Suggestion: Have Biomes Naturally Expand? :: Equilinox General Discussions

Store Page

Equilinox

All Discussions Screenshots Artwork Broadcasts Videos News Guides Reviews

Equilinox > General Discussions > Topic Details

Dingbat

Dec 26, 2018 @ 2:49pm

Suggestion: Have Biomes Naturally Expand?

I'm a little disappointed that plotting down some grass, trees and a bit of fauna, that they roughly conform to the same location you plot them down in. I think this control is important, but I feel that the game should have a balance between you playing God and the environment deciding how it spreads around or how if at all the animals should migrate. This is something that a game like Sim Safari did and did well a couple of decades ago. I was almost expecting that kind of mechanic when I got this game.

I think that adds to the balancing act even, plus it makes for more interesting observations.

What do you think?

Last edited by Dingbat; Dec 26, 2018 @ 2:53pm

A developer of this app has marked a post as the answer to the topic above.
Click here to jump to that post.

Originally posted by ThinMatrix:

I think the main reasons that this isn't the case is that Equilinox was designed to be more of a game than a simulation.

One of the main concepts of the game is to give the player control over nature. I want the player to be able to decide what lives where, to be able to design every biome. If the nature starts spreading on its own it takes this control away from the player. Suddenly biomes will be merging together, plants will be spreading into areas that you don't want them, animals moving to areas where you didn't place them. You'd constantly be using the delete tool and moving things back to where you wanted them. Think of a city-builder game where the city just keeps changing the road layout and expanding on its own. It might be a cool simulation to watch, but it's not how the game is designed to be.

Secondly, it's also meant to be the player's job to spread nature, carefully balance the ecosystems and decide what works best in different areas. The player has to make sure that each plant and animal has sufficient resources to survive and is satisfied with its environment. If animals start migrating to areas they prefer (which is also something people often suggest) and plants start spreading everywhere on their own then the game starts doing the player's job for them.

There are also lots of balancing issues that mean this wouldn't currently work (at least with the current way Equilinox works). Firstly, the DP system - animals each provide you with DP. When you buy and place one sheep in Equilinox you end up with a small family of sheep, about 4-6 of them. If you want to increase your DP income you need to spend more DP first. However, if the animals kept spreading you would end up with more and more sheep and more and more DP income without spending any more.

Also, the way environmental preferences work would cause some issues. There would be nothing to stop disliked species spreading into your biome and killing off the animals/plants that dislike them. You'd have to constantly be using the delete tool or make sure that you never place any of the disliked species anywhere nearby which would be very limiting.

It's actually very easy for me to allow plants/animals to spread infinitely, but when I do the result is really not very exciting. Starting with a world with some nicely designed biomes, if I turn on infinite spreading after about 5 minutes the world is ruined. All the biomes merge together, grass and other small plants fill up the entire world, and almost all the trees and animals die out because their environments are no longer nicely balanced.

Equilinox was simply not designed for this sort of functionality. I'm not saying it would be a bad game and it could be part of a cool simulation, but it's just a very different game from what Equilinox is meant to be. It really would have to be redesigned from the ground up for this change to make sense.

Karl

< >

Showing 46-60 of 95 comments

DreamsDefined has Equilinox

Feb 8, 2019 @ 9:12pm

#46

Aeonir Feb 13, 2019 @ 1:56pm

good thing i read this before buying, if it gets added i'll buy

#47

Zander117

Feb 13, 2019 @ 3:16pm

Originally posted by Aeonir:
good thing i read this before buying, if it gets added i'll buy

thats pretty stupid thats not the what the point of this game is, stick to skyrim then lol

Last edited by Zander117; Feb 13, 2019 @ 3:18pm

#48

Dingbat

Feb 13, 2019 @ 4:52pm

Originally posted by Zander117:
Originally posted by Aeonir:
good thing i read this before buying, if it gets added i'll buy
thats pretty stupid thats not the what the point of this game is, stick to skyrim then lol

It's a more than fair reason. I regretted the purchase a bit myself.

#49

Zander117

Feb 13, 2019 @ 10:15pm

Originally posted by Dingbat:
Originally posted by Zander117:
thats pretty stupid thats not the what the point of this game is, stick to skyrim then lol

It's a more than fair reason. I regretted the purchase a bit myself.

If you didn't refund it under steams refund policy that's your own fault.

#50

Aeonir Feb 14, 2019 @ 2:35am

Originally posted by Zander117:
Originally posted by Aeonir:
good thing i read this before buying, if it gets added i'll buy
thats pretty stupid thats not the what the point of this game is, stick to skyrim then lol

why is it stupid? i was interested in a game, looked in the comments to find out what people though about it, found out a feature that i thought was in the game wasn't, wrote it down giving the dev a chance to notice, and subscribed to the discussion to see if anyone responds that the feature will be added, and now i'm postponing my purchase untill this feature arrives.

also have you looked at my games beyond skyrim? i have a bunch of indiegames/simulators/strategy/etc i have a load of games and not all of them feature combat and realistic graphics...

#51

Dingbat

Feb 14, 2019 @ 8:18am

Originally posted by Zander117:
Originally posted by Dingbat:

It's a more than fair reason. I regretted the purchase a bit myself.
If you didn't refund it under steams refund policy that's your own fault.

Sorry you choose to villainize me because I don't abuse the refund system. Even if I wanted to I played more than 2 hours of it.

#52

Vicinian

Feb 15, 2019 @ 11:43pm

#53

SmokinC

Feb 18, 2019 @ 7:38am

Same here... I played about 3 hours but this is to static for me so i stopted playing. Its gets boring very fast.If the would be Naturally Expand I would go on playing to explore all bioms, animals and plants.

I read throu some therads with good suggestions.

- if animals are really really happy, let them spread more or let them start expanding

- give us terretory fights between animals :D:D

-terraforming would be important to stop vegetation and animals from expanding all over the map
in this case there are maybe some good ideas to seperate.
I think about mountains, rivers, sweet and salty water. Maybe there is some more.

-change demolish tool into a meteor I can throw :D:D

Stuff like this would satisfy^^

#54

Klugman

Feb 18, 2019 @ 9:19am

It would be nice to know where the Devs stand on all this.

#55

Torven

Feb 18, 2019 @ 10:26am

I'd love to have naturally expanding biomes, but if they want to keep the biome completely curated by the player, then it would be nice to have some kind of overlay, so we could see the territorial extent of the flora and fauna. Maybe have a paint tool to set the limits of the biota, rather than just having it extend in a radius from a single, placed object. That would allow more control over the biomes, while keeping an increased cost for greater coverage.

#56

MAL Feb 18, 2019 @ 1:27pm

I too agree that this feature would be great. Allowing biomes to spread naturally until they reach an undesired elevation or a competing biome. Animals should run around the map more freely while sticking to their desired biomes. If anything add a river type of tool that players could use to help define each biome (prevent biomes from jumping over water).

#57

RMJ

Feb 21, 2019 @ 2:44pm

Agreed. There need to be another more dynamic mode. Where biomes are also less finicky. Because of requires of certain species was this finicky in real life, then all plant and animal life would have gone extinct long time ago.

#58