Mon, 09/21/2009 - 20:29
This is probably more the sort of collaborative effort I pictured when I heard about this place than what actually goes on here but I've had an idea for awhile I'd like to try out.
Anyone who's seen Star Trek or Star Wars has probably had that little chuckle to themselves about how nearly all the aliens have shapes awfully similar to humans, [i]as if they were just humans wearing a suit.[/i] People who have checked out much in the way of alien abduction stories may have thought similarly "why should those gray aliens just be humans with odd proportions?"
In shows where people have had a little more range of the aliens they could employ have warped humans to that sort of degree and sometimes even warp some other lifeform on Earth into a whole sentient race... but that's still implausible.
If you're not one of those folks that take the first part of the Bible literally chances are you're pretty ok with the idea of evolution and don't have much trouble seeing how all the life on Earth today builds on previous forms so having sentient slugs is like saying their world had the same history as Earth at least up to the point where slugs came into the scene.
This all makes for some pretty shallow science fiction.
However I've got a solution. Make a biological history for the homeworld of whatever sentient race. Seeing as I've got several years of college biology under my belt I'm all set to do just such a thing except for this one problem: I've got several years of biology under my belt. This is a problem because it's just so [i]gosh darn difficult[/i] to push that aside long enough to think of a different way of doing things. It's like how Picasso said it took him years to learn to draw like a child again (or at least I think that was him.)
But a place like this could be great for this kind of thing. You guys wouldn't have to unteach yourselves very much, especially if I stick you in the water somewhere you're unfamiliar with anyway. If we manage to set up a path significantly different from Earth I'd have sneakily sidestepped my own trouble with this as well and could also participate in creating a diverse planet's worth of life.
So if this sounds like an interesting sort of project to anyone here comes the first step.
I don't much want to deal with chemistry so I'm going to be introducing the same toolset life on Earth had. Bacteria are pretty boring so we'll just skip over that and start off with photosynthesis already established and multicellular life up to the point where things start to be not-microscopic.
This means tissue types and the first tissues that make sense are basically skin and muscle. Muscles ned nerves to contract so there's got to be some of those as well.
So with just skin, muscle, and a small bit of nervous tissue what kinds of animals can you guys think up?
*sketches welcome but I expect more word descriptions.
**and feel free to tell me it's too hard to assemble an animal like this from scratch. I can seed us with a starter if necessary.
Edit: Now I can't decide if this is more a world building topic...
Wed, 09/23/2009 - 16:06
#2
I've played spore but it was
I've played spore but it was a mockery of evolution and although some of the mechanics from a programming perspective were neat the gameplay was lacking to a degree that I find myself disgusted at the expansion packs.
Everything basically ended up being bald until maybe the end if you had enough complexity to try and simulate hair and what you did before only had a limit on the kinds of mouths you had in the second phase and some random unrelated skills in later phases.
Spore starts you out as a small fish and then there's nothing but fish until you leave the water. Clams, starfish, worms, eels, insects, amphibians- they're all nowhere to be found in the water. On land placental mammals and the whole milk thing is completely nonexistant and the only trade off of abilities you ever need to make comes from not having enough points to have as many little body parts as you wanna tack on to your monstrosity.
It would have been nice if you had to choose to have your skeleton on the inside or outside at some point...
But the idea I have here will put some actual history behind the aliens instead of just swapping out anything you like back and forth as it suits your goal. The designs will be better because they will have to come from what came before instead of just being scrapped as soon as you don't like it and totally reworked into something else.
Anyway, this is starting ealier than spore does because there is no skeleton of any sort at this point. There aren't giant predators bigger than these things yet because this is the start of having muscle tissue. Everything on the planet will end up being there for a reason instead of just being randomly seeded creatures.
So instead of just clicking and dragging parts onto globs of meat sitting on a spine what sorts of ways would you try to make early early animals?
Edit: If I've got enough samples there's also going to be dice rolling and things to work out how the species survive or don't. If almost everything dies off then the things that are left get to try to fill in the gaps. I'll explain things as this goes along if people get into it enough for it to go anywhere. If it works out well maybe I'll even work out an official system and people can treat it like a game to play with some friends.
Thu, 09/24/2009 - 16:25
#3
Rotten to the core
Picture a cold rock kind of world, no molten core, no tetonic plates, no earthquake and no new mountains formed by volcanic acitivity.
The original rocky formations are worn away down to nothing over the centuries under the effects of wind and rain untill the world is mostly covered in shallow water.
Life begins by a combination of conflicting tides from two small moons, stellar radiation and lighting storm stirring up the mess of chemical leeched from rocks mixxing ti up in the primodial soup.
Plant life is king, plants which anchor them selves on floor of the world ocean and reach out for the sunlight on the surface dominate, but soon serve as habitates them selves as parisites anchor and grow directly into them plantlife duels it out, plant feeding on plants and creating a strata of plant life at the botten growing in the thick layer of rotting sludge underneath with more plant life intertwineing as they attempt to choke each other off forming a soggy by thick upper level.
Storms serve as forest fires on this world, with no mountains to divert them, tornados and hurracanes are commen and tear up the plantlife allowing fresh growth to replace ageing plantlife.
Animal life is base on trilateral rather then bilateral forms, eye, limbs and organ come in threes not two. Most life is worm like with a inner skeleton formed of hardened cartilage that anchors muscles which fuses together to form a series of pelvis like rings in the larger life forms.
The apex predator is a creature which had adapted two of it limbs for locomotion with clawed toes to tear into the upper level of plants for speed and webbed in between to support it in rest. It third limb is more like arm like and it held tucked up beneath while running except when it it thrust down to serve as a pole for the creatuer to swivel it two other limbs around to bring it rear stinger into play.
The hind end of the creature consists of a three sided hollow stinger which parts into three sections when it egects it's excrement out, but injecting this excrement into the sides of the large whale worms type creature which is it main sorce of food it attempts to create a infected wound which will weaken the skin of the whale worm enough to allow the creature to pierce the skin and feed on the softened wound.
The fore end of the creature consists of a three sided semi flexible jaw, at the joints of the three jaw are nostrils which open to it three lungs, the upper two serve mainly for breathing while the botten one has the strongest sence of smell.
The creature see with three evenly spaced long distance eyes which it brings into play by rearing up on it leg to see in all directions at once, close up heat sensitive pits on the side of it nostrils helps it detect thing in the dark and spot opprotunist predator lurking below the upper strata of the plant floor.
due to the physical seperation of it three brain lobes the creature communicates even in it own head by means of low level radio signals, this creates a group mind effect in packs of the creatures. It also interfears with thier ability to think during lightning storm, forceing the creatures to either flee oncomeing storms or dig into a thick clump of plantlife and hope for the best.
The creature are born with three eggs like organs, if one of these is consumed by another creature it passes on genetic information and quickens thier three organ to develop into younger versions of the creature which emerge from blister like patches on the creature skin, killing the parent creature in the process. Newborns are either forced into thier parents surviveing group mind or form a new one with other newborns.
While fairly intelligent the lack of resources and tendency to react hostily with other group mind packs means these creatures would never deveop any technology or even much in the way of culture, but if found by other spacefareing species a artificial signal could easily dominate thier group minds and direct them as willing slave labour, at least until another electrical event made them believe a storm was comeing and their instints overroad the signal.
Thu, 09/24/2009 - 17:44
#4
It seems like you've taken
It seems like you've taken that from some other source since it doesn't so much fit what I set up.
It's interesting but it's hard to view it as having been ground up like I'm proposing.
And I'm asking for smaller steps anyway. I'm starting this off on a very Earthlike environment to keep things simple but after going a ways into that places like a shallow ocean world could be done. Right now I'm only even asking for animals without bones: brainless and flat out instinctual behavior ("eat things that smell like food") is the limit for this step. Very simple starting point I thought.
Sat, 09/26/2009 - 10:59
#5
So this is definitely not the
So this is definitely not the kind of activity I should expect people here to participate in?
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Sounds like you need to play Spore. More strange and odd aliens then you can shake a stick at... And dildos. lots and lots.
Other things your creature needs:
Protective covering. (Skin, shell, toxic slime, mind projected bubble)
Energy intake. (Eating, photosynthesis, absorb and convert heat, devour/absorb souls)
Waste disposal. (Traditional techniques, lazer beams)
Procreation. (Merge with another, then split into 20 smaller beings)
If you want to eventually have compelling alien characters you will also need.
Offensive capabilities
Defensive capabilities
Intelligence