the 3d... whats up with it

[oblivion5683]

sorry if this has been thought of before but i have to ask something. so in all the previous creatures games the norns navigated by smell basicaly right? and so if they were hungry and they knew that hungery was bad they would go towards the smell of food, im order to lower there drive to eat.(im simplifing this but im assuming you get the idea) this is the same for all the other drives. now heres my question, doing this in 3d, wouldnt that require an extreme almost complete re do of all the code involved? and if not are they just going to be brainless machines coded to move towrds food when hungry? as in just a simple trigger hidden by an animation? i am very sorry i ranted this long but i am genuinly worried that this is just going to become another "feed the pet, play with the pet. yay" kinda game

[Genesis]

In the previous creatures, people are happy when they eat at all - a norn hunting food by smell would be WOW!!!!!!!

The only creatures who used smells for navigation are c3 creatures when they become home sick (sometimes)

Normaly the norns wanted something - they saw it - and then they walked in that direction - except there is way to much fear chemical in their body - then they walk away instead of towards it! (that's because of the genetical hard written walking)

Oh - and a lot of food (specially third party food) doesn't smell at all!

But could be different in previous creatures, cI'm only sure about c3

[Shallan]

Not necessarily. Obviously I have no idea what their code is like, but if you design your program intelligently, you make it so the visual aspects are very separate from the rest of the logic, and all the features are rather separate from each other, so you can easily rip out and redo the various chunks of it. But I'm also not convinced that they are letting the norns move in three dimensions like that either. If you look at the screenshots they have like, http://www.creatures4-thegame.co.uk/goodies/screenshots/environment-the-cavern and http://www.creatures4-thegame.co.uk/goodies/screenshots/environment-the-treehouse, it suggests to me the norns will only be able to go left and right like a sidescroller, though now they will be real time rendered, not pre-rendered sprites.

[Genesis]

I don't think so Shallan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quk0QQ_PFcw

[ChosenPredator]

^^ yup yup

even in the older video you see them walking around and utilizing the ladders climbing down or up can't remember but they definitely go from up down left right and more

[Seonta]

Also keep in mind those are zoomed out screen shots. In one of the hatchery pictures you see a zoomed out scene with a " very small norn" (far away norn) on it... where in other screen shots you see zoomed up on the norn. The far away picture gives you a better estimate on how proportionate the environment is to the norn.
http://www.creatures4-thegame.co.uk/goo ... e-hatchery

On the zoomed in images, you see just how much floor space the norn has to walk on.

Lots of videos show the norns in different positions along the floor. further and closer to the screen.

[ArchDragon]

Actually Genesis, C3 Norns could smell a whole range on things, including food, opposite sex, Grendel, Norn, Ettin, water, light (yes, light!) etc. etc.

Shallan is right though, if things are coded correctly there's no reason you couldn't add in some extra dimensions and allow the Norn to move and smell in multiple directions.

I don't want to make it sound like it's easy to do, but it should be possible. The CFE creatures for C3 for example have updated brain lobes that allowed them to smell things on higher or lower floors, whereas the original breeds could really only smell left or right (it's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the short version).

In theory you'd only need to do something similar to the C4 Norn brains and rewire them to see the world with extra dimensions. And having a basic understand of how Steve originally coded the brains, this should be doable.

[SpaceshipRat]

In short, C1 navigation was ALSO somewhat hard coded!

Smell just tells a norn how close is the object; like sight and hearing, it helps the brain to choose which object to interact with, measuring how interesting the object is (nearby, wiggling, making noise) against how much the norn needs it(hungry, bored, cold). Then the engine would help it to reach the target.
I think in this case the engine will help the norn navigate the third dimention, the maps are mostly flat anyway, I'm not too worried.

[Andrea Di Stefano]

We actually reworked the Norn navigation system so that that they can now move around in 3D and also follow smell in 3D.
We kept the smell, viewing and hearing intact and moved them to 3D

[ChosenPredator]

We actually reworked the Norn navigation system so that that they can now move around in 3D and also follow smell in 3D.
We kept the smell, viewing and hearing intact and moved them to 3D

that is awesome! you're my favorite dev andrea <3 lol