Ryzom

marct wrote:I for one would love to see herds get enormously large due to the fact that no one has thinned them down. Imagine seeming a herd of 400 Bodocs. And if their socialness extended to attacking Aggro.

Seen a *huge* herd of bodocs spawn, but I must admit this more looked like a triple spawn then anything else, small AI-server hickup

Yes, growing herds would be great, as the carnivores in the region would gain more food and grow in numbers, thus thinning the herd beyond the part where this herd can support the aggro. Then the carnivore population grows smaller allowing the herbivores to grow in size.

Groups of herbivores attacking aggro... Why not make it so that an area has a certain amount of food in one place and another amount in another place. This would cause migration but when a herd learned to attack other animals, why not kill the another herd (bodocs vs yelks) to get the limited amount of food? This is a *possible* result in evolving groupactions.

The first I can think of a way to implement not too difficult.

SET spawn_location = Fount_01
SET herd_spawn_type = bodoc
SET herd_spawn_level = 100
SET herd_spawn_number = 15
SET herd_spawn_evolve = yes
SET herd_max_size = 50

This is theory ofc, but would say that a group of 15 Bodocs, 1* would spawn somewhere in Fount. The exact amount of basic/fine bodocs is a know balance set in another configfile.

This is the spawn of a herd at the startup of the AI server. I could think of other things I would like to set, but or the evolution, these are okee to start with.

Now let's add some rules.
IF herd_size = 0
THEN SET herd_spawn_number = (herd_spawn_number - 1)
IF herd_spawn_number = 0
THEN SET herd_spawn_location = (herd_spawn_location + 1) \\needs a loop
(also add some rule that will make the herd grow with one every x amount of seconds)

These rules could not act alone, something similar for carnivores:
IF herd_size = 0
THEN SET herd_spawn_number = (herd_spawn_number - 1)
IF herd_spawn_number = 0
THEN SET herd_spawn_location = (herd_spawn_location + 1) \\needs a loop
(also add some rule that a carnivore needs to fight a herbore (or homin) every x amount of seconds or it dies.)
(also add a rule that if within a certain timeframe of y seconds, an z amount of carnivores (min 2) fought a carnivore and lived, a carnivore is spawned and the herd_spawn_number goes up by one)

Now the migration rules would include that moving to another herd_spawn_location would SET this location, we would see carnivores popping up near the new location of the herds. Migration area's would include a region (a group of spawnlocations).

I think this could be CPU demanding, but programmed well would make for a living world feeling for sure.

"Anyone seen the bodocs recently?"
"They moved on, no idea where they went."
"I can understand, look at all these kinchers!"
"Well, they ate all the bodocs and will starve soon."
"Help me put them out of their misery then."
"Gladly!" *evil grin*

btw: this would also require all carnivores attacking all herbivores. And a group of hungry ragusses attacking mobs they cannot handle will indeed starve and spawn in another place to try again.

jeuiv wrote:Now i know that this would be hell to code, but at least in the higher areas, could the mobs evolve because of the pressures exerted on them by us homins?

Im not doing this to spite all of the hunters or anything, but since it been like 6 years on Atys, and we've killed these things over and over you'd think they'd either learn or evolution would weed out the stupidest

How about homin evolution then??

*Given the amount of DP homins have amassed since the beggining of the game...it would be fair for us to evolve as species too...i dont c why mobs could
throw off weaknesses and not us...

eg
compared to the times zatchel [or any other boss mob] has been killed from homins, he has killed a lot more...so we should evolve faster

*Seems to me yubos would be terrorizing the Noobie Isles..etc etc


Ps.i have to like the grow up and fight for food ideas...leave it be and it will grow in strength and eventually overrun you seems more natural..

really unsure about this but here goes.........

i was chatting to a freind in another mmo who was in the alpha testing team for ryzom way back when it was being constructed. he said that teh origonal concept was for a more dynamic ecosystem with mobs 'growing up'

in order to stop overpopulation carnivores impacted on the growth rate of the herbivore population and the could 'starve to death' if the herbivores were in short suply.

i also think .. correct me if i'm wrong.. a recent game called stalker (set in the aftermath of chenobyl) also tried to do a similar thing with the environment... this had some sucess down to the fact that it is a single player game and so ther is no impact on environment by other players.

the problem is that the environment is very unstable and liable to large fluctuations in terms of mob types and lvls even without the intervention of homins.

now imagine this....

scenario1: mobs gow up
team A start off at lvl 10 kills all the lvl 10 mobs.. then all the lvl 20 mobs then all teh lvl 30 mobs (gainning lvls as they go) and so on and so on.

team B kill all the newly bread lvl 10 mobs and get to lvl 20 and start to look for the lvl 20 mobs. however there are none about since team A has killed them all. so they must wait for the lvl 10 mobs to spawn and 'grow up'

meanwhile team C arrives.. sees all the lvl 10 mobs and kills them

conclusion of the scenario... only team A can progress beyond lvl 20

scenario 2: mobs evolve
Team A of lvl 50 kill lvl 50 mobs and lvl up. when these mobs spawn again they spawn with different charachteristics to adapt to the way that they were killed

team B of lvl 50 figh same mob and also progress but more slowly since each mob was harder to kill. mobs respawn with better charachteristics again.

team C of lvl 50 are unable to kill the mobs that team A&B had just killed

conclusion of scenario: at a certain poin all mobs will be impossible to kill after a certain point
..............................................................

the only ay stalker works is that every time you load your single player game the environment is 'reset'. trying to code this in terms of ryzom would not be hard to do BUT it would be imposible to sustain since it is a perpetual world

Yes, kayak. That was what I understood would happen in the game too, that was the designers vision for Ryzom? It would be awesome if it worked; selfgenerating content. A living breathing world.

I played a Neverwinter Nights PW with a similar feature. The problem was, like you point out -- the monsters grew up way too fast and players didn't dare to venture into the woods, resulting in even more powerful monsters... The server had permadeath, many died.

The mobs' growth has to be supervised and capped in some way. If it would work we'd get a much more unpredictable game.

cloudy97 wrote:The mobs' growth has to be supervised and capped in some way. If it would work we'd get a much more unpredictable game.

yep it's the caps that would be hard to code since it would be in efect be psuedo self checking mini programs for every mob on atys.. ie. each and every mob can only evolve if certain parameters are true. not only would this be a nightmare to code it would require huge processing power. however this would be cool cos you could also and a line in: set_animal_behaviour = random. and have a list of 10 or so behaviour traites. that way some yubos would be curious.. some would run away.

but there is randomness everywhere. i think the system is 'as good as' a dynamic environment as we can expect untill the processing power is suficiant to asign a program to every mob.

lets have them finish the encyclopedia first

im happy that nevrax seems to be churning through at a good pace FINALLY now that jessica is there

Ill ask them for mob migration in 2008

one system, whilst easier to implement into game, wouldnt be able to deal with the strains created by having to deal with actual players. It would be nice to have wee little critters popping in the starter zones, and migrating towards the harder zones as they grow more powerful, but players will happily exterminate entire generations, breaking the cycle.
The solution is to have the program 'cheat', and maintain minimum populations using the currently existing system. These minimums would be lower than you would have if growth and migration were occuring, but still enough to sustain some activity in the zones.

And one thing I strongly beleive. If the mob cant be defeated by the people who can get experience from it, it doesnt belong in that zone. Move it up.