“John Candlebury, post:18, topic:8836”]I say that if we wanted to take biome evolution seriously, Earth would more or less degenerate into giant insect country, its quite likely that giant insect scavengers would completely eat more or less every zombie in the planet (things are not looking that hot for the blob unless it manages to turn every zombie into a brute or hulk) and even then ants could realistically topple the bigger zeds just like they do with spiders and other insects IRL.

Current triffids would likely not fare much better against giant ants (neither would normal forests)

Leaving more or less only the fungus as the serious threat to our dimension.

So I think its better to say screw realistic biome simulation and just land a balance between zombie animals normal animals and interdimensional critters that is fun. I personally like the idea of having dead zones that are infested with zombie animals and have more normal forest retain more or less normal pre cataclysm spawn lists, with the very occasional odd stuff thrown in.[/quote]

I like this idea too, but it should occur over a long period of game time, maybe only check for changes every season. So player actions (or inaction) have an impact on the environment. IT shouldn’t be totally crazy right at the start of the game.

[KA101]

[quote=“John Candlebury, post:18, topic:8836”]I say that if we wanted to take biome evolution seriously, Earth would more or less degenerate into giant insect country, its quite likely that giant insect scavengers would completely eat more or less every zombie in the planet (things are not looking that hot for the blob unless it manages to turn every zombie into a brute or hulk) and even then ants could realistically topple the bigger zeds just like they do with spiders and other insects IRL.

Current triffids would likely not fare much better against giant ants (neither would normal forests)

Leaving more or less only the fungus as the serious threat to our dimension.

So I think its better to say screw realistic biome simulation and just land a balance between zombie animals normal animals and interdimensional critters that is fun. I personally like the idea of having dead zones that are infested with zombie animals and have more normal forest retain more or less normal pre cataclysm spawn lists, with the very occasional odd stuff thrown in.[/quote]

Hmm. Fungus is a threat because it can area-effect infest & convert/kill other critters, I believe. Melee is Not A Good Idea.

Blob can blobify (if not the PC) or Slow (the PC) critters it hits: problem is that there’s very little that can touch giant bees, etc. Presuming the blob’s special is based on physical contact, perhaps a defensive use of the same technique could shift the balance back.

Triffids might not do well in an open-field contest, but at the Grove they’ve got biollantes and their slowing sap attacks. Mobile biollantes might evolve over time to combat the ant menace.

[Rhodri]

[quote=“John Candlebury, post:18, topic:8836”]I say that if we wanted to take biome evolution seriously, Earth would more or less degenerate into giant insect country, its quite likely that giant insect scavengers would completely eat more or less every zombie in the planet (things are not looking that hot for the blob unless it manages to turn every zombie into a brute or hulk) and even then ants could realistically topple the bigger zeds just like they do with spiders and other insects IRL.
-snip-[/quote]
I don’t see the problem here.

[Barhandar]

[quote=“KA101, post:17, topic:8836”]Non-threatening/carnivorous critters, though, should become less common by the same token: increased predation as predators functionally DON’T die off thanks to rezzing. :-/

Critter replenishment should be a thing too, yeah.[/quote]
Shouldn’t blob-driven critters not go after small critters for pure food, and also understand that blobbing doesn’t work on them and thus leave them alone?

Then the result would be squirrel and the like populations exploding massively.

Oh, and if dead animals rise and go after their still-living relatives, these relatives will very, very quickly learn to immediately eat or at least tear apart their dead, balancing the numbers. Cannibalism isn’t a moral issue for the animals.

[Coolthulhu]

Non-threatening/carnivorous critters, though, should become less common by the same token: increased predation as predators functionally DON’T die off thanks to rezzing. :-/

Zed predators would probably not make good hunters. They can’t ambush and they’re slow, so no hunting fast critters. They’re loud and clumsy, so they “lose” to small forest critters.
Only good method of predation they have is persistence hunting due to their sense of smell and lack of fatigue.

Moose would probably die out, but small fish, water mammals, birds, small digging mammals etc. would probably get a huge population boom in zed-heavy areas.
Oh, and insects. Lots, lots of flies, possibly even adapted flies laying eggs on zeds. Huge, bloated mosquitoes too lazy to drain small stuff, but just small enough not to get smashed by zeds.

It would offer an interesting contrast with triffid/fungus areas, which would probably be eerily silent and devoid of animal life.

[Barhandar]

It would offer an interesting contrast with triffid/fungus areas, which would probably be eerily silent and devoid of animal life.

Fungus. Triffids probably wouldn’t, lore-wise, go after woodland critters since these maintain the ecosystem.

[KA101]

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:23, topic:8836”]It would offer an interesting contrast with triffid/fungus areas, which would probably be eerily silent and devoid of animal life.

Fungus. Triffids probably wouldn’t, lore-wise, go after woodland critters since these maintain the ecosystem.[/quote]

Triffids aren’t some weird nature-guardian Ent thing. They’re semi-sentient plant critters, and can indeed eat meat.

And persistence hunting is a human long suit as well, IIRC. Deer, etc can’t run forever. (So stamina systems need to be universal, not just for the PC.)

[John_Candlebury]

Well if you ever wanted to be even more realist, the current implementation of fungus would have probably killed or turned anything on Earth by the first few months. Unless it has some sort of range limit like triffids do, it would just multiply too fast for anything to keep pace, this could be sorta cool, but the game would feel more like survive the alien ecosystem of this ruined space colony, surely not a bad game at all, but probably not what most players would expect.

That said, I wanted to ask, past lore (or well GlyphGryph) stated that the fungus and triffids were actually supposed to be symbiotic organisms, were the triffids use the fungus as a way to derive nutrients. Wanted to know if this piece of lore still stands, because now the fungus has a hive mind and it seems unlikely it would ever cooperate with the triffids.

The fungus does have a hive mind right? Or is the PC just imagining the interaction with the fungus?

[KA101]

[quote=“John Candlebury, post:26, topic:8836”]Well if you ever wanted to be even more realist, the current implementation of fungus would have probably killed or turned anything on Earth by the first few months. Unless it has some sort of range limit like triffids do, it would just multiply too fast for anything to keep pace, this could be sorta cool, but the game would feel more like survive the alien ecosystem of this ruined space colony, surely not a bad game at all, but probably not what most players would expect.

That said, I wanted to ask, past lore (or well GlyphGryph) stated that the fungus and triffids were actually supposed to be symbiotic organisms, where the triffids use the fungus as a way to derive nutrients. Wanted to know if this piece of lore still stands, because now the fungus has hive mind and it seems unlikely it would ever cooperate with the triffids.

The fungus does have a hive mind right? Or is the PC just imagining the interaction with the fungus?[/quote]

Yeah, we probably need to dial back the fungus a bit.

But it does have a hivemind, and the triffids have from time to time managed to contain and harness elements of it. There’s a reason the Filthy Traitors can go Adrenaline just from seeing a triffid: the Mycus is well aware that triffids are a threat!

[Burnt_Earth]

Eh, maybe fungus growth is halted by pollution? Say it’s sensitive to toxins in the ground, so farms, mines, cities, hazmat areas (maybe rivers?) are given wide berth since they could poison the whole organism. Some fields could be considered fallow farm fields and have residual fungicides in the soil or somethin

But more realistically I think the limiting factor to growth would be lack of nutrients in the soil which would limit it’s growth. That’s a lot of biomass to sustain after all. So growth fastest to slowest would be swamps, forests, fields, towns, craters, roads and perhaps polluted areas.

[i2amroy]

Thing is, you get zed critters when a critter dies and nothing takes care of the corpse. Old-age or non-predator-caused-injury, IOW. So zed critters kinda need to become more common over time. This could be handled by making off-camera (outside the reality bubble) critters make a save v. Zombie every so often, but whether that’s feasible to program is another question.

Assuming that you have a list stored of the various animal groups (which should include what type of animal they are) then it should be relatively easy to do, and could probably even be JSON’ed fairly easy (the same system could also easily be adapted to have say, evolving zombies over time or something similar with only a tiny tweak).