Flora Generation Constraints

[Rathalos]

@HyperbolicHadron

That should be possible; it could be created using the billboard system by just creating one flat plane billboard from above, then applying that texture to the ground texture. Mixing multiple plant species/different objects should also not be difficult to extend the system with. This might also include other objects like rocks (Are there other objects to consider here? Maybe sticks?).

Great! Personally, I think for the sake of making Thrive worlds look visually very distinct, this seems worthwhile.

As for other objects besides the small plants: definitely rocks. In a forest environment, sticks and maybe fallen leaves (again maybe imprints of parts of the auto-evo’d trees above?). Even less frequently, footprints of local fauna, and fauna droppings if we want to be funny?

Going into much detail here really isn’t necessary, but you can see how much you feel is worthwhile.

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And one last point on the depiction of abundant flora: Any thought gone into the underwater environment aspects of this?

Pretty coral

This seems less likely, but I will ask anyway: any chance of static terrain deformation determined by certain species being present?

Because as in the above photo, for some types of flora I feel like “bumpier-than-usual” terrain with an appropriate texture (perhaps in combination with some 3D models at “bushland” rather than “grassland” density) might look better than both just billboards or just 3D models (at the, I am guessing, very sparse distribution those would need to have).

Also, depending on how wild we go with auto-evo, we could make it so that you might end up with something exotic like land-coral (or stromatolites) instead of (or in addition to) conventional land plants. Do we want to take that possibility into account?

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@hhyyrylainen

I think it is important performance-wise for both rendering and auto-evo simulation to heavily restrict the number of plants in Thrive. We need to after all have a lot of performance leftover in the simulation for actual animal species, and even when rendering I think we need to leave quite a bit of performance budget over from the vegetation so that animal herds and stuff like that can be in Thrive.

Absolutely agreed with cutting auto-evo flora variation as much as is necessary to create as much space as possible for the fauna. Just wanted to clarify that I think that should happen on auto-evo’s own merits/needs/goals. Since from what HyperbolicHadron is saying, it should be quite possible to get the rendering costs of a variety of very small plants very low. By only placing them occasionally, or literally just integrating them into the ground texture.

@hhyyrylainen

I won’t say this for certain, but I would think that the average player is not as interested in the variety of small plants as a biologist would be. So we should also concentrate effort and performance budget for the animal side of things which I would guess is much much more noticeable to the average player.

I wrote this post before reading the last few posts of this thread and I think that reinforces my point how we shouldn’t go completely crazy on vegetation so that we have at least some energy to spare on animals

Oh I am absolutely sure you’re correct on this. I am aware of my bias in this case!

Though I am not necessarily concerned about the little plants themselves. If macroscopic auto-evo ends up in any way resembling the patterns of real life evolution, then (with flora just as in fauna) the variety of small species to a large degree determines the extent of variety and visual differences in the large species. The latter to a large degree then determines the environment players actually live in. In fact, that probably occupies a large proportion of the screen space at any one time.

And while I am sure the vast majority of player care very little about the minutiae of the evolution of small land plants! Maybe they will appreciate a striking environment that changes over the generations as a result?

But I should probably leave more in-depth discussion on auto-evo to another thread.