animals

[oshron]

i know there's already plans set in place for animals in the game, but i thought id just throw this out there. this is the setup that im planning out for godstorm.

basically, instead of having a set bestiary of specific animals, nature in each game is set to a civilization (either a neutral GAIA civ or one of the playable civs) and changes depending on that. so, for example, instead of having individual lion and tiger units, there'd be one "great cat" unit that changes depending on what civilization is applied to it. for the neutral gaia civ, it would be a lion, while for, say, an indian faction would make it into a tiger and an amerindian faction would make it a jaguar. it works better with a more diverse selection of civs (the ones of 0ad are all from the same general area, but subspecies could be applied, like barbary and european lions instead of a generic african lion). there could also be wild equivalents to domestic animals, so there's wild horses that can be hunted for food as well as horses that can be herded back to your town. other such ones include boars/pigs, rams/sheep, feral/domestic camels, chickens/junglefowl, and so on

[Aldandil]

That's quite an interesting idea, though I think that using the same model with different textures and then keying the fauna to the biome would work better visually. Lions and tigers both lived in Turkey, Pakistan, India, and Iran in ancient times, so the maps located in those places would ideally have both. Also, keying fauna to the biome instead of the civilization allows players to travel their army far afield from their civ's homeland.

[oshron]

well the idea is that, instead of using the exact same model, its the same basic skeleton of a unit (the same basic polygon) with a different external model, like with the current units in 0ad

[Aldandil]

Yeah... I don't know nearly enough about modeling to understand what you just said. Sorry.

Edited September 22, 2010 by Aldandil

[Mythos_Ruler]

We will already have "biomes" where the animals change based on the biome the map is.

[oshron]

really? cool. maybe the information on animals in teh design document is just outdated then

[feneur]

really? cool. maybe the information on animals in teh design document is just outdated then

Hmm, where do you see any information contradicting this in the DD? Would be nice to know so we can update it in that case, the only thing I can find in a quick look is this bit in the Maps section: "The different types of Random Map Scripts each define a filtered packet of elevation meshes for land Lowlands, Midlands and Highlands and Ocean Floor, terrain textures, and geology, fauna and flora objects that portray certain geographical regions, called a biome." Since that does mention that animals will be specific to biomes, though I can admit it can be missed among all the other info in that sentence

[oshron]

maybe i'd just misunderstood it, i dunno

[feneur]

Ok, it isn't specifically mentioned in the Fauna section as far as I can tell from a quick look, so perhaps that's the reason

[oshron]

maybe. i think my idea is pretty nice too (well of course i do, its MY idea ) and should perhaps be considered. as i said, it works best with civs that are seperated by greater stretches of land and in different environments