Environmental Mobs

[Tom Cantine]

(This is something I mentioned in a thread on tracking, but it occurs to me that it probably merits its own thread.)

There are various sorts of things happening all across the landscape that, if properly simulated, would be incredibly laggy. I'm thinking in particular about growth of new vegetation besides just grass (and horsetails on fallow farmland), but there are other processes we could think of.

So the basic idea here is to put existing mobs to work. Checking every tree, flower and berry bush to see if it drops a seedling or two would be pretty costly in computing resources, but if wandering mobs had a small chance to "plant" a seed/dropping object, the load wouldn't be much greater than the seeds a human player might deliberately place. This would also serve as an additional animal tracking clue: finding bear scat is a good sign you're in bear country.

But this concept could be expanded to cover a great many other natural processes. For example, imagine in a rainstorm, spawning in a few rain mobs. Players wouldn't directly interact with these, and probably shouldn't even perceive them as mobs at all, but their function would be to do the sorts of things that flowing water does in an environment. A rain mob falls from the sky, lands on a hillside, and begins travelling downhill. It could pick up (or create) objects as it moves, depositing new sticks or stones or driftwood where the conditions are appropriate. Eventually it finds its way to a depression with no drainage, and waits there until it either dies when the sun comes out (not immediately) or is joined by enough other rain mobs to form a permanent puddle. Or maybe it burrows down through soil until it hits a rock layer and keeps following the same behaviour until it hits a cave and forms or adds to a stalactite.

Strong winds could spawn wind mobs that generate sticks as they pass trees, and deposit them downwind.  Or they could pick up a pollen flag from a flower they pass, and if they happen upon the same kind of flower later on, they carry a flower seed and deposit that further downwind. (This'd be a little less random than I'd like, what with the wind only ever going west-to-east...) Or it could pick up sparks from a fire and... well, that'd be bad.  Or hey, how about if a wind mob picks up a SMELL tag from what it passes over, and when it passes a player, the player gets a message "you smell apple blossoms" or whatever...

I'm sure lots of other applications could be dreamed up.

 

[LadyWYT]

18 minutes ago, Tom Cantine said:

For example, imagine in a rainstorm, spawning in a few rain mobs

I read this, and thought you meant actual creature mobs, like rain frogs that only spawn when the weather is right, or something to that effect. Not an invisible entity that serves as a vehicle for spawning things.

Overall, it's an intriguing idea, I suppose, but I think it still runs into the processing hurdle--how much power is needed to actually process all that computing.

[Tom Cantine]

52 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Overall, it's an intriguing idea, I suppose, but I think it still runs into the processing hurdle--how much power is needed to actually process all that computing.

Well, it's not entirely FREE, in terms of processing, but it depends on how many of these mobs exist at any given time, and the main idea here is that you wouldn't have more than a handful of them. I figure that if there are already hares and bears and butterflies and raccoons wandering about, they can be put to work just adding a little occasional random act of planting to their behaviour. And spawning a couple of extra invisible mobs every so often wouldn't involve much more than spawning in any other animal. 

To be fair, I don't actually know how much processing is involved handling the various wildlife normally present. Maybe hares and wolves spend most of their time idle, just resting in the grass until a player activates them by coming into detection range. But the weather mobs I'm thinking of wouldn't involve much if any animation overhead, even when they are active. 

[LadyWYT]

15 minutes ago, Tom Cantine said:

To be fair, I don't actually know how much processing is involved handling the various wildlife normally present. Maybe hares and wolves spend most of their time idle, just resting in the grass until a player activates them by coming into detection range.

In Vintage Story, they don't remain idle, as far as I can tell; they do move around and go about their lives, though some mobs do get more active when a player is nearby. I think in the other block game, there's a certain radius that the mobs will stop moving and just sit in place(which is why dolphins end up drowning unless you shove into an aerated box). That's not really a problem either, unless you have a LOT of mobs nearby.

19 minutes ago, Tom Cantine said:

Well, it's not entirely FREE, in terms of processing, but it depends on how many of these mobs exist at any given time, and the main idea here is that you wouldn't have more than a handful of them. I figure that if there are already hares and bears and butterflies and raccoons wandering about, they can be put to work just adding a little occasional random act of planting to their behaviour. And spawning a couple of extra invisible mobs every so often wouldn't involve much more than spawning in any other animal. 

It could work, plus it would likely just be limited to chunks within a certain distance of the player. That way, only the areas that you're most active in(and thus, the areas most in need of "restocking") would be the areas affected. New chunks don't need this kind of simulation calculated, since they haven't yet been modified by the name. Old chunks that the player doesn't spend any significant time in don't really need that kind of simulation either.

Perhaps there could be a check to see how many times within the past X months/years the player has visited the chunk(provided the player breaks a block), and if the player has made enough visits then the chunk could "update" every once in a great while with a few new flowers or something. It's another case of, I'm not sure how much processing it would end up eating through, but if it's just a rare occurrence for strictly chunks the player is active in frequently, it might be feasible.

[Tom Cantine]

I wasn't even really thinking of unloaded chunks. This is something that would only happen live, while the player is within the area. I wouldn't expect you'd be able to return to a place you passed through years ago and find anything different. 

And bear in mind that the WHENEVER a player wanders through an area, there are going to be mobs doing their thing, so if the player's there long enough to make a significant difference to the terrain, then those mobs will also have been having their effects. So there will already be some seeds and saplings primed to update the next time the player comes through.

[Thorfinn]

17 hours ago, Tom Cantine said:

For example, imagine in a rainstorm, spawning in a few rain mobs. Players wouldn't directly interact with these, and probably shouldn't even perceive them as mobs at all,

This was the only way to accomplish many effects via modding (or whatever we called it back then) of Baldur's Gate and BG:TotSC.

10 hours ago, Tom Cantine said:

I wasn't even really thinking of unloaded chunks. This is something that would only happen live, while the player is within the area. I wouldn't expect you'd be able to return to a place you passed through years ago and find anything different. 

That would break the verisimilitude for me. What's so special about me that the only place the world changes is where I am?

[Tom Cantine]

35 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

This was the only way to accomplish many effects via modding (or whatever we called it back then) of Baldur's Gate and BG:TotSC.

That would break the verisimilitude for me. What's so special about me that the only place the world changes is where I am?

Would it? if you spent long enough in any chunk to really take note of where things were, then there might be the occasional new flower or sapling or even a whole tree next time you came through. But the suggestion isn't intended to make massive wholesale changes to the landscape. Just to add some life to the chunks where players have the most impact (such as where they remove currently non-renewables like berry bushes, flowers and rhizomes).

That said, it just occurred to me that fire would be another good candidate for an environmental mob like this, planting seeds of fireweed and other post-fire plants. (Some species of pine even rely on fire to crack open their cones so the seeds can grow.)

[Thorfinn]

2 hours ago, Tom Cantine said:

Would it?

As carefully as I strip wild crops, yes. I'm pretty sure I'd notice them regenned if I had spent any time in the area.

[EDIT]

I think it's probably a side-effect of playing without a map. You have to basically commit the area to memory.

Edited May 23, 2025 by Thorfinn