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[Neonivek]

Well what the game could do I guess is make several base creatures and then allow itself to make slight alterations to the creature with an algorithm where the further away from the starting location it is (With sea distance applying double), the greater chance for a greater number of variations in the base creature. The naming theme would likely be either "Location" + Base and/or "Trait/Habitat" + Base if the varience is low enough. Though differences are slight, huge distances could bring on varience great enough to change entire aspects of a species.

Though that could be excessive.

As for food niches remember that you can seperate niches rather vastly. Birds for example have been known to seperate niches according to the area of the trees they use and nest in. So even times they are active during the day could be a niche.

[Lord Dullard]

Neonivek: Some interesting ideas. I'm not sure if/when I'll delve into something as complicated as true evolutionary drift and whatnot; as awesome as it would be, and as much as I'd eventually like to implement that sort of thing, it can probably wait while I slap together a slightly more sane/comprehensible-to-code placeholder system that will do until gameplay is in place and I can start becoming more serious about insane amounts of depth.

Still working on creatures; it took me a while, but I got a lot of the behavioral stuff churned out, and I'm now going through the list of body parts and making sure they're all described properly. I suspect I'm going to have to be a bit preemptive and code scrolling text fields with scrollbars just for this, but I'm going to need them later anyway.

Sorry to say the creature descriptions themselves aren't looking much more interesting... yet. But with all the groundwork now in place, that should change pretty soon.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Knight of Fools]

That's pretty impressive for something put together by code.

But... Is that creature an insect?  I know about as much as a watermelon does about biology, so I'm not sure if mammals or reptiles can have "body segments".  I'm leaning towards no, but I think my initial image of the creature threw me off.  I was imagining some small, furry creature with green fur, and then I hit the body segments bit and my mind nearly fell out of my ear.

That's probably just me, though, so don't look too deeply into it.

[Lord Dullard]

That is an (extremely) partial creature description. The reason you're confused is because about 95% of the description is not yet being implemented by the description generator, which is what I'm working on now. The description proper will include useful facts such as what kind of bodily covering the creature has, whether or not it is an invertebrate, whether it is warm or cold-blooded, its colors, etc.

[Knight of Fools]

Sweet.  I look forward to it.

[Neonivek]

Well the even lazier way to do it Lord Dullard I guess is to make a base creature and have them randomly generate offshoots... then just throw them in random locations. (refering to that shift thingy).

[Knight of Fools]

Perhaps a mix of both would work - That way you'd have some standard "builds" (IE: Four legs, torso, head, fur) along with a few oddballs.

[Lord Dullard]

At this point I'm just generating a set number of creatures and distributing them across the world. Evolutionary simulation isn't really a part of the picture for now.

Creating a smaller subset of base creatures and allowing them to morph over given distances sounds like a pretty interesting idea to keep in mind for the future, though. It doesn't sound like it'd be exceptionally hard to implement (I'll probably be eating my own words on that later, mind), but I'm not certain it's a hugely important goal to pursue until I have more time to devote to detail.

[Lord Dullard]

More progress:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

When I get home from work today I'll add in the rest of the limbs/extremities and start working on color selection. After getting stat selection and modification done and writing the code for creature habitat selection and spread, I'll be on the home stretch.

[mendonca]

Holy moly that's a thing of beauty.

Minor nitpick though, 'not entirely nonbelligerent' is a bit unclear to me, i.e. shouldn't really be describing with double negatives.

But nevermind that, I still love it..

[Lord Dullard]

Thanks, mendonca. Yeah, there are still some elements of lingual weirdness I need to weed through before this is finished (or at least polished).

Arms.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

ETA: Also just realized I need to finish adding the rest of the head-detail dictionaries. That (and limbs) should hopefully be finished in the next couple of hours. More screens to come soon.

[nenjin]

Just a thought, but some of those sentence constructions could be simplified so it reads much cleaner.

Ex:

"The Ali is [unimpressive] in physical stature; it weighs between [3 to 4 pounds]. It [doesn't trouble itself] with safeguarding territory."

Not using contractions does sound more clinical and erudite, but it makes for some torturous constructions, especially with the super mad libs thing you have here. So a hefty dose of editing for brevity would be good, in addition to isolating where double negatives are created.

Of course, not knowing all the terms you've included, maybe this is the construction you've found works best for all them.

[Lord Dullard]

Thanks, nenjin; I'll work on simplifying sentences as best as I can manage while still retaining some amount of variability between descriptions.

Quite a few more facial features have been added, including mouths, noses, proboscises, trunks, teeth, and tongues. I think I need to fix the 'spurred' trait; for some reason I included it in the digits dictionary instead of in hands/feet. Not sure why, exactly.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Legs and other appendages still need to be added. I'll try to get that finished tonight and post one more set of screenshots before bed. No ('actual') work tomorrow, so I may be able to get quite a bit more finished throughout the day.

[Outcast Orange]

These are coming out amazingly, sir.

Keep up all the good work.

[Neonivek]

Yep, even if I don't post I am watching this intently. I am just waiting for the gameplay elements to emerge.