A game about growing plants (beta 6 released!)

[Taehl]

I've finished five genes. Here's a test of making plant parts change as they age:

[TechnoCat]

Now get all the trees' leaves to rustle in the wind in waves.

[Taehl]

Don't worry, I already have wind in mind. I'm not going to make it until after all game mechanics are firmly in place.

[Taehl]

Let's look at two genes. Please tell me what you think of them.




The top two plants have a very high "variance" gene. As such, they're freakish, twisted, irregular, and their branches grew in random spurts. The bottom two have identical genes to the first two, except they have a very low variance, which makes them unnaturally regular, fractal-like, with all equal-sized leaves, and each branch grew evenly, at a steady rate. Of course, normal plants will have a more average variance, causing them to look natural. The plants above would have to be specially bred to bring out those mutations.

The two on the left have a moderately low "bush" gene, causing them to be longer and more like vines or bamboo. The two in the right have a fairly high bush gene, which causes them to be generally smaller but more dense, with more branching. Neither of these pairs had unnaturally strong or weak bush genes, meaning that it would be possible to make them more or less bushy - at minimum bushiness you end up with no branches at all, and maximum bushiness makes for a leafy poofball.

[ZenX2]

You sir...


are epic.

[Taehl]

I've finished nine of the genes, including all of the hard-to-make ones. Here's a random forest of fairly "normal" plants (that is, their genes tend towards average, and don't have any extreme mutations):


On the other hand, this set was allowed to have wildly varied genes, capable of going up to extremes:

[Robin]

I like the very green one in the second image. Wouldn't it be fit for a normal plant? It looks much better than the ones that are supposed to be normal.

[Taehl]

What, exactly, do you like about it? (I mean that literally: Is it better because it's green, or because it has larger leaves, or something about its shape...?)

[TechnoCat]

What all traits are available in that forest?

[Taehl]

Those last two forests are made of random values for the following nine genes:

Bushiness - The difference between a dense plant (bush) and a sparse plant (vine).
Growth Speed - The difference between quick growing (kudzu) and slow growing (trees).
Leaf Amount - The difference between a leafy plant (bush) and a non leafy plant (cactus).
Leaf Size - The difference between huge leaves (palm tree) and small leaves (dill).
Plant Size - The difference between a massive plant (great redwood) and a tiny plant (thisle).
Variance - The difference between a wild and crazy plant (vines) and a straight and simple plant (bamboo).
Color - A gene troika: The hue, saturation, and lightess of the leaves and stems.

These genes are going to be developed next:

Amount of flowers
Flower hue
Flower lightness
Chance flowers will turn into fruit
Fruit hue


I want to remark on how I've got it so that while different genes produce nicely varied plants...


... That if plants are given the exact same genes, they won't all look /perfectly/ similar, but easily appear to be the same species:


Like in real life, my genes aren't strict blueprints so much as descriptions that are open to interpretation.