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[Vakey Rujevic]

I don't think you can post videos here but the following video shows off our little millipede organism sneaking up and eating some jelly fish:

https://twitter.com/VakeyRujevic/status/980168444153860096

The millipede organism uses it’s antennae to cast a net in front of it and anything inside it will get consumed. But eating jelly fish can be dangerous for they have a strong sting, which is why the millipede organism is so sneaky. Had a lot fun making this organism!

[Zireael]

Art style is cool and I absolutely love the dragon-thingies that connect together <3

[Fuzzy Branch]

Cool project! It might be cool to see a change in jellyfish behavior when they spot the millipede. From the video alone, it's harder to see why the millipede needs to rely on stealth when it's bigger AND faster than the jellyfish, and can kill them at range. Minor point though. Enjoying seeing all your different creature designs!

[sidbarnhoorn]

Nice!!!

[Vakey Rujevic]

Thanks everyone!

Cool project! It might be cool to see a change in jellyfish behavior when they spot the millipede. From the video alone, it's harder to see why the millipede needs to rely on stealth when it's bigger AND faster than the jellyfish, and can kill them at range. Minor point though. Enjoying seeing all your different creature designs!

Thanks man! And I am totally with you with giving the jelly fish defensive behavior when they detect the millipede. My thought is for them to shoot out an electric shock wave when they spot a predator, which would not only hurt anyone near by but also paralyze them temporarily.

[JobLeonard]

I think there are predatory millipedes. Or are those centipedes?

[Vakey Rujevic]

I think there are predatory millipedes. Or are those centipedes?

No, you are right. According to the article below, there are a some species of millipedes that do hunt for food. But generally, millipedes are scavengers, eating mainly decaying plants. I always thought that all millipedes were herbivores.

https://a-z-animals.com/animals/millipede/

[Vakey Rujevic]

Cool project! It might be cool to see a change in jellyfish behavior when they spot the millipede. From the video alone, it's harder to see why the millipede needs to rely on stealth when it's bigger AND faster than the jellyfish, and can kill them at range. Minor point though. Enjoying seeing all your different creature designs!

Thanks man! And I am totally with you with giving the jelly fish defensive behavior when they detect the millipede. My thought is for them to shoot out an electric shock wave when they spot a predator, which would not only hurt anyone near by but also paralyze them temporarily.

So here is how the jelly fish defends itself:

[CodeLobe]

Great stuff!

I think the millipede "net cast" needs a bit more visual flair to really show off what's going on.

Love me some ecosystem games, your's is... uh, quainterrifying! 

[Fuzzy Branch]

It's definitely powerful enough!

From an animation/FX angle, I think it could use some anticipation and cooldown phases to give it that extra bit of character. Doesn't have to be long, but if you add some kind of charging up FX before the main release of energy, and a little residual energy crackling afterwards it could look really cool. Disregard if you're still working on it though

[Vakey Rujevic]

Great stuff!

I think the millipede "net cast" needs a bit more visual flair to really show off what's going on.

Love me some ecosystem games, your's is... uh, quainterrifying! 

Thanks! Good point on the net cast needing to be more visible. Updated:

[Vakey Rujevic]

It's definitely powerful enough!

From an animation/FX angle, I think it could use some anticipation and cooldown phases to give it that extra bit of character. Doesn't have to be long, but if you add some kind of charging up FX before the main release of energy, and a little residual energy crackling afterwards it could look really cool. Disregard if you're still working on it though

Yeah, I think the electric shock might be too powerful for such a little jelly fish. But love the feedback here on introducing animation effects to give the jelly fish some character. Adding charging up effects can also act as a warning for anyone that is too close. Going to make a note of this, but don't want to go too deep in implementing all the details right now.

[JobLeonard]

You could make an individual jellyfish weak, but have them work together are close enough together to produce one powerful shock (as if they "link up" to pool their electricity to produce one big shock). That way you could encourage players to catch the strays, just like in real life.

[Vakey Rujevic]

You could make an individual jellyfish weak, but have them work together are close enough together to produce one powerful shock (as if they "link up" to pool their electricity to produce one big shock). That way you could encourage players to catch the strays, just like in real life.

That's a great point! If I understand you correctly, that would lead to some fun gameplay where the player would need to avoid grouped jelly fish and try to hunt down the strays. I am taking notes.

[JobLeonard]

Yep, give them a strength-in-numbers kind of advantage. Makes them feel more like schooling animals too

[Vakey Rujevic]

Currently working on how this organism hunts and eats. The idea behind it is that this organism can not eat on its own but needs to connect with another organism of the same species to eat.

[JobLeonard]

That seems... impractical. But cool! How does it eat then?

[Vakey Rujevic]

That seems... impractical. But cool! How does it eat then?

By trapping the organism in between it. The organism is a hunter (like a shark), but it hunts in pairs. When their connected, they chase after a smaller organism and trap it in between their bodies (the red line). Once trapped, it extracts the organisms energy and then poops out the dead body. I have had thoughts of allowing the organism to hunt and eat on it's own, where she just wraps her body (on the red line side) around a prey to consume it. However, connecting with a partner makes them bigger, stronger, and faster allowing them to catch bigger pray. Not sure how well that will work out but my main goal here is to experiment with chasing mechanics.

[JobLeonard]

That sounds very cool. Requires good AI for hunting prey in pairs though! How tricky is that to establish?

[Vakey Rujevic]

I have not delved into AI much so I could be completely off here. But I imagine it should not be too tricky. The AI is state machine based. The basic states of any predator organism would be the following:
- Idle
- Hunting
- Consuming

For this organism, I would add two more states to it: connecting and disconnecting. Then it's just matter of establishing the rules for when the organism should connect, hunt, be in the idle mode etc.  So I can see two of the rules of the state machine to be something like this:
- if (hungry and preyIsNear and partnerIsNear) SetState(Connecting)
- if (hungry and preyIsNear and partnerIsNear && connected) SetState(Hunting)

One thing to note is that this game will be story driven. So how in depth the AI is for an organism depends on what role it will play in the story.