Animals

[west]

There are also jungle elephants.

[Doug R.]

Cantr Elephants can live in jungles.

[Cherize]

It's Cantr, they can live anywhere.

[Doug R.]

I thought I would post here my tentitive plan of action.

Chris has informed me that there will be an animal cull in several weeks. My primary concern during these coming weeks will be to study the database and advise Chris as to the best way to cull so that areas of low animal density are in no way effected.

Also during this time, I will be tweaking all animals so that they have natural growth rates that allow for adequate repopulation after hunting but are not excessive. Players should be able to deplete areas and then see them repopulate if conservation is applied.

Hand in hand with this will be a study of animal migration rates, which I currently think are universally much too high. Even a migration rate of 1% (the lowest it can be without being 0) forces many animals onto the roads. The more animals that are on the roads, the longer it will take for the effects of conservation to be noticeable, as new animals will be appearing on roads and not in locations.

Once the cull has been performed, I will then monitor local populations in certain problem areas to make sure that things are running smoothly.

Once this is done, I will put forth a proposal to programming to alter the current system to make it more self-sustaining. The proposal will contain the following:

-Overpopulation is now calculated based on the sum of all animals in a location and applied to all animals in a location. I will propose that overcrowding be changed to the sum of each animal type in a location and applied specificly to each animal type that is overcrowded. I will also consider a possible change in the way overcrowding is calculated (currently based on reproduction rate, but I'm not convinced this is the best way.).

-Overpopulation now ages all animals by one hour and makes it 2x more likely for them to migrate. I will propose to harshen these measures.

-Underpopulation. Currently no underpopulation check exists. I will propose one.

This will be done in a manner that will attempt to minimize the amount of work programming needs to do and also attempt to minimize additional stress on the server.

Once that is completed, I hope to begin the introduction of new animal species into the game in order to diversify the various islands. Such an introduction would necessarily be very gradual. Look for a massive expansion in bird species and also much more variety in the mountains, among others. There is a possibility that with new introductions, old animals may be phased out of some areas. By broadening the number of animal species, and then keeping them confined to certain islands, it will make monitoring and controlling their populations much easier than animals that exist on nearly every island in the game. Lemurs on the Polish D and V isle are my first experiment with this concept of regional restriction.

If your island is currently suffering from a lack of animal variety, anticipation of this is one reason why I haven't done anything about it yet.

Introduction of new species will also be accompanied by the boosting of existent species if necessary. I've already begun this in a limited number of areas.

Implementation of under-population triggers, tightening of over-population triggers, proper balancing of natural birth/death, treating species herds individually, and diversifying and boosting animal numbers should pretty much "fix" the system, although it will always need to be monitored.

All this, of course, is dependent on the server running properly, having personal time to devote to it, the approval of my departmental supervisors and the cooperation of multiple departments. These are my aspirations and not my promises, so don't take them as such

[Frits]

Good piece of writing Doug. I can't think (of the top of my head) of any arguments raised that you didn't address.
Balancing birth and death, including ageing will prove very hard i think. Related to this, are we going to witness predators trying to kill rodents and herbivores in future?
When overpopulated animals age by 1 hour?! Is that as little as it sounds?

[Doug R.]

Intra-animal predation will never see the light of day, since the system as it is is too hard to control. The only reasoning behind it was to help control over-crowded conditions, but it turned a blind eye to the fact that it would also exacerbate under-crowded conditions. In light of new proposed population controls, implementing this would be pointless and most likely damaging to the game.

And yes, it is as little as it sounds.

[Chris Johnson]

And as big as it sounds - Aging 1 Cantr hour 4 times a day over and above the normal means they age a day and a half in one day . This is a significant aging effect.

Animals in overcrowded areas which never move therefore have lifespans 2/3rds as long as animals of the same type in uncrowded areas.

[Doug R.]

Good point.

[Sicofonte]

System is not hard to control, but impossible, because it is bad designed.

System should be able to work alone without OOC supervision.

[Doug R.]

System is not hard to control, but impossible, because it is bad designed.

System should be able to work alone without OOC supervision.

Even real world ecosystems can't work without human intervention, because of human presence. If nature can't adapt completely to us, I would never expect an artificial system to. To expect something as complicated as free-roaming individual animals to ever operate without OOC supervision is an impossibility. All we can do is minimize the amount of supervision required.

[Sicofonte]

Even real world ecosystems can't work without human intervention, because of human presence.

Human intervention in Cantr means "Cantrian intervention", i.e., characters intervention.
OOC intervention in Cantr means Divine intervention in RL.

And the problem here is that even where there is no human intervention (still undiscovered and uninhabited islands of Cantr), OOC intervention must occour in order to avoid unrealistic and inconvenient events, as can be the hawks or scarabs becoming the only animals in a place (for example, the hawks should die if they can hunt pigeons, rabbits, lemmings and other small preys, but you can find 200 hawks happy and flying around alone in a place).

If nature can't adapt completely to us, I would never expect an artificial system to. To expect something as complicated as free-roaming individual animals to ever operate without OOC supervision is an impossibility. All we can do is minimize the amount of supervision required.

A proper artificial system is completly known by who designed it, and thus it is controlled by them.
What you said can be valid in environments not completly artificial (for example, simulating sea currents behaviour and its effects on the ship's hulls using scale models, where you have not designed the behaviour of the water that simulates the real currents and thus you have no control over nor complete knowledge about that simulated curruents).
But it is less true when talking about computational systems, where you can control (almost) every parameter, every rule, and just everything (but bugs still happens; or you can run into a really complex and not well designed system, but that is what we should avoid).

So I do think that the system have to be redesigned (more) thoroughly.

Again, system should be able to work alone without OOC supervision.

[The Sociologist]

Shut up Sociologist, you don't know shit. 1) It was said that the animal code DOES NOT cause the lag and is most likely the most optimized code in Cantr.

Wrong. I know plenty of shit. And I repeat: the animal code is wrong in concept for a game like Cantr. It has never worked, never will work, and is destroying the game. We need to vote urgently to request of ProgD staff that they restore the old system and quit wasting our time and their time.

Then I might--just maybe--return to actively playing the game again.

[mtm21]

Shut up Sociologist, you don't know shit. 1) It was said that the animal code DOES NOT cause the lag and is most likely the most optimized code in Cantr.

Wrong. I know plenty of shit. And I repeat: the animal code is wrong in concept for a game like Cantr. It has never worked, never will work, and is destroying the game. We need to vote urgently to request of ProgD staff that they restore the old system and quit wasting our time and their time.

Then I might--just maybe--return to actively playing the game again.

Yeah, please just fix the animals and we will be right. Socialist is not the only one I have heard this from. I've heard it from a few Rd's and normal players in IRC personally. Reverse the process of the animals and I really believe the lag will be gone. I think it is better to have non-packed animals than ACTIVE and GREAT RPers (like socialist) leaving the game because of a small problem that couldn't of been fixed ages ago. I might even join Socialist in the protest in holding my charries off until the lag is finished with too.

[SekoETC]

I remember reading several times that animals code is the most optimized thing there is. Well, if Jur says it's not then I guess it ain't.

[sanchez]

As Sicofonte put it, no matter how efficient your methods are you are still counting sand by the grain.