Animal mod

[Pegasos]

The idea: Well, I´ve seen many mods, ffh, sevo mods, translations and other stuff, and my computer is full of different mods. But once I watched Discovery-channel I started to wonder, if there was any mod based on animals. And now I mean the whole scale of evolution, not just modded tigers and bears. There can be humans as one civ, but then there will be everything from the first bugs on land to dinosaurs and to birds and finally to mammals. Technology tree will be replaced with evolution tree and civics will be like: environment, food, specie (means: mammal, bird, insect etc.) etc. I thought also about the plants, but it would make the civics screen way too big, tree units are hard to imagine (think about it, a walking tree, that can kill animals ) and other that kind of stuff. I already have an evolution tree but I have to translate it to english first.

I need: a python scripter, an artist and anyone interested in the project

Schedule: none

Mail me or to this thread in case you happen to want to help me with this.

 

[Gerikes]

The idea: Well, I´ve seen many mods, ffh, sevo mods, translations and other stuff, and my computer is full of different mods. But once I watched Discovery-channel I started to wonder, if there was any mod based on animals. And now I mean the whole scale of evolution, not just modded tigers and bears. There can be humans as one civ, but then there will be everything from the first bugs on land to dinosaurs and to birds and finally to mammals. Technology tree will be replaced with evolution tree and civics will be like: environment, food, specie (means: mammal, bird, insect etc.) etc. I thought also about the plants, but it would make the civics screen way too big, tree units are hard to imagine (think about it, a walking tree, that can kill animals ) and other that kind of stuff. I already have an evolution tree but I have to translate it to english first.

I need: a python scripter, an artist and anyone interested in the project

Schedule: none

Mail me or to this thread in case you happen to want to help me with this.

Sounds interesting! I was always kinda wondering about doing a mod that involved evolution (after playing a couple of hours of Cubivore on the Gamecube). It just seems to me that games based on evolution make gameplay so easy to become open-ended and fun (which is why I can't wait for Spore ).

Although I've already got enough on my plate, if you run into any problems I'd be glad to help!

 

[Impaler[WrG]]

Yea I saw a preview for Spore, it was mind-blowing, the asycronus-content sharing is genius and proceduraly generating EVERYTHING is realy bold.

 

[erikg88]

I'm curious as to how you'd develop this idea more - what kind of buildings would you have? Resources? Any unique gameplay mechanics? What would you do with religion?

 

[Teg_Navanis]

The idea sounds great, but erikg88's questions are justified.

Lemme think of a way to translate the idea to Civ IV (to be honest, I always liked the idea of an evolution game, but I dunno if Civ IV is the best platform for it):

technologies --> evolutionary steps

cities --> populations(?) nah, not really, every unit is a population by itself...

promotions --> small increases in size, speed, better eyesight and so on.

cash/upkeep/religions --> nah, not really necessary

...


After trying to match the concept with the Civ IV engine, I think I'd rather wait for Spore.
I want to see a game in which evolutions happens in numerous small steps. This is pretty hard in Civ IV: either you create lots of units (tons of work for any artist) or you work with the promotions, which is not graphical and probably a bit boring. Civ IV is pretty complex in areas that aren't needed for the simulation of non- or semi-intelligent lifeforms, i.e. diplomacy, economy and city-building.

 

[Pegasos]

I'm curious as to how you'd develop this idea more - what kind of buildings would you have? Resources? Any unique gameplay mechanics? What would you do with religion?

I haven´t thought those things yet, as the idea is so fresh. The buildings could be something like nests, warning system for predators and so on, or some "buildings" that can make some of the resources "useful", like bees that use flowers and make honey. Then the wonders... We all know some great achievements of the nature, and plenty of them are made by some kind of animal.

Thank you for good reply this is what this thread needs.

 

[turquoiseninja]

Awesome idea! Would you include dinasaurs in it? That would be interesting. Your cities shoud start at very bad health and food and happines, and to improve it, you have to get rescpurces like nectar for bees or grass for cows and stuff like that. I would be interesting if predator species had to kill enemy units to grow, but I'm not sure how someone would mod that. Maybe civic categories could be something like:
-Moblilization (flight, bipedal, quadpedal, swim, i dunno)
-Reproduction (sexual-live young, sexual-eggs, spores,)
-Eating (Carnivore, Herbivore, Omnivore, scavenging)

I dunno. Just randomly rambling off some ideas.

 

[erikg88]

Alright, just spitballing some ideas here.

First off, the idea of cultural borders fits in perfectly with animals - now it represents territory. As such, wolves would have something like the creative trait, since their territories span miles and miles.

Second, I think the idea of habitats needs to be looked at. Check this idea out - you're playing the Felidae kingdom (cats, that is). Now you send out a settler afield. Let's say you settle it in a plains region.

Then you get a Lion habitat. The lion city would give you access to lion units, who would be powerful attackers in plains tiles.

Now let say you send a settler south, to the equatorial jungles. Settle a city in there, and you might have a chance of getting a panther, leopard, or some other habitat.

Jungle on a hill? Tiger.

Snow hill? Snow Leopard.

Forest? Lynx.

As you can see, there's really a lot of possibilities for that - the question is, how do you make these cities unique? Aside from being your only source of a specific sort of unit, what else could be done? What do improvements represent?

And this is a big question for me - what do herbivore civs do? I mean, there is that one commercial where the impala runs down the lion, but it might be kinda goofy. Actually, I'd be willing to go along with it.

As for turquoiseninja's idea, a page could be ripped from Will Wright's book, and have cash represent evolutionary "currency". So if your civics were flight and carnivore, you'd pay out the wazoo for a powerful combination of civics. Possibly a flight promotion could be given to animals when you switch civics?

Oh - and for victory conditions - domination works well, diplomatic would require some massaging to make sense, and conquest is cool too. But what if the Space Race victory represented the evolutionary race to become human? So SS Thrusters might be "tool-usage", and boosters might be "opposable thumbs", that sorta thing. And once you get to, I dunno, "Large brain", you've got it.

I dunno, just kind of rambling here. I'm very intrigued by this concept, and I hope to hear back.

 

[Pegasos]

Awesome idea! Would you include dinasaurs in it? That would be interesting. Your cities shoud start at very bad health and food and happines, and to improve it, you have to get rescpurces like nectar for bees or grass for cows and stuff like that. I would be interesting if predator species had to kill enemy units to grow, but I'm not sure how someone would mod that. Maybe civic categories could be something like:
-Moblilization (flight, bipedal, quadpedal, swim, i dunno)
-Reproduction (sexual-live young, sexual-eggs, spores,)
-Eating (Carnivore, Herbivore, Omnivore, scavenging)

I dunno. Just randomly rambling off some ideas.

Yes, dinosaurs are coming to this mod. Afterall, this had to be over the WHOLE evolution.

Those civics ideas are good. I promise I´ll think about those. (At this point I don´t have much civics, so every proposal is important)

 

[Pegasos]

Alright, just spitballing some ideas here.

First off, the idea of cultural borders fits in perfectly with animals - now it represents territory. As such, wolves would have something like the creative trait, since their territories span miles and miles.

Second, I think the idea of habitats needs to be looked at. Check this idea out - you're playing the Felidae kingdom (cats, that is). Now you send out a settler afield. Let's say you settle it in a plains region.

Then you get a Lion habitat. The lion city would give you access to lion units, who would be powerful attackers in plains tiles.

Now let say you send a settler south, to the equatorial jungles. Settle a city in there, and you might have a chance of getting a panther, leopard, or some other habitat.

Jungle on a hill? Tiger.

Snow hill? Snow Leopard.

Forest? Lynx.

As you can see, there's really a lot of possibilities for that - the question is, how do you make these cities unique? Aside from being your only source of a specific sort of unit, what else could be done? What do improvements represent?

And this is a big question for me - what do herbivore civs do? I mean, there is that one commercial where the impala runs down the lion, but it might be kinda goofy. Actually, I'd be willing to go along with it.

As for turquoiseninja's idea, a page could be ripped from Will Wright's book, and have cash represent evolutionary "currency". So if your civics were flight and carnivore, you'd pay out the wazoo for a powerful combination of civics. Possibly a flight promotion could be given to animals when you switch civics?

Oh - and for victory conditions - domination works well, diplomatic would require some massaging to make sense, and conquest is cool too. But what if the Space Race victory represented the evolutionary race to become human? So SS Thrusters might be "tool-usage", and boosters might be "opposable thumbs", that sorta thing. And once you get to, I dunno, "Large brain", you've got it.

I dunno, just kind of rambling here. I'm very intrigued by this concept, and I hope to hear back.

Yeah, I figured out also that the cultural borders are fitting just perfect.

The Felidae kingdom (in this example) could get around with the settlers, but I thought that you have to first "invent" getting any new environment (for example you need to invent fur in evolution tree before you can get to tundra and arctic areas). As the cats are still "young" specie in the evolution, they have already "invented" those things are able to get almost everywhere.

I wasn´t thinking about making cities anyway unique, the environment question will be solved by civics. If you have an environment civic "jungle", you´ll get some bonus production from the tiles with jungle. This way moving to new areas requires changing a civic. Actually there is only one specie that can live almost everywhere in the world, human. This way it´s harder to have a city in some desert and in a tundra at the same time.

There are some examples when a herbivore beats carnivore. I don´t see any problem with that.

I haven´t thought about currency yet, good ideas.

The victory conditions thing is easy, if you have some hard victory condition you don´t like, remove it

Whew, I think that was all. Thank you all for posting here.

 

[turquoiseninja]

Oh, another civic category could be....
Group Orginization!
-Hunting Pack
-Herd
-Hive
-Individuals

 

[Pegasos]

Oh, another civic category could be....
Group Orginization!
-Hunting Pack
-Herd
-Hive
-Individuals

Yes, was thinking about this also. My problem is this:

Civics:

Specie: Bird
Environment: Water
Group Organization: Hive

Sounds goofy, huh? I was thinking to make some civics impossible to have together. As I´m a bad modder I can´t do it myself. HELP!

 

[Pegasos]

OK, the first version of evolution tree. It has 20 techs. I call it Tree 0.1.

There are four eras:

1. Under water era (UW)
2. Settlement of the land era (SOL)
3. Reign of the dinosaurs era (ROD)
4. Rise of the mammals era (ROM)

Technologies are:

1. Optical Organs (UW)
2. Tentacles (UW)
3. Hard Exterior (UW)
4. Back Bone (UW)
5. Fins (UW) reqs: Tentacles
6. Spine (SOL) reqs: Back Bone, Optical Organs
7. Nest (SOL) reqs: Hard Exterior
8. Scales (SOL) reqs: Hard Exterior
9. Lungs (SOL) reqs: Spine
10. Limbs (SOL) reqs: Fins
11. Silk (SOL) reqs: Hard Exterior
12. Fingers (SOL) reqs: Limbs
13. Hard Eggs (ROD) reqs: Scales, Fingers, Lungs
14. Feathers (ROD) reqs: Hard Eggs
15. Wings (ROD) reqs: Hard Eggs
16. Growth of the size (ROD) reqs: Hard Eggs
17. Fur (ROM) reqs: Hard Eggs
18. Warm-Blooded animals (ROM) reqs: Fur
19. Ears (ROM) reqs: Warm-Blooded animals
20. Cloven Hooves reqs: Warm-Blooded animals

This is going to be only the base of the tree, my objective is 30 techs more, a total of 50 techs.

 

[Teg_Navanis]

ok, I made a rather critical comment on the idea some posts ago, but I'm still intrigued. My comment on the "tech tree":

I have a drawing of it before me and I realise that it is only a rough outline. I disagree with some requirements (e.g. warm-blooded requiring furs, or qour differenciation between backbone and spine that doesn't make sense in English). My main concern is, however, that the dependencies of the evolution tree should only follow causal rules and be independent otherwise. Our evolution path is not the only possible one (I still think the Civ IV tech tree is too interconnected; it makes sense that horseback riding requires animal husbandry, but why is sailing a prerequisite of the calendar? The Maya civilization had pretty advanced calendary, mathematical and writing systems without using the wheel, which is impossible in Civ IV. But I digress...), and I'd like a greater flexibility.

How about making the tree itself only marginally interdependent, but combining the different requirements for specific units? Most 'milestones' of evolution serve a specific purpose, for example hard eggs making it possible to nest on dry land without the eggs drying out, lungs making it possible to breathe oxygen outside of water and so on. However, these aren't absolute necessities. Instead of hard eggs, you can have amphibic creatures that still spawn in the water or live births. Animals without lungs can survive in the air by staying small enough for the oxygen to reach their cells directly (with the help of the tracheal system) --> insects.

What I'm trying to say is this: While lungs and hard eggs typically co-occurred in early land-animals, there is no causal relationship between them. They are only 'historically' related because they both served similar functions, i.e. giving the animals a survival/reproduction advantage outside of water. And just because modern birds typically have eggs doesn't mean that eggs should be a prerequisite of wings, for the same reason. Hell, there are even fish that have wings!

I'm perfectly fine with a spine being required for complex organs or a central nervous system, or with some sort of basic extremeties being able to develop either in fins, limbs or wings. And in order to be warm blooded, animals certainly need a fully developed circulation system.

I see that the whole system could get messy with so many different possibilities and lots of (non-existing) animals that each has lots of tech requirements. A linear evolution tree (or two or three parallel ones) with some selected animals would be a lot simpler, but I don't want to be bereft of the ability to try new combinations.

 

[Pegasos]

This is only a base of the evolution system I´m developing, and these things can be changed for the final version.

There are some things I want to clear out:

1. To get to land from water there are 2 possible ways, by developing the hard exterior (insects) or developing spine and lungs
2. Hard Eggs was a remarkable point of evolution and my idea was that the Hard Eggs would make possible to have lizzards and so on to the dinosaurs.
It is scientifically proved that birds were developed from lizzards.
3. Mammals were also developed from lizzards by having a fur, which did lead to warm-blooded mammals.

I also want a couple of alternative options for evolution.

 

[Gerikes]

This is only a base of the evolution system I´m developing, and these things can be changed for the final version.

There are some things I want to clear out:

1. To get to land from water there are 2 possible ways, by developing the hard exterior (insects) or developing spine and lungs
2. Hard Eggs was a remarkable point of evolution and my idea was that the Hard Eggs would make possible to have lizzards and so on to the dinosaurs.
It is scientifically proved that birds were developed from lizzards.
3. Mammals were also developed from lizzards by having a fur, which did lead to warm-blooded mammals.

I also want a couple of alternative options for evolution.

So far I think this is one of the most original ideas I've heard on this forum. My two worries are these:

First off, you're not fighting other humans like Civ4, you're fighting other animals. If you win a domination or conquest victory, wouldn't you ruin the food chain and end up killing your own species in the process? Or, is your idea of "domination" going to be just inhabiting enough of the planet? Or do you have something else in mind?

Secondly, the graphics. This would require an absolute TON of graphics work to make all the models. One option would be to use the mod somewhere on this forum that turns every unit into a 2D "playing piece" with just a simple picture drawn onto it (I can't find the post anywhere, but if anyone else knows what I'm talking about could post the link?). Otherwise, there's gonna' be a ton of graphics work.

Edit: Found that link. It was in my bookmarks all along
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=162610

And, if there's gonna' be some changes in the code (Python and SDK), I'm sure I can offer my assistance. I'm working on a mod right now that will hopefully allow for easy changes for special abilities that you might want to give special units, if you can't do it simply in python or xml. And, so long as it's not massive, I can probably change some SDK parts for you (I just have other projects, specifically Civcraft, that I want to concentrate on).

However, I think there's still a lot to be planned for all this. I sure hope it gets off the ground (no pun intended).

 

[Pegasos]

I´m looking for an artist, and really appreciate your offering. Thank you

 

[Teg_Navanis]

2. Hard Eggs was a remarkable point of evolution and my idea was that the Hard Eggs would make possible to have lizzards and so on to the dinosaurs.
It is scientifically proved that birds were developed from lizzards.
3. Mammals were also developed from lizzards by having a fur, which did lead to warm-blooded mammals.

Exactly my point: Your tree may be historically right (birds developing from lizards that have hard eggs), but there is no reason as to why evolution shouldn't progress otherwise (as proven by other animals that developed wings, i.e. flying fish).

 

[IrishDragon]

like the idea but instead of cities you could have herds, packs etc.

 

[Pegasos]

I´m sorry for not posting anything here for a while, but my net is broken and the repair man guy is not going to come to fix that soon... but the mod still isn´t dead. My capability of modding is limited and I´m trying to do my best to get my messages to this forum some how. Post your ideas and propositions here, I´m really gonna need it!