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TIGSource ForumsCommunityJams & EventsCompetitionsOld CompetitionsProcedural GenerationApple tree - feed the hungry birds [Toy / open ended. Windows exe uploaded]
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Author Topic: Apple tree - feed the hungry birds [Toy / open ended. Windows exe uploaded]  (Read 12945 times)
antont
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« on: June 02, 2008, 01:58:37 PM »

Hi,

was really happy to see this compo, and happened to work on a little toy thing on some evenings so got something together .. not a game, so am not participating really, but posting anyway in case someone finds this interesting. Didn't have much time, just a couple of hours in the evenings now and then, 'cause am working (making games Smiley and have family etc. But was fun enough, the little that could do, and this will probably continue to be a free time toy project .. so any feedback / ideas are welcome.

It features an apple tree, which is actually what you control: arrow-up adds branches, untill it's grown enough to produce fruits (still with arrow-up). You can also revert the growth by pressing arrow down. Arrows sideways rotate the tree.

When you grow some apples to the tree, hungry birds start to fly towards them. As the birds eat them, the effect on the bird depends on the type of the fruit - now there are just two: one that makes the head of the bird grow, and another which fertilizes the bird so that it heads down to the ground to give bird to a little baby bird Smiley After breeding the new mother goes to get food for the chick, which then grows if the parent succeeds in getting some food.

If you stop adding apples to the tree, the birds can not get food here anymore and fly away (and if there were poor chicks they just stay on the ground waiting for mom to feed them..)

The big heads don't have any functional effect yet - I had the idea that it would improve sight or memory or something, and that also wings and the tail could grow and affect other things, but haven't had time to implement any of that nor come up with game mechanics / scoring / goal / anything that would make this a game. I'm sure there are possibilities though, and am open to ideas Smiley

This is written in Python, using the Soya3d engine, and is just very simple lines & spheres & triangles all procedural graphics -- there are no gfx files, just the .py code and the engine is needed. Am on a mac now (and my son is sleeping in the room where my win laptop is) so can't make an exe, so am just putting the source on-line so if anyone bothers There is a windows executable now at http://www.kyperjokki.fi/an.org/tree_birds_01.zip

For other platforms / to be able to run own modifications of the code you can install Soya3d from http://home.gna.org/oomadness/en/soya3d/download_______/index.html .. a not-most-recent but enough to run this binary package for windows is available from http://thomas.paviot.free.fr/soya/ .. Linux distros like Debian have soya3d in the distro so you can just install it from there.

http://an.org/programming/appletree_birds.zip is a pack of the source, with these files:


It's all pretty nicely modular (OO), so would be easy to add several trees, different birds, different foods .. and earlier was thinking of perhaps making this competitive by adding other animals, like monkeys or worms or something. Of course making the birds shit after eating to distribute seeds might be interesting .. and to not overpopulate some means of death should be introduced. Or all that could be scrapped to make a game in another way, like shooting with the mouse, instead of continuing in the simulation vain .. dunno, but anyhow did not have time to do those now, sorry.

A screenshot where birds have eaten some fruit, one already had a child and is going to get food for it .. one is going down as it was fertilized to give birth, and one is easting happily by itself.



Have been toying with ideas around food and eating otherwise recently too, like wrote unit tests for the logics of mother and father when they have hungry children and limited food .. that's in http://an.org/programming/food.py and http://an.org/programming/human.py and more notes&links in http://www.playsign.net/FirstAndLast/FoodWorld

Thanks for the cool submissions, am certainly looking forward to getting to play some of those that are actual games (didn't have time for that either yet though but am not without hope..)

cheers,
~Toni (first post here..)
« Last Edit: June 02, 2008, 10:30:31 PM by antont » Logged
Gainsworthy
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« Reply #1 on: June 04, 2008, 04:48:03 AM »

No one's replied to this yet! Well, I am. Downloading this right now, I'll edit with my thoughts when I play it.

Off the bat, though, it's a cool idea. And I like that uber low-poly look you've got going! Like something out of the late eighties. Probably.

Also: Clean up that post! Links everywhere. Confusing.

EDIT: Uh, right. Not too much to say, exactly. Other than work on this further! With a forest of trees, some method to fruit growth, and some more animals, you could have a very snazzy life-sim on your hands! Predators, prey, even some evolution! I mean, currently, there isn't much, but, there could be.
« Last Edit: June 05, 2008, 03:10:22 AM by Gainsworthy » Logged
MekanikDestructiwKommando
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« Reply #2 on: June 04, 2008, 05:48:24 AM »

Just because he's a manbaby doesn't mean we can't play his game  Shocked
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« Reply #3 on: June 04, 2008, 06:25:27 AM »

the win exe link is not working for me,. is it broke or just currently down?
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antont
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« Reply #4 on: June 05, 2008, 02:11:39 PM »

The win exe download link, http://www.kyperjokki.fi/an.org/tree_birds_01.zip (the only link in this post! ;) seems to work now at least from here - dunno if my ISP has had probs at some point.

Thanks for the comments, and for the trouble of trying it .. not too rewarding as there's no game yet, but am glad to hear you also saw the potential.

Dunno yet where will go, was thinking how it would be easy to add shooting there .. and perhaps that'd be a way to prevent the birds from eating *all* the apples so quickly all the time. But I'm not sure I want it to be yet-another Duck Hunt :p .. still thinking more what could be done with the idea that you are the tree.

Was thinking that the birds could age and die when they get old, perhaps get some kind of generations thing going.

~Toni
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moi
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« Reply #5 on: June 10, 2008, 08:34:44 AM »

Interesting.
I would probably enjoy a whole game with this graphic style.
Only problem was the framerate but I supposed it's not easy to optimize a PG engine.
One of the birds looked like the enterprise at the end lol.
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antont
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« Reply #6 on: June 10, 2008, 09:01:24 AM »

hee, thanks for trying it out moi.

was recalling the other day that i forgot to mention about the framerate - it is totally not optimized, even more actually bastardized beyond any limit, as all the models are left in the 'construction mode', and not 'shapified' (the soya3d term) .. which down inside the engine comes down to it traversing python objects for each vertice every frame which is just mad of course :p

the reason is that everything there is still directly editable in the code, can move any vertex or add geometry to the objects without any extra hoops at any time .. in a finished version would 'shapify' the geometry always after changes, so it'd run normally just internally in the engine (and would animate using bones etc..) so that fps and polycount would be what you'd expect from your gpu .. but didn't look into it yet, how to get back to editing after the optimization.

also the idea is of course not that the birds will multiply indefinitely in the end..

for the gameplay, the current top idea is that i'd add, err, shitting for the birds .. so that after they have eaten they would 'spawn' you-know-what, and that would contribute something the tree needs, nutrition like minerals etc. in real life. would kinda explain / motivate why you make fruit, and perhaps give good means to make it a game..? dunno yet.

~Toni
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« Reply #7 on: June 10, 2008, 09:21:10 AM »


for the gameplay, the current top idea is that i'd add, err, shitting for the birds .. so that after they have eaten they would 'spawn' you-know-what, and that would contribute something the tree needs, nutrition like minerals etc. in real life. would kinda explain / motivate why you make fruit, and perhaps give good means to make it a game..? dunno yet.

~Toni
Would need caterpillar and earthworms for a complete circle Wink
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« Reply #8 on: June 19, 2008, 05:35:29 PM »

Spiffy!  I am not sure about the game mechanics (I understood that I could add to the tree or remove from it, as well as rotate it), but it was still pretty cool to watch it all happen.  I really liked being able to rotate the tree after I had made the tree relatively complex.  The "birds" were interesting too.  Very surreal in general.
Cheers,
--Zack
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antont
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« Reply #9 on: June 21, 2008, 12:15:08 AM »

Thanks for trying it out zradick - yah so far those are the only things you can do so there is no game really, but am glad to hear it was an interesting experience anyway Smiley

Was googling for apple trees and hungry birds for fun and came across this quote from a book, 'Under the Apple Trees' by John Burroughs, which seems quite fitting with the idea that in this game you'd be / play the tree..

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If the plants and vines and trees had minds and could answer our question as to what is passing in them, they would say: "We are thinking how best to perpetuate our species  – how to attract the insects to visit the flowers, and thus secure a hardier race by cross-fertilization; how to tempt the birds and four-footed creatures to come and sow our seeds; how to protect these seeds and nuts till they are ripe and ready to pass along the precious heritage of life;

from http://www.kellscraft.com/Burroughs,John/UnderTheAppleTrees/UnderTheAppleTrees03.html
.. i wonder if there should be some sort of enemies for the tree, or what, hmhm.

~Toni
« Last Edit: June 21, 2008, 12:17:32 AM by antont » Logged
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