Before the latest patch, we didn't have a way to map a planet's surface, now we do. This added another aspect of gameplay to the game that wasn't there before. How is this any different from having landable atmo planets with things for you to map and discover? It starts to get more NMS sounding, but it's seems to be the next logical step.
Spitball time: Procedural scientifically plausible plant life?
- Thread starter NeilF
- Start date
Before the latest patch, we didn't have a way to map a planet's surface, now we do. This added another aspect of gameplay to the game that wasn't there before. How is this any different from having landable atmo planets with things for you to map and discover? It starts to get more NMS sounding, but it's seems to be the next logical step.
I suspect scientifically based, procedurally generated life will ultimately prove to be far less interesting than any of us could suspect.
Let’s start right here on Earth, with our own naturally procedurally generated life. We have more than 100,000 species of mold. Most of us could probably identify a dozen at most and mistake all the rest for one of these. Great stuff for moldologists, not so great for game play.
Now let’s break down life to its most basic form, DNA. DNA is DNA, is DNA, no matter what planet it’s found on. So I suggest that life elsewhere may be little different than life on Earth. A Ceti cow would likely be little different than a terrestrial cow.
There may be some differences in plants, based on the color of stars in the systems, and things like insect life may show some more exotic variations, though be genetically identical. Gravity can also play a factor - a high gravity cow might well be shorter with a much denser musculature, but still be a pretty standard looking cow.
It’s until we start delving into the radically different environment that we would likely see some radically different forms of life. Crystalline forms of silicon based life. Thargoid-like forms from ammonia-based worlds.
In comparison, NMS is more about the fantastical than the scientific so the variety of life has a very different set to draw upon when it comes to life forms, however where things like plants are concerned, it’s very common to see the same plant (model) used across any number of worlds.
Let’s start right here on Earth, with our own naturally procedurally generated life. We have more than 100,000 species of mold. Most of us could probably identify a dozen at most and mistake all the rest for one of these. Great stuff for moldologists, not so great for game play.
Now let’s break down life to its most basic form, DNA. DNA is DNA, is DNA, no matter what planet it’s found on. So I suggest that life elsewhere may be little different than life on Earth. A Ceti cow would likely be little different than a terrestrial cow.
There may be some differences in plants, based on the color of stars in the systems, and things like insect life may show some more exotic variations, though be genetically identical. Gravity can also play a factor - a high gravity cow might well be shorter with a much denser musculature, but still be a pretty standard looking cow.
It’s until we start delving into the radically different environment that we would likely see some radically different forms of life. Crystalline forms of silicon based life. Thargoid-like forms from ammonia-based worlds.
In comparison, NMS is more about the fantastical than the scientific so the variety of life has a very different set to draw upon when it comes to life forms, however where things like plants are concerned, it’s very common to see the same plant (model) used across any number of worlds.
We should definetely be able to blow our own clearings into the forests... a few trees should be nothing a Plasma Accelerator can't vaporize
We'll probably just land anyway and squash and destroy whatever is below us. We're humans, it's what we do.
Which is precisely why so many things in ED are indestructible. Space stations, planetary outposts, the Voyager probes, the vacuum trees and plants we have in game currently... none of them can be squashed, bent, blown up or otherwise damaged. The only interaction with the currently -available plants is fungal parasite removal. I can't see plants on atmospheric planets being any different, except for the whole "covering the entire planet rather than one tiny square" thing.
It's really hard to make proc-genned things interactable, and even harder to make the interactions (burn down a circle of forest today, come back in a month to find a new circular meadow of young plants growing out of the ashes), since each "exception" you make to the procedural generation needs to be saved and remembered somewhere.
Re: plant variety: they should tie it in with what will hopefully be a revamp of planetary surface conditions. Right now, planets are the same uniform temperature, no mater where on the planet you are. This doesn't make too much difference on an airless moon, but should make a great deal of difference on an atmospheric planet. It should be much colder at the poles than the equator (unless you've got a high axial tilt, or a tidally-locked ribbon world, or some other edge case), and any lifeforms you find should reflect this. On Earth, you don't get mango trees growing in the Sahara, or eucalypts in Siberia. Different parts of Earth are dominated by different kinds of trees, so I'd expect to see this. I'm thinking putting "regional variety" to trees shouldn't be too hard; just follow a "seed-planting" model: drop seed-trees randomly on the planet, and let them spread organically via the stellar forge. They might even be able to "drop down" entire ecosystems this way, with proc-genned animals and plants delivered to regions of a planet in "sets".
Indeed, I'd expect "tropical trees" on different planets to all look much the same as each other ("evolutionary convergence", given similar conditions), and radically different to the "Arctic trees" on the same planets.
There is a huge assumption made in your post that alien life will use DNA, now something with the same function yes, something using the same elements probably, but something using the same enzymes I consider highly unlikely.
Physical similarities are also unlikely however we could probably work out their ecological niche after a while.
My biology is very rusty, but my understanding is that DNA itself is a product of evolution here on earth (evolving from RNA), and that there are many possible alternatives that could serve a similar function (the reproduction and transmission of information, essentially). It’s probably a mistake to treat it as something universal.
Also, I think that you are vastly underestimating how dynamic and subject to chance life is. Life evolves as a result of things going “wrong” (mutation). Certainly, it’s likely that similar conditions will give rise to moderately similar traits, but it’s pressure applied to a foundation of chance. Life on earth represents a particular trajectory developing from a common ancestry, one that has been subject to all manner of internal and external pieces of chaos. If you rolled the dice again you may well see broadly similar solutions to the problems that life faces here on earth, but the forms themselves will likely be very different, and that's before we factor in how life might develop under very different conditions, and from different foundations. That's my view at least.
Last edited:
Hmm already established the Guardians use/have/had DNA, so perhaps the assumption of Oxygen-Water based life uses DNA is one used for the ED Universe., as DNA and RNA does the job so going back to the natures uses what works
Last edited:
You realise a huge number of folks in ED are interested in exploration, which is quite a lot to do with... well exploration and seeing stuff
If we consider how popular DW2 is, does that put it into maybe some context?
Yes, and I'm one of them. DW2 is a blip - a HUGE amount of people signed up for that during the last few weeks; almost all not because they "are into exploration" per se, but because they read about it on some game magazine etc. Talk to me again once we're a waypoint or two past SagA* and see how many are actively still part of it then.
Don't get me wrong, I do realise exploration is quite popular. But I'm not sure (only FDev can tell) -how- popular it is out of the entire (active) player base.
Also, I would absolutely love to see a fully-fleshed out interactive scientifically plausible algorithm populating planets with geology and biology which we could discover and explore. I love NMS even though it's not even close to being plausible.
But I think you *vastly* underestimate the amount of effort it would require to do so. Even to a basic level. Just saying "it only needs a few clever people and a bit of time" is like saying "we should have bases on Europa by now; we made it to the Moon nearly 60 years ago. All it needs is a couple of clever engineering types..". Technically we probably have the capability to do so if we absolutely had to. But it's still extraordinarily difficult and expensive and would take the efforts of quite a lot of people for quite a lot of time.
There are whole industries around generating realistic-looking plants, and that's only for replicating known earth-based plants. To create "new" and "unique" content you not only need the technology (which, possibly, FDev should have some of looking at their other games) but also LOTS of creative input and design followed by creating actual production-ready assets. Quite apart from making it all performant enough inside the game; people already complain enough about the performance on planetary surfaces...
If you don't work in a creative industry, specifically game development, just saying "all it needs are a few clever people" is being just a touch disingenuous. People not in the industry constantly underestimate the effort needed to create certain things and overestimate the effort needed for others. Conceptually none of it is rocket science. But put it all together and it requires a LOT of time and effort.
OK... Change it to procedurally scientific plausible plant life some artistic license?
As for the variety of life, there's talk for example about the possibility of simple plant life on Titan in its lakes, with cells using liquid ethane and methane. Life on Titan could exist, but it's probable its biological clock would tick very very much slower than here on earth simply due to the lower levels of energy readily available.
If we add layers and layers of procedural generation, all dependent on Stellar Forge details, and then more locally, planet regional information (eg: height/temps etc), I suspect then plenty of variety could be generated.
And I think it's important that this wouldn't be something applied to most atmospheric worlds (so different to NMS?)... It should be a nice rare find IMHO. More common in "goldilocks zone worlds," but still possible in some more extreme locations, if rather more rarely...
Last edited:
Convergent evolution is something I tried to point out as well, earth-like worlds will mostly have green vegetation (in the sense of life that applies photosynthesis), detailed flowers will only appear in noticeable numbers if symbiotic animal lifeforms exist that are attracted to it.
It seems highly probable that random processes led in many different locations in the universe to DNA as the basic information storage for lifeforms (that live long enough to make an impact), but it probably is not the only one, it is just the only one we usually think about because of our familiarity with it. There is still the possibility that Panspermia had an impact on our world, let alone others.
The Lagrange-lifeforms had to get somehow into the vacuum.
There is the possibility that lifeforms of different composition exist that we don't perceive as such because we only take a short look on processes that happen to move incredibly slowly, appearing as dead matter. But something like that is probably not very useful to simulate in a game.
It seems highly probable that random processes led in many different locations in the universe to DNA as the basic information storage for lifeforms (that live long enough to make an impact), but it probably is not the only one, it is just the only one we usually think about because of our familiarity with it. There is still the possibility that Panspermia had an impact on our world, let alone others.
The Lagrange-lifeforms had to get somehow into the vacuum.
There is the possibility that lifeforms of different composition exist that we don't perceive as such because we only take a short look on processes that happen to move incredibly slowly, appearing as dead matter. But something like that is probably not very useful to simulate in a game.
True... But for example, if I recall correctly, isn't there a line of thinking that photosynthesis could also result in black plants in some conditions?
I'm sure, as pointed out by other folks, if a touch fo articist license is included to create maybe large brackets to what is rendered (variety/extremes) to what we might truly expect, then a good variety of "alien" plant variety could be created across a huge variety of worlds?
You just reminded me of this article : https://www.livescience.com/1398-early-earth-purple-study-suggests.html
Basically they posit that plants on Earth started out purple and only later turned green.
Ha, I haven't seen that yet.
Photosynthesis is not the only way to get energy from the environment, there is also Chemosynthesis, but I don't think more complex lifeforms would depend on that method (unless sunlight is unavailable) and it requires many sources of those inorganic compounds
Last edited:
But with just a little bit of hand-wavium artistic license?
I don't see how it could not in the end.But with just a little bit of hand-wavium artistic license?
I am just suggesting points to give it a slightly educational feel, so it can provide enough information for players to research the background themselves.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...-disintegrates-rocks-acid-and-cellular-knives
It’s not outside the realm of possible, in the right circumstances and conditions something like this might form a symbiotic relationship with other organisms, resulting in a more complex form of life.
There certainly are possibilites. Especially at the microbial levels, though these are going to likely be things we never actually see. Detect? Read about? Sure. Be represented by a cluster-of-germs icon? Very possible. But larger, more complex life? Not so convinced all of it would be all that different from forms we are familiar with, colorations notwithstanding.
At least not based on any sort of playable procedurally generated system. But who knows, we do have faster-than-light travel, so the Fi part of Sci-Fi might win out over the Sci, for the sake of making things more interesting.