Era 3: The Oculus Era
This era is named after the first appearance of ‘true’ eyes. There was also some interesting chemistry going on at this time.
On the sea floor, the appearance of
Dumber made Drinker extinct. Dumber carried on the battle with Dibblenipon, neither much more successful than the other (the former benefiting from being able to eat sponges, the latter from retaining the ability to scavenge dead thing).
Ancient species such as the Dibbler and Blobster still survived due to their simplicity. ButBlobster was lurking on the edge of extinction as the seas got more dangerous.
Fearsome new predators appeared. The
iSucky was to first to evolve eyesight. With this advantage, it replaced older Suckers as the top ambush predator near the sea floor.
Huntrex had a brief period of success as it gobbled vulnerable animals in the shallow seas. Nothing could match its fearsome fangs combined with a fair rate of speed. The older Jawster went extinct. Even other predators like the iSuckys sometimes featured on its menu. Then things became tougher.
Defences were a good investment now. Poisonous
Seaworm Jim replaced the older wormys. They were rarely attacked by predators, except in desperate times.
Wrigglys with their vibration senses replaced the old Snakeys, and bred in large numbers. Wrigglys were especially hard to catch, as they could avoid predators with their speed and awareness.
The Blower went extinct, but not before evolving into two new forms. Only the
Tentablow had much chance of trapping Wrigglys, thanks to its poisonous tentacles. The
Flapper generally lost out to the Tentablow, though its large sail fins made it more efficient at long distance travelling across the ocean.
It was a good time for
ProtoSpike to appear. The simple defensive spike was an advantage, if only that other targets tended to be eaten first.
Even the sponges were fighting back.
Spongita Carnivorita was sometimes able to trap creatures in its structure and digest them. This was enough to hold off extinction for this species. The older Spongita Garganteuna was not so lucky.
Hunter lacked similar defences. But it survived in small numbers thanks to its superior plankton-detecting senses.
The advanced predators were all competing with each other for the remaining vulnerable species, which were fewer and fewer in number. With their unspecialised stomachs, all descendents of Sucky could technically eat slimes and sponges, but this only provided them with a small amount of energy. More and more energy was needed by the new species.
By the end of this era, none of the big predators were really thriving. iSucky and Tentablow tended to be more common in shallow and open waters respectively, and the Huntrex and Flappers lost out slightly, though there wasn’t much in it.
The new
Cazone was a very basic flesh-eater compared to the others. Yet it had a place in things because of its simplicity and very low energy requirements.
Ragworm also did well as a parasite preying on helpless sponges.
The Slimeotron MkIII domination of the seabed was broken. Its adaption for water retention proved fruitless. The acidic
Slimeotron Deslover replaced other plant species along the sea shore and removed all hope of Slimeotron MkIII getting a foothold there.
Then there was the appearance of
Bubble Slimeo, with floating growths that could get nearer to the sunlight. Thankfully for the Slimeotron, the Bubble Slimeo tended to grow in groups and didn’t keep the same advanced spores of its predecessor.
Finally, there was the ever growing number of slime-eating creepy crawlies on the sea bed. And the slime-eating sucky descendents. The slimeotron MkIII still survived, but in smaller numbers.
Meanwhile, the
TideBlob was the first creature to move onto land, but there wasn’t a huge invasion. Tideblobs remained very small in number. The acidic Slimeotron Deslovers soon covered the seashore, and these were often too dangerous to eat. And the Tideblob faced competition from other crawlers in the shallow water.
Nitros Basicus replaced its older form in the mineral-eating niche, and continued to exist quietly.
The
Cryoalgae replaced the Hiberotron. This branch of evolution continued to do very well. Large carpets of Cryoalgae thrived in the cold waters, with no predators of any kind of threaten them.
Random NPC evolution:
Huhuwanapi los Terrios went extinct, replaced by its evolved form: Briltyte had stronger legs for moving further and more efficiently across the seabed.
Warm Shallows: (sorry for terrible pictures
)
Cold Shallows:
Open Ocean:
Im going with Mauritania’s suggestion. There are things to be scavenged in the deep water, but special ‘pressure tolerance’ genes are needed. There is no light for normal plants to exist down there.
Land:
Bonuses:
Slimeotron Deslover gets the first plant bonus. TerrisH has +1 gene allowed for next evolution.
Cryoalgae gets another plant bonus. Niklas has +1 gene allowed also.
I gotta give another bonus for the Wrigglys. North King has +1 gene too.
Stats:
Here
Problems:
@~Darkening~, I haven’t counted Cazone’s muscles as a separate thing yet, otherwise it would have had no dedicated gene for moving around.
@erez87, I haven’t counted the ProtoSpike’s skeleton either. I gave it a ‘spike’ gene. But it could develop a skeleton now.
@Abaddon, I didn’t know if you wanted your plant to be floating freely. I didn’t make it like that because it would lose out on minerals on the sea floor. Some kind of ‘stems’ gene is probably the way to go if you want really tall growth (needed to transport stuff between main body of plant and the main photosynthesising areas when they get separated like this).
@ Mauritania, im afraid the chemistry you described is too complex for me
Im going to have to abstract things like that into simple stats.
@Feanor, I want to keep movement and trapping abilities separate, I imagined them as needing different parts of the body.
@everyone, there are more issues, cant remember now! Check the stats before evolving, because I did make changes to many creatures before I added them.
Notes:
All species need at least one gene devoted to getting energy from something, else they cannot survive! (EG Plankton Eating, Flesh Eating, Photosynthesis etc)
You may be able to ‘own’ species at a later date. Then others will be prevented from making evolutions of *any* of your creatures. But random NPC evolutions could still occur, and then these would be open for anyone to evolve further. Either way, there won’t be any secrecy.
For now though, im leaving it totally open. Otherwise everyone would have to start from scratch, and there would be lots of nearly identical species.
This update took over two hours to sort out. I cant keep this pace up, especially when im working on my main NES again. Probably won’t be an update tomorrow.
@Lord_Iggy, I should have mentioned the ‘default’ senses. Basically as you said, I imagine all lifeforms have basic sense of touch, detecting light/dark, temperature etc. More so for moving animals.
