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Sciocont's Organism Editor Concept

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Sciocont's Organism Editor Concept Empty Sciocont's Organism Editor Concept

Post  US_of_Alaska Sat Jan 09, 2010 12:56 am

Controls
point&click based
adding parts will be click and drag
tap s for asymmetry on a selected part
hold s for special symmetry options
in symmetry options and sizing board there will be a few number input fields for size and radial symmetry
you can click off of the creature and drag a box to select multiple objects


General Options
there is a general tool for stiffening or softening up bones, tentacles, and plant parts. this allows you to create stiffened raptor tails or prehensile monkey tails.
There is a tool for setting vertebrae as a tail section, and you can define in what ways a tail will move.
you can save, name, and start a new creature
you can edit the behaviors using the behavior editor. Behavior "maps" made in that editor can be shared between organisms.

The "Caste" option will allow you to differentiate your creature between sexes and types of your creature (think:ants). Once you have created a creature, you can click "add caste" and your creature will be copied into another caste slot where you can edit it. You can edit what castes are needed for reproduction, individual AI for each caste, and the proportions of castes in the species.


Skeletal
All of these categories can be used on one creature, and they can all be used in any one of the specific skeletal parts For example, a hand could be a tentacle with three fingers and leaves.
Vertebrate
Spine
You can create a spinal cord by making a bezier curve on the center axis of your creature. The curve shows where the spine is. You can stiffen the spine by selecting a section and using the stiffen tool. Ribs are automatically generated along the spinal cord. Each rib generated in skeletal view represents three ribs on the actual creature. You can scroll up or down on them to make them wrap around,or recede back into the spinal cord. The ribs' shapes are controlled by handles at the top, bottom and side, so you can make a circular, elliptcal, or egg shaped cross section. You can also split the spine, leading into two or three spines coming out of one.

Limbs
Limbs are made of joints and bones. You drag a joint onto the existing skeleton to create a new limb, and then put a bone on it, stretch that bone or bulk it up using the scroll wheel, then put on the next joint and the next bone and manipulate that until you have the desired shape.

Feet/Hands
Feet&Hands are done here using the same parts as the limbs, but when you want to add one, you drag the hand/foot creation bubble to the end of an existing limb, and the camera zooms in and the rest of the skeleton becomes translucent so that you can focus on that area. You build them just like legs, but you can add claws, nails, hooves, and a few other ends. If you want it to be exclusively a foot, then go back to full skeletal view and the game will ask you if you want it to be a foot, hand, or a walking grasper, a hand that you also use to walk (think gorillas).

Skull
The skull is made of separate blocks, which you mold into the desired shape. You can twist, angle and morph them until you are happy with the look. If you want to create a jaw, you can add a jaw attachment point and build off of that. You can create one piece jaws like a human's two piece jaws where they are split down the middle, or many jaws. You can place teeth and get them into shape with handles or have them procedurally generated. You can also add a beak.

Invertebrate
Wormacle
This tool is used like the limb and spine parts in the vertebrate category. You draw a bezier curve on the screen, slide the points around, and you have your path for a tentacle or worm body. You can modify the shape of the wormacle by rings that are generated procedurally along it. You can edit the shape in much the same way as ribs, with top, bottom, and side handles. You can split wormacles just like the spine.

Feet/Hands
You can use the wormacle tool to make tentacle hands or blend it with other parts to make a very unique hand. You can add suction cup ends.

Head
Wormacle really does work for everything. You can use it to shape a tentacle-mop head for your creature, or stiffen it to make eye stalks.

Arthropod Parts
There will be about 25 or 36 arthropod parts. they are arranged in a square and are grouped around others with the closest shape. You use them like limb bones in vertebrates, Except they have a cube of lines around them. When parts come out, they are in their cubic form, so idf you make ti twice as long, it will be the same length as any other arthropod part that is twice as long as its original cube. This simple numeric system allows you to swap a part for another and keep the same dimensions.

Plant
Trunks/Stems
You can basically drag a type out (trunk or stem), and decide where you want to put it, then edit the basic shape of it (width/height and shape of the trunk in cross section). All plants will be differently shaped because they will have their parts' shapes generated by number strings. Trunks and stems can be created on their own or be attached to animal parts. Roots will be generated procedurally as well, but you can influence their depth and spread, and if roots can sprout up into another pant. Roots will not be needed if the plant is on an animal base.

Branches
There will be a few different types of branches and layouts of branches to choose from. You could have many grass-stalk like branches all around the plant, a few woody branches at the bottom, or clumps of different branches in different places. Branches will be populated either by placing them onto the trunk or defining areas for branches to fill using procedurals. Each branch will procedurally grow out smaller sections and twigs, and leaves, also flowers, cones, and other reproductive parts.

Fungi
Fungi parts are still under discussion. They may be incorporated into plant parts.


Muscles/Organs
Muscle
Muscles will wrap around any bones i a procedural way. Larger muscles will attach to larger bones. You can make muscles larger/smaller, but you can't delete procedurally generated muscle. You can add muscle, but remember that larger muscles consume more energy, and smaller ones pose the risk of snapping. Muscles will not wrap around arthropod, plant, or fungi parts. Wormacle invertebrate parts will be filled in by muscle.

Fat
You can also give your animal fat stores. You brush on where fat is stored, and if your creature eats enough, these places will start to expand.

Organs
Specific organs will have different functions, and your creature must have circulatory, respiratory, and metabolic organ systems.
Animal organs are still under discussion, but they will be placed into the animal as parts. Your placement and size of these organs decides how safe and efficient they will be. A heart behind ribs is protected, and big lungs/gills give your creature the ability to use air more efficiently

Leaves are the metabolic, circulatory, and respiratory system for plants. Leaves will be populated in the same way as branches, but there will be a leaf editor as well. It pops up and lets you basically draw the leaf in a box. You can save that leaf and the drawn part will become the 2d part and a model will be made procedurally for the 3d part. The 3d part is basically a cutout of the outline of your leaf on a slightly folded plane. Flowers and fruit will be procedurally populated wherever, or where you specify. There will be many, many different types of flowers, and each will grow into one of a few types of fruit possible for that flower.


Skinning/Details
Once you are done muscling your animal, you skin it and add all of the details. A detailed description of how the game could handle skin tightness and the appearance of feathers, quills, skin tags, and hair can be found at the following link.
viewtopic.php?f=60&t=741

There will be a skin connecting tool which can connect two parts with skin. In this way, you can create bat wings. A certain surface area to weight ratio of feathers or skin gives your creature the ability to fly. There will also be a flight feather tool. You select a limb to be the wing part, and then the tool will add flight feathers to the limb that are large enough to let the creature fly. Once this is done, the wing will try to animate itself by folding up against the body and stretching itself out all the way. It will then try a few different flaps.

There will also be a skin removal tool for beaks and bone plates that you don't want to be covered by skin.

Detail parts are just like the ones in spore, there are larger feathers, camouflage, odd lumps, etc. Put them wherever you want.


Colors/Textures
Coloring and texturing should be done with something like the crayon box idea
http://evolutions.jamaica-focus.com/f/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=691
and possibly custom brushes where you can simply "draw" on your creature.


Editor/Test Drive Environment
The basic environment is a 900m wide volcanic crater. A player decides whether the entire thing is in the deep sea, under a little water, or some water/some land, with a 300m island in the middle. Different plants, cliffs, caves, and hills let you test out your creature in its natural environment. If your creature can fly, it will have plenty of airspace to drift or flap around. The editor ceiling is about 900m high, and the player can select what sorts of gases and density the air is.


Sizing Board
This is where you decide how big your creature is. Basically, you start out as a silhouette that is human-sized, next to a silhouette of a human, elephant, and mouse. You can get up to about 300 ft long or down to fly-size, all by scrolling up or down on your silhouette. Underneath the silhouette is your dimensions and mass, which will change depending on your silhouette's size. Also, if you set up one dimension or your mass, the entire thing will snap to comply with that. So if my creature is 1m by 1m by 1m and five kilos and i want it to be 2m long, i set in 2m as the length, and then the silhouette,height, width and mass change accordingly.


Last edited by US_of_Alaska on Sat Jan 09, 2010 8:04 pm; edited 2 times in total (Reason for editing : Cleaning up)
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