How do monsters spawn in this game?

[Doctopus]

I'm curious about this game, but I'm a bit on the fence about getting it. One thing I've grown to deeply dislike is how monsters spawn in these games. I wanted to know what is the case like in this game?

Do they just randomly always spawn out of your visual range or do they have an actual source/spawner from which they come from?

I hate it when you're faced with exterminating the 7.578.987th monster and knowing that you can never stop them. This is why Terraria, Starbound, Minecraft have lost respect from me as a player.

I'd rather prefer if there was a physical source in the world from where the monsters come from, that you as a player could affect, so that your actions really do have a consequence and that you can, in effect, truly conquer areas without having to build a base that is the size of the planet itself.

How does this game work? If its the former, I'm simply not going to get this game.

[Signs of Life]

It's similar to other games, but we've talked about doing what you describe as far as monster nests. On a practical level, it would be too difficult to have the monsters actually spawn at the spawners and spread out from there because we only keep the chunks around the player active, but it would definitely be possible to have nests that, once destroyed, reduce or completely prevent spawning of that creature.

[Doctopus]

That would be great!

I don't mind if its abstract to some degree, as to have monsters randomly spawn off screen *as long as there is a spawner in that particular area responsible for it that I can go and hunt down*. As long as the player can actually effect the area in a permanent way, then such solutions are great.

The system could even be used to introduce non-native monsters to certain environments by allowing the possibility to plant a spawner as the player. Useful for breeding livestock or creating zoo environments.

Just make the spawners small and numerous, so they're like breakable pots in terraria. It will get past the limitation of needing to consider monster spawns from distant chunks and keep it more local for each sector.

Thank you for the rapid response : )

[Signs of Life]

Originally posted by Doctopus:

That would be great!

I don't mind if its abstract to some degree, as to have monsters randomly spawn off screen *as long as there is a spawner in that particular area responsible for it that I can go and hunt down*. As long as the player can actually effect the area in a permanent way, then such solutions are great.

The system could even be used to introduce non-native monsters to certain environments by allowing the possibility to plant a spawner as the player. Useful for breeding livestock or creating zoo environments.

Just make the spawners small and numerous, so they're like breakable pots in terraria. It will get past the limitation of needing to consider monster spawns from distant chunks and keep it more local for each sector.

Thank you for the rapid response : )

Yeah, I agree with you pretty much entirely.

[GreenMan]

This gives me an idea. If there are monster 'nests'....

As part of the story, you could have a 'pitch black' type event. When the nests start to multiply after a certain # of day cycles. Which would flood the surface with monsters normally found at lower levels. At which point the character would either have to fort up, or go hunting for said nests.

Ofc, if that was ever done you might want to also script the nests to reduce in # after a certain period, emulating a natural boom/bust cycle, as the monsters exhaust the food supply. I still think this would be the best way to explain what happened to the people at the base.

[stylez]

Crea implements this monster nest idea pretty well. The cool thing about it is, when you attack the nest all the monsters of that type (within range) are alerted, and come to attack you. Also when the nest gets below a certain % HP, it starts spawning monsters at an increased rate to defend itself.