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 Bifrost  |
 Here's a quick draft of how I'm imagining this world right now. There are both familiar and more unfamiliar features, and there are still a lot of more or less empty areas. Especially the lower areas are a bit of a mess, as I'm still trying to figure out where to place what, and I've pasted in a collage of placeholders to give an idea of what can be where. The graphics are trying to emulate an Albian ReGenesisesque feel. @Merboy: You can probably see that I've been borrowing some of your work; this is what I meant by wanting to see and perhaps use some Ainardan scraps. There's still a LOT of work left to get this right, but right now, I'd like to know what you guys think I should change, before I start applying more detailed shapes and textures. I'm thinking an overgrown forest/jungle-ish feel, though not so tropical that it can't have cold winters. I'm planning on making the lowest areas near the center into some sort of bog/swamp/marsh-area, and I want old trees around the caverns. All input is welcome. |
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 Merboy |
I think it looks great! I would LOVE to paint a sky with clouds and such and photograph it for the background. If I really had my wish I would LOVE to sculpt a model out of clay and photograph/edit it a la C1. But I think time is a barrier there... anyways I'm loving this though. This does look very warm and inviting, I think it's looking good. There is definitely a lot of empty space at the moment but that's fine for this stage. I purposefully left empty spaces in Ainarda so other people had space to add their own additions to it (like the rocky area under the castle, the openness of the ocean, even the round hobbit hole to the left of the great tree). That's a possibility for Kreatures, but since this is being presented as a full fledged game I think filling in as much space as possible is the way to go. I'm sure we can brainstorm some ideas for areas, like perhaps a waterfall can fit somewhere, etc. Where were you thinking the "home" area would be? That's a good place to think about food availability and variety at this time. When I get a free moment I'll see what I have in the way of scraps. I'm wondering what the style of the world will be though as I'm not sure my material will quite fit into the style of the sketch yet, which btw I quite like this sort of dreamy, wistful sort of brush-stroked look here but I wasn't sure if you mean for that to be the final product. Do you have anything you can show that would give more of an idea towards textures and such? The Lantern Light.com |
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 Brynn |
Bifrost, that looks fantastic! I adore the painterly feeling. I think my favorite area is the cavern under the tree with the pond(?). Looks like it is also kind of luminous - are there holes to bring in air/light shafts? Those would be hard to place since it's below sea level, but I like the idea... Do you plan on doing anything else with the rightside mountain? It looks a bit difficult for a Creature/Kritter to move around the surface of it, and the little house looks lonely. |
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 Geat_Masta |
@merboy, no! no sky! I've said this 3 times! I'm looking into an atmospheric model to procedurally generate a sky with clouds and such based on the weather conditions of the CAs I've been making, currently water vapor will move around based on air flows, but I still have to add convection currents. It will also handle making things that are farther away look bluer or whatever. Similarly water shouldn't be drawn in, once I fix the fluids they should color whatever they're infront of based on some parameters they have. I don't think redrawing elements from copyrighted works makes it okay to use those elements. But I don't know that because I'm waiting on a letter of engagement from the IP lawyer I was talking to, and I can't ask about it now. Regardless, the composition itself is also very similar, e.g. its basically regenesis but flipped horizontally. You've got the house area, the big garden, and the tree area, then under that you have a long tunnel with yellow columns. It's C1 flipped horizontally. Redrawing it doesn't change the copyright issues. Similarly, I always loved the upper half of C2. It would be fine to have a big tree and a bridge over a jungle and a desert and column area in the world, but you can't have the big tree, followed by the bridge over the jungle, followed by the desert, with the column area beneath it. If they can prove you had access to C2 during development: that infringes. The closer the way the engine deals with creating life is to the original, which it sort of has to be, there's only so many ways to do it, the more other things about it have to diverge. This is why I keep asking for a simple line drawing: I don't want you to spend too much time on a world that ultimately is just too similar and is unusable. I'm sorry I seem ungrateful, and I'm sorry I'm asking a lot of you. But if i released it with this world: I would get sued, and it would have to be taken down. This is some concept art from C2 That's what I mean by line drawing. |
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Bifrost |
Don't worry about seeming ungrateful; this kind of criticism is what I wanted. I'm really not good at line drawings, but I can give it a try. I've modelled the image around the ReGenesis image. I've removed some of the most glaring similarities, but I suppose it's still too similar. The idea has been to give this world the chance to possibly be a version of Albia, without explicitly being Albia. Perhaps I should diverge even more. Oceans have been drawn in just to show where the oceans should be; it's easily removed. What kind of areas do we want? I want to keep and improve on the great tree and the root cave. And I want a forested area with gardening possibilities. An ocean, a beach, underground swamps, preferably in a cavern area filled with old, gnarled trees and roots. What other areas do we want? |
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Geat_Masta |
For now make drawings similar to the one I posted, of an individual area, we'll vote on the best ones and decide which ones to include. My sister has some time tomorrow and said she'll try to make some too. And I'm sure merboy has some ideas. It may be significantly easier to create areas then try to shove them together than trying to create a world. So I say we try that. And since I'm sure people are wondering why I haven't released a build in a while. Most of the things in the engine are building on the core, e.g. parallax layers are building on the core, they took an afternoon, getting the norn to walk around was building on the core, that took a few days, particle effects took a day, particle physics took an afternoon. The current things: CAs, Atmosphere, and Lighting are all additions to the core, and they're all pretty tightly linked together, so it may be a while. I'm also not totally sure if the data used by plants to see how much light there is can also be used by the renderer to actually light the scene. To make matters worse, I only have 3 days of ADHD meds left, I called my shrink and left a message, usually I get a scrip in the mail or an appointment after 3 days, but it's been 4 and I haven't gotten anything. So if that doesn't resolve itself my coding may grind to a halt until that's resolved. |
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Merboy |
Well, you gotta take care of yourself. Health always comes first. And honestly I don't think there's any rush to get this done aside from simply sticking to a sustainable pace. You don't want to burn yourself out but also don't want to lose your momentum. So just do what you have to do for you. I think we all can understand that. The Lantern Light.com |
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Merboy |
Geat_Masta wrote: Yes! Merboy *does* have some ideas! At the moment I was thinking I'd really love to create a sort of crypt/underground castle sort of thing. How does everyone feel about this? Because I was going to use my previous Halloween layout from my site (http://www.thelanternlight.com/hall2016.html) as a starting place and sort of build up from that. I think it might be a really cool place to have a waterfall or two. Let me know if yay or nay on this idea. And if yay, then Ghostlove, darlingface, I need to know how tall your rabbit-raptors/lago-babies/Faunlets are so I can create the area accordingly. I don't want to assume they're the same height and size of norns because you know what happens to those who assume. But that's all assuming we all want a crypt/underground castle sort of thing. Oh snap krackle pop! You know what else we need? We need someone to make some plants and fruits and such because I'm telling you, that is a PROJECT on. of. its. own!!!! I have some stuff from Ainarda that (to my knowledge) nobody has ever used including these golden apples that grow on the Great Tree and then they fall and when they hit the ground BAM they explode into like six or seven rainbow colored seeds. God I loved those things. I can't BELIEVE those aren't a thing.... I should see if I see have them... *checking* Ok so I have the sprites but I don't have the coding/actual COB. I think Moe *might* have it but I also don't think it matters since we're setting up a new engine/coding language. Moral of story: who's watching the new season of Reign? The Lantern Light.com |
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Bifrost |
We should really discuss ecosystem in full. Do we want earthlike plants and critters, or do we want to come up with our own thing? Can we pick stuff out from mythologies? With light rendering, we might want bioluminescence, such as lighting bugs, glowflies, glowing mushrooms and/or flowers. Do we want berries, fruits, edible bugs, earthworms, herbs, weeds, vegetables, mushrooms, the ability to eat dead kritters, and eggs from kritters and other life forms? And how do we want to name them? |
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Brynn |
"Dark forest with bioluminescent plants" is one of my favorite fantasy aesthetics. If we can't manage to give actual growing plants light-emissive properties, we could always have them as glowing background elements. Should we talk about the living part of the ecosystem first or the terrain of it? What sort of biomes do we want present in this world? We can decide these before we do concept art of them. Do we want a cold mountain peak (possibly with snow)? An underground area? Canopied forest and its undergrowth? Beach and ocean? (There are lots of different kinds of beaches too; rocky ones, sandy ones, tide pools...) Also, how close to home do we want to get? Should we be adventurous with fantasy biomes like "giant mushroom forest"? >the ability to eat dead kritters What happens to kritters when they die? Do they float away and get immortalized in the crypt like Norns do? Or do they sink into the ground and, given time, change soil properties? Do we want a crypt or explicit log for dead kritters, or are we fine with a more general event-based log that covers anything of interest? |
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Bifrost |
I've thought of some possibilities towards diverging further from the Creatures games. The most obvious similarities will be in terms of game play. What if we didn't add written speech; at least not in the first edition of the game, but rather communicate through symbols (sort of like Sims)? Either in direct images, or in a more hieroglyphic (though more easily understood) set of symbols. I've also tried to look up the early concept image of Albia that Steve Grand drew, but didn't get used in any of the games. I ended up in this archive, but the images aren't stored. Graphically, it was a dead end, but conceptually, there's a lot of inspiration here, in terms of Grand's original ideas that didn't make it into the games, and that we might consider. The main hub, or first area you enter in the world, I feel should be a great tree, with its roots and canopy. Growing next to an ocean could lead a waterfall to run down inside the roots, into a warm pond at the bottom, where kritters can have relaxing baths (see concept above). Within these roots, I'd like to see one or several great statues of godlike beings, holding in their hands a dna spiral, a piece of a motherboard, and other attributes alluding to the concept of a world made around digital genetics. |
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 BaffleBlend |
Bifrost wrote: I feel like that would be taking out a pretty significant and game-defining part of play; hand-rearing the creatures and teaching them speech manually. There's changes that affect cosmetics, and then there's changes that affect function. This is the latter, not the former. And the further you diverge arbitrarily merely for the sake of divergence, the harder it will be to do the former. Also, "this feature is not included in the first edition" and the like is just bad game development practice and an unfortunately negative trend of the industry. Do we really want to be like that? |
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Geat_Masta |
@merboy Creature height is controlled by a chemical receptor, so they could mutate and become taller/shorter. I told ghosthandle to make them 256 pixels tall, which gives them a maximum height of 256 pixels on a 200dpi monitor, or 128 on a 100dpi monitor. @bifrost Whether bioluminescence is possible depends on how well I can memoize the data (when a light moves how much of the scene do i have to recalculate?), I'll get back to you on that. @Brynn It depends how well I can tie creatures to scripts (the reliance of decision scripts on thread blocking makes it basically impossible to write them in jewelscript). It's possible they'll just disappear when they go off screen. |
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 Prodigal Sock Ghosthande  |
Merboy wrote: Merboy, you are lovely. I would love to see a crypt/underground castle thing. C1 and C2 had elements of this but sadly never expanded on them. Geat_Masta said in the other thread to make them 256 pixels tall, so that's what I'm aiming for. Bifrost wrote: The Creatures learning computers use such symbols for teaching and I always thought they seemed pretty straight-forward... something like that would surely work as speech. My (overambitious) idea would be Slyphania, a world made up of bodies. Not in a creepy way, but, you have these elflike creatures called Slyphs that love philosophical and scientific discussion, and one night they discuss science and philosophy so long that they fall into an exhausted sleep which lasts for millennia, and this world grows up around them--and they become a part of it. It's not obvious everywhere but as you explore you'll realize that a certain hill is actually moss and little wildflowers growing on top of a gigantic head... there might be a random ridge of toes sticking up in the middle of the desert... following the roots of a stand of trees downward might reveal that they are the hair of a sleeping woman... et cetera. If you travel underground far enough you may come to caves of non-overgrown artifacts, such as giant spectacle glasses, ink wells, and other intellectual paraphernalia temporarily abandoned by their sleeping owners. But it's the kind of thing better suited for daydreaming than making. ![:\](/images/smilies/confused.gif ":\")  |
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BaffleBlend |
To add to my last post, I've (mostly) gotten over that this will be a new project and an officially supported continuation. But there's still a limit to what I feel is reasonable. I understand that copyrighted species are kaput here. But if there's fundamental changes to the engine that will make it impossible for anyone to mod them in later without them being in-name-only, that's how I'd know it's gone too far. Replacing bibble with original speech: Acceptable. Not using speech at all: Not acceptable. Do you see the difference? Ghosthande wrote: Also, that sounds sorta familiar. |
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Prodigal Sock Ghosthande |
I've never played Xenoblade, but the world being made out of people and/or mythical creatures is common to a number of mythologies around the world, including the ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, Aztecs, and the Norse. I don't doubt that several fictional universes have borrowed the same idea. BaffleBlend wrote: This still boils down to copyright, BaffleBlend. I understand that you want a Creatures clone but as he as already expressed multiple times now, that cannot happen because he does not own the copyright for the game. Ultimately, this is also Geat_Masta's project. Geat_Masta has expressed that he doesn't want to get sued, and it is up to him to decide what is acceptable and which changes he wants to make to ensure that his game doesn't violate Gameware's copyright. He is not being unreasonable here. |
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Bifrost |
 Is this more in line (badum-tss!) with what you're looking for? |
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BaffleBlend |
Ghosthande wrote: The behavior isn't copyrighted. The neural systems aren't copyrighted. It's just the species itself that's copyrighted. I mentioned Rivals of Aether before; it borrows nearly all* of its mechanics from Super Smash Bros., but is sold for profit, even though many of its characters are near-exact clones or composites of those in the Smash series. Zetterburn is a clone of Wolf. Wrastor is a composite of Meta Knight, Falco, and Captain Falcon. Maypul is a clone of Pikachu. Absa is a clone of Ness. The list goes on. And yet, it isn't getting a DMCA, even from the notoriously trigger-happy Nintendo. I don't like RoA (in fact, there's a pretty big number of reasons I actively hate it), but I think it's a good demonstration that maybe things are getting a little paranoid around here, and you should check it out for the sake of argument. (*There are some things missing, like blocking and ledge grabbing, but that's just a half-*arg*ed attempt to make the gameplay more aggressive and competitive based on a logical fallacy—namely "Brawl was worse than Melee because it had too many powerful defensive options, therefore this will be better if it has hardly any defensive options at all"—not for copyright reasons.) |
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Bifrost |
As I keep reading about Steve Grand's original ideas for Albia, I'm growing increasingly fond of the idea of matching this new world up to his. If we only could get a hold of his old sketches. Perhaps he'd be willing to share them with us. |
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Geat_Masta |
@Bifrost Yes! very nice! I like the bridge between the trees particularly. I would also like to see an area using the gravity mechanics. You can have an area (rectangular) where gravity is altered so creatures can walk up the walls or on the ceiling, you can also pull everything towards the center, or push everything away from the center. |
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Bifrost |
Geat_Masta wrote: That. Is. Awesome! Perhaps we could apply that in a "glitched" area, like, where pieces of a motherboard or some binary codes can be seen through the background. =p |
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Prodigal Sock Ghosthande |
Geat_Masta wrote: That reminds me of the older Sonic games that always seemed to have some level with weird physics. I'd love to see this incorporated into the world somehow... maybe as part of a wacky science lab, inside a crashed spaceship somewhere underground, or even in a space station above the planet's surface. |
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 Lodestar Doringo |
Geat_Masta wrote: Can you also have no gravity? Would be interesting, especially considering the outer space areas in Creatures 3, which were completely breathable and norns would walk on set floors. Of course, no-gravity wouldn't exactly allow for much movement, though I'm sure that would be the intention. |
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Prodigal Sock Ghosthande |
Low gravity areas would be very interesting. Would it be possible to have the kritters' max size be bigger than 256 px tall? I just realized that if I scale them down to that size, on my monitor their heads are only as big as my fingernail. It would be nice to be able to see a little more detail than that... especially since monitor resolution is probably not going to decrease in the future. |
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Geat_Masta |
By default there's no gravity, you add gravity by adding a physical zone to the metaroom, and setting it's dimensions to encompass the entire thing, then you set the acceleration vector of the physical zone to what you want gravity to be. What's your monitor's DPI? if it's over 200px they would be scaled up in engine. |
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Prodigal Sock Ghosthande |
It's about 140. Not sure scaling up is going to be the prettiest solution. I have other games on this system that also try this, but the graphics wind up looking pixelated and sometimes blurry. There's no chance of making them bigger to start with, and then scaling down as needed? |
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Bifrost |
Do anyone know of a way to get a hold of Steve Grand's sketches of Albia from "Small Furry Creatures: A Mythography"? @Geat Masta: you think he might have it and be willing to share it on Twitter? (I don't have a Twitter account.) |
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Geat_Masta |
@Ghosthandle you can make them bigger, but the issue is that bifrost has already expressed that he thinks my scaling is blown up too much. Starting out with everything much too big will just consume RAM on most computers. I can't figure out how to set up a poll on these forums. So, I say you should set up a poll for how big it should be with reference images, and we'll see what the bellcurve looks like. @bifrost I don't know of any way, and I doubt he still has them. |
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BaffleBlend |
No harm in asking? |
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Bifrost |
My biggest concerns with size was that ReGenesis was made half the size it was used in the game, and looked in my eyes noticeably resized. New backgrounds will be made about twice as big, and can stand being bigger in-game. Without Grand's sketches, there's still a lot of information to work with. I'm imagining right now three main planes with different climates. Asgard, Midgard and Outgard. These would be three different metarooms. |
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Bifrost |
From the Mythography, edited to remove used and copyrighted material: "The [...] world is divided by mountain, desert and sea into three regions: Outgard, where [...] eggs are to be found; Midgard, ruled (before the Extinction) by the dwellers of the [...] city of Niflheim; and Asgard, a holy land in which lies the great World Tree Yggdrasill, that holds up the Sky. Outgard is divided from Midgard by the Desert of Volund [...]; Midgard in turn is split from Asgard by the Mountains of the Ragnarok, and Asgard from Outgard by the Meniscus Sea." "Besides the gross geography described above, each area is divided into smaller regions of forest, lake, plain, marsh, etc. Each of these has a name, which can be found by deciphering one of the [...] atlases in a library. Each is also the habitat of a different race [...] (those few that remain in existence). Throughout [the world] are found the burrows, towns and cities of [...] a variety of [...] races. Some of these will provide food and shelter[...], and some will harbour dangerous, predatory species, who must be defeated, avoided or pacified." "Outgard is a fairly dry, barren land, with pockets of semi-desert that merge together at the east to form the hot, dry Desert of Volund. Midgard is altogether greener and more lush, being protected somewhat by the Mountains of the Ragnarok. The more equable climate of Midgard explains why the [inhabitants] of Midgard abandoned their semi-nomadic lifestyle in favour of city dwelling. The Mountains of the Ragnarok are extremely cold, but this is of little consequence, as they are impassable on foot anyway. [...] A variable wind crosses the mountains, and its changes of direction are of great significance to [...] aeronauts. Asgard is still more lush, being between mountain and sea, and presents a tropical appearance. This partially explains its Elysian connotations in myth, and certainly rewards the weary traveller. The Meniscus Sea is warm and has a gentle wind, which occasionally drops to a flat calm. The atmospheric circulation causes the wind to cross the sea from west to east during the first part of the day, and east to west later. Leaving one's sails hoisted all day long is therefore a surefire way to end up back where one started! Night time [...] is very cold, due to the limited heat capacity of such a narrow atmosphere. Particularly in the dryer areas, shelter is an important requirement once night falls." From: Steve Grand; archived. |
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Prodigal Sock Ghosthande |
Geat_Masta wrote: Yes, that would probably be best. I'll wait until I've finished the basic sprites I'm working on and have something a little more detailed to show than just the lineart. |
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Bifrost |
Three realms. Three main metarooms, connected by two lesser ones - the Ragnarok mountains and the Volund desert. There might also be a great sea connecting Outrealm and Inrealm. We start off in Midrealm, in the tree. Midrealm isn't as wild as Outrealm, but not as well structured as Inrealm either. The city ruins of Niflheim can be found there (Merboy, that could be your underground ruins). The Daoine spacecraft has (crash?)landed in Outrealm. The key to getting it started is in the Well of Urd by the roots of Yggdrasil in Inrealm. Yggdrasil's size makes the biggest tree in Midrealm look like a small shrub. Both Yggdrasil and the rest of Inrealm is filled with viking/celtic styled buildings. (Names are placeholders.) |
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Merboy |
If I'm being honest, which I rarely am, I have to say I was never ever in favor of the C3/DS setup of multiple metarooms. It's just my one, humble opinion which can count for naught but I've always vastly preferred to have the entire world all together than to have a number of small areas that feel contained rather than open. Though of course I know smaller areas = less strain on the game and computer, but it just doesn't feel worth it. Just my two cents, it's whatever GM wants. The Lantern Light.com |
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 Fuzzy Dragonhat Pilla |
The upside of having different metarooms is quick navigation between different spots, but if there would be a way to quickly navigate to certain spots on the map, this wouldn't be an issue. ...But it would be nice to have the ability to add extra worlds as add-ons in a 'metaroom' fashion. Visit my Creatures blog/website - Pilla's DS Agents Join us on Discord - Caos Coding Cave Visit/contribute to the Creatures Wiki |
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