There is a notable lack of quirkyness in Rimworld. What if it had animals like these ?
(http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/animal-hybrids-182.jpg)
(http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/animal-hybrids-272.jpg)
(http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/animal-hybrids-222.jpg)
(http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/animal-hybrids-53.jpg)
(http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/animal-hybrids-132.jpg)
(http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/animal-hybrids-19.jpg)
http://www.boredpanda.com/animals-hybrids-photoshop/
What if we could capture people, harvest their organs, and sell them into slavery? And then sit around the campfire drinking beer & celebrating?
Rimworld has plenty of imagination... you just have to be on the right wavelength.
Well you could easily mod it.
Yeah, the game could have like, an antelope that explodes or something. ::)
well, you have boomalopes, boomrats, thrumbos, and kind-of wargs and muffalos.
All other animals are DIRECT earth animals.
Although it would be fun, no dwarf fortress mega bea- wait you got a point
Well if there was animals like the ones in the photos I would just murder them all as they kinda scare me (as I care for my colonist and I don't want some t-Rex seahorse ripping their legs off when they walk around in water) and there is plenty of creativity in rimworld
Rimworld has many Earth animals.
There's nothing special about Mufallo, Warg or Thrumbo.
Boomalopes, Boomrats are the only remotely creative animal, and they sound like a joke. That kind of animal couldn't survive. A single predator would kill an entire pack.
It's as if Tynan disliked imagination. Rimworld's setting is more like futuristic fantasy than science fiction. Science is just there to provide a new setting, new frontier, new Wild West - clearly not to limit anything by worrying about plausibility.
So why even bother sticking to very mundane animals ? Short stories by Robert Sheckley show you can have fun and creative worlds within the futuristic (not necessarily science fiction) convention. His books read more like Discworld than actual science fiction.
One of my favourite short stories is The Odor of Thought (1954 - still copyrighted). A man crash lands on an alien planet. All animals living there have green fur. So he meets green squirrels, green wolves and so on. They're also completely blind... and telepathic.
Another author which wrote good, lightweight sci-fi that could serve to spice up Rimworld setting - Henry Kuttner.
So.... you suggest the massively creative idea of merged earth animals.... because someone wrote about green earth animals....
I'm sorry what - how is that any more imaginative.
What's interesting is the RimWorld lore talks about lots of genetic experimentation and makes it sound somewhat underrepresented in our colonies.
Quote from: Quick PrimerGenetic engineering - Genetic engineering is relatively easy on many planets and has been used for everything from creating xenohuman super-soldiers to perfect mates to talking dogs, explosive plants, and air-spewing terraformer algae.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pIZyKif0bFbBWten4drrm7kfSSfvBoJPgG9-ywfN8j8/pub
QuoteOne consistent class of modification we've seen applied to a wide variety of creatures is intelligence enhancement. Dogs, pigs, monkeys, gorillas, whales, dolphins, and elephants have all been engineered and combined with human DNA to produce smarter variations. Some variants are created as pets. Other are made to do work too dangerous or unpleasant for humans, and beyond the capacities of a culture's AI. Some are created as warriors and weapons - hyper-intelligent guard dog, a bird scout that can speak what is sees, a bomb-carrying suicide monkey. These brain modifications are often paired with physical changes - fingers so a pig can manipulate tools, or a humanlike larynx and mouth so a dog can talk.
Such intelligence-enhanced animals are collectively classified by their degree of brain power and called by a specific prefix like so:
Opti - Indicates enhanced but still sub-human intelligence. Optianimals can usually use tools, form long-term goals and organize into primitive social groups, but can't speak more than a few words, read, or think abstractly. Optidog, optipig, optiwhale, optimonkey.
Trans - Indicates intelligence in the human range. Transanimals can read, use tools, form teams, hold conversations, and think about complex ideas. Transdog, transbear, transgoat, transsimian.
Quote from: b0rsuk on November 15, 2015, 08:28:38 AM
Rimworld has many Earth animals.
There's nothing special about Mufallo, Warg or Thrumbo.
Boomalopes, Boomrats are the only remotely creative animal, and they sound like a joke. That kind of animal couldn't survive. A single predator would kill an entire pack.
It's as if Tynan disliked imagination. Rimworld's setting is more like futuristic fantasy than science fiction. Science is just there to provide a new setting, new frontier, new Wild West - clearly not to limit anything by worrying about plausibility.
So why even bother sticking to very mundane animals ? Short stories by Robert Sheckley show you can have fun and creative worlds within the futuristic (not necessarily science fiction) convention. His books read more like Discworld than actual science fiction.
One of my favourite short stories is The Odor of Thought (1954 - still copyrighted). A man crash lands on an alien planet. All animals living there have green fur. So he meets green squirrels, green wolves and so on. They're also completely blind... and telepathic.
Another author which wrote good, lightweight sci-fi that could serve to spice up Rimworld setting - Henry Kuttner.
So on one hand you complain about muffalos yet your suggestion for "more creative" animals includes coloring Earth animals different colors, i.e. exactly what the muffalo is? You complain about boomalopes and boomrats being silly yet your OP suggests randomly mashing together Earth animals, which is just about one of the laziest, most boring and stupidest methods of creating fictional animals?
As it stands, you simply criticize the game while demanding the same things you supposedly dislike be included. If you want to complain about Rimworld lacking imagination, at least come up with something that actually is more imaginative than what's in the game already.
P.S. There cannot be predation of boomrats and boomalopes since no predator can withstand the explosion
re: P.S. also, boomrats and boomalopes can't have accidents. If a tree falls on a boomrat, or a mufallo steps on it, the entire colony dies.
Read the short story "The Odour of Thought" before you accuse me of lack of creativity. I could go into detail, but I don't want to spoil that excellent story.
As it is, Rimworld animals are below the level of lazy animal mashups. Mufallos are yaks with the first letter changed.
Quote from: b0rsuk on November 16, 2015, 06:58:34 AMRead the short story "The Odour of Thought" before you accuse me of lack of creativity. I could go into detail, but I don't want to spoil that excellent story.
You having read a story doesn't say anything about you nor does it make you in any way an authority on deciding what's creative or not. We are not accusing you of lack of creativity, the title of this thread was written by YOU not by US.
Quote from: b0rsuk on November 16, 2015, 06:58:34 AMAs it is, Rimworld animals are below the level of lazy animal mashups. Mufallos are yaks with the first letter changed.
Would you rather have green muffalos?
Quote from: b0rsuk on November 16, 2015, 06:58:34 AM
Read the short story "The Odour of Thought" before you accuse me of lack of creativity. I could go into detail, but I don't want to spoil that excellent story.
Nobody will read books or short stories just to understand some point you're making. If you want to use it as an example to illustrate something you need to name the aspects relevant to your argument, otherwise people will have no idea what you're talking about. If you can't or don't want to do that you shouldn't bring it up in the first place.
QuoteAs it is, Rimworld animals are below the level of lazy animal mashups. Mufallos are yaks with the first letter changed.
No, they're buffaloes/bisons but blue instead of brown, which is exactly the type of recolored Earth animal you've been suggesting in your previous post.
OP bashing aside,
A few more interesting animals could be useful. Seeing a boomrat/boomalope predator with 100% fire resistance could be feasible, and a very interesting indirect threat to the colony (forest fires anyone?)
We already have wargs, why not some of the other less "out there" fantasy monsters. Rust Monsters to damage equipment more? Tribbles (from Star Trek) to provide an overpopulation threat - they're completely benign, but reproduce like crazy and eat the map clean.
We don't even need super-crazy-off-the-wall-weird animals. Even a couple more earth animals could be useful...sheep? Old earth animals - Mammoths, saber-toothed tigers.....dinosaurs?
No, i don't claim any level of "creativity" - I'm just brainstorming. Animal taming was introduced early enough that there isn't much reason to expect a super-diverse selection of animals. Now that there is a lot bigger focus on the animals, there will probably be more animals introduced (Tynan even has a thread around here somewhere asking for animals people want to see in game)
Off topic: The M in Muffalo comes from Muskox:
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ed/Ovibos_moschatus_qtl3.jpg/230px-Ovibos_moschatus_qtl3.jpg) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muskox)
On topic: I agree with Limdood & others. I'd like to see more animal diversity, but I'm no artist. If anyone can make the graphic assets, I'll mod them in. If they're really good, I'll nominate them for vanilla inclusion (not that my nomination carries more weight than anyone else's).
Quote from: b0rsuk on November 15, 2015, 08:28:38 AM
Boomalopes, Boomrats are the only remotely creative animal, and they sound like a joke. That kind of animal couldn't survive. A single predator would kill an entire pack.
That single predator would also die horribly trying. Aside from the fact that I think they're escaped lab tests, exploding when something tries to eat you actually sounds like a pretty good survival advantage. What would want to eat you if they'd die trying? Further, the fire would destroy your body before it went out, so anything that tried to eat you and survived wouldn't even get anything for its trouble.
Considering animal interactions is kind of a moot point in the context of the game; Tynan's stated he wants to keep things simple because adding complexity to that sort of things has a minimal payoff given the time it takes and the potential bugs that emerge. Though with the hive system eventually incoming, maybe that's an indication of a change of design focus that could lead to a more alive ecosystem.
That said, boomrats are neat because they're different. They remind the player he didn't just crash land in North Dakota. I'd love to see more quirks, but the biggest question is how to make animals different in a meaningful way that isn't just for the sake of being different.
As a mechanic boomrats are kind of cool because the player has to balance eradicating a pest with the fact that pest explodes, and that encourages the player to make meaningful knowledge-based decisions like hunting in the rain or not using melee hunters for boomrats.
Quote from: NoImageAvailable on November 16, 2015, 08:48:54 AM
Quote from: b0rsuk on November 16, 2015, 06:58:34 AM
Read the short story "The Odour of Thought" before you accuse me of lack of creativity. I could go into detail, but I don't want to spoil that excellent story.
Nobody will read books or short stories just to understand some point you're making. If you want to use it as an example to illustrate something you need to name the aspects relevant to your argument, otherwise people will have no idea what you're talking about. If you can't or don't want to do that you shouldn't bring it up in the first place.
Woah woah woah, back up there.
I will read almost anything for almost any reason. This sounds like a perfectly good reason.
I'll probably forget about the thread in the meantime though.
Anyway, yes, more varied animals would be good.
Tribbles or something similar sounds especially interesting, and I understand an insect-hive version is already in development.
That does not mean a mammal version is a bad idea, in that vein, I would also like to see that one purple alien fungus mod that aggressively grows over everything be implemented in vanilla.
Let's see, what else could improve animal, or to be more broad, ecology in Rimworld...
More species interactions like predators eating prey.
Muffalo occasionally damaging trees (large grazers tend to rub against trees), at just a bit faster rate than trees grow, so if a herd stays in the same place long the trees start disappearing.
Beehives increasing plant reproduction speed, maybe even allowing your planted plants to occasionally spawn outside their fields. Also, honey.
Come to think of that, if we have honey we can have honeybadgers. Honeybadgers also eat snakes, so that gives the cobras a natural enemy.
And/or bears. Bears are cool.
But this is an animal creativity thread, I shouldn't let myself get distracted.
- Blatantly stolen from the Terrible Thunder Lizards animation series intro: Sharks with legs ("Damn this evolution thing!")
- Living zeppelin creatures, they are about 1/10th the size of the total map and too high to see anything except their shadow. They graze on the full grown trees wherever they are (the young ones are too short too reach), and their only other effect is that bullets make them explode, not in a directly destructive way but covering a large part of the map in blood.
- Invisible cats. Also blatantly stolen, this time from Alice in Wonderland by way of China Mieville. (I think it was his Calorieman story but I could be mistaken.)
- If the insect hive thing becomes a thing I want ant-eaters.
- Not a real creature (or is it!) but a variation on the thrumbo herd event implying they were running away from something. Cue a massive moral drain, at least equal to a negative psychic event.
- A running Gag: literally the word "Gag" with legs running from one end of the map to the other. it cannot be caught or killed. This one i stole from 1/0 (One over Zero), the webcomic by Tailsteak. http://www.undefined.net/1/0/?strip=1
- Yeah, yeah, I know copyright and all that haberdashery. How about this: feral lawyers come to visit! they all have abrasive and social skill 20, and nothing else. Expensive clothes though.
- I got distracted again... How about some variation of hypnotoad? Every colonist who comes within a certain range just stares dully at it until they die (usually from hypnotoad bite)
- Hypnotoad could be a dryad, nyad, or other similar seducing mystical being.
- Or something like Tolkiens Old Man Willow, a tree that makes poor hobbits fall asleep and then tries to turn them into fertilizer. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Old_Man_Willow
- Another alternative is black lotus fields, that just turn your colonists into addicts instantly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus-eaters
- Tesla trees (yes, also stolen, from Dan Simmons' most excellent book Hyperion. Read it. Now. I'm not kidding. Seriously, it is truly great literature, science fiction, and philosophy in one.) Anyway, Tesla trees store or create electricity during certain seasons and release it at all surrounding life to kill competition and predators and create fertilizer at the same time. They could even be used as a power source if the right tech was researched. There are other interesting animals in Dan Simmons' books, but I don't want to give spoilers.
- Hyperaccumulators, as in plants that accumulate useful metals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hyperaccumulators They could be used for a very slow but renewable source of metal. They exist in real life, but I think they are fantastic enough to fit in this thread.
- Shooting plants, there are plenty plants that shoot their seeds, peas among them, so that could easily be adapted (I know plants vs zombies used them, but it is a naturally occurring trait so copyright doesn't come into it) Maybe humans happen to be great soil for these seeds giving the colonist an infection that
really needs to be treated asap? They can even be used as a defensive weapon though that would require getting one of your colonists seriously infected with dozens of embedded seeds while he is planting them. Wouldn't it be hilarious if harvesting them from living people was the only way to get these seeds? After which planting them would be safe until they matured.
- I seem to like plants more than animals, so just to honor the OP I will attempt to come up with another animal. Something that drinks blood, like chupacabra or vampire. Maybe just a giant mosquito? Or swarms of mosquitos acting like piranha, completely draining small animals (except boomrats) and giving blood loss and potentially infections to large animals (except boomalopes) and humans. There would have to be some gameplay mechanic to fight them though, maybe just cleaning up or having some other floor than dirt?
as others have brought up, the help files say there is a lot of animal diversity thanks to genetic experimentation. but we only ever see modified creatures with Earthly ancestry. this makes me wonder: are there any alien lifeforms in Rimworld so far? is there life that can't ultimately be traced back to Earth?
Quote from: ironstar on November 28, 2015, 02:07:53 AM
as others have brought up, the help files say there is a lot of animal diversity thanks to genetic experimentation. but we only ever see modified creatures with Earthly ancestry. this makes me wonder: are there any alien lifeforms in Rimworld so far? is there life that can't ultimately be traced back to Earth?
Thrumbos?
But I think they're blue giraffe rhinos with fur coats.
No aliens. Tynan has expressed that numerous times. But GMO experiments gone awry? Yes!
Not likely to be Earth, but it's possible.
Quote from: milon on November 28, 2015, 07:30:50 AM
No aliens. Tynan has expressed that numerous times. But GMO experiments gone awry? Yes!
Not likely to be Earth, but it's possible.
I think I put too much alien spice.
(http://i.imgur.com/Z1xYAcx.png)
Call it a Scyther / Praying Mantis hybrid and you're good. ;)
A robot/insect hybrid?
Stranger things have happened on the rim. (And the cause is most likely human experimentation, but that's unimportant.)
Well this thread keeps inspiring me to make some animal textures...
(http://i.imgur.com/FrbBbjX.png)
So far I have thought of a:
- Bear/Mole hybrid
- A flying furry orb thing, with proboscis for legs which it uses to stab and latch onto prey
- Spider/Gator hybrid, a spider with the jaws/head of an alligator
- A hermit crab that uses debris as a shell
- A cactus-like animal with arms that hugs things (yes)
I wish some animals had ranged attack, either monkeys and elephants throwing stones or fantasy ones spit damaging liquids/thorns/whatever
For the OP I would recommend http://www.gog.com/game/Impossible_Creatures
A Friend, would you mind creating front & back views of those? I feel a mod coming on. ;)
Quote from: milon on November 29, 2015, 04:53:24 PM
A Friend, would you mind creating front & back views of those? I feel a mod coming on. ;)
Here you go (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=2390.msg183601#msg183601)
Dang, those are good! I'm pretty busy right now, and I've never modded animals before, but I'll get to it as soon as I can (provided no one else beats me to it).