Trees, Plants, and Vegetation Wildlife

[Aztec_Brave]

ditto for the huge tree idea.

Since we have a lot of different races some of them pretty peculiar you half to ask questions like what does a rock based life form eat. It can\'t be just rock because there\'s no energy in it.

Actually, you\'re not entirely correct. Our body is mainly carbon (actually it\'s mainly water, but we don\'t get a lot of our water from food), which is why we eat the stuff we eat. If you\'ve been paying attention in chemistry/biology then you\'ll know that all food is basicly carbon arranged in a different way. The Kran however are silicon based (check the race bit on the main site). Silicon is found in rocks. Guess what. Rocks are good to eat if you happen to be a rock yourself. Same way that we eat animals.

[Fish]

OK for the sake of argument well say that rock bass life form doesn\'t just exist because of magic.  That is, if magic went away entirely they could still exist.

There\'s more to eating than building body mass.  There\'s the whole energy problem.

We eat carbon-based food that is based on plant life.  It uses photosynthesis to change carbon dioxide into plant material.  There is surprisingly little mineral content in a plant.  When we eat the plant or animal that has eaten a plant we take the carbon and turn it back into carbon dioxide.  This takes the material from a high-energy state into a low energy state.  There\'s a surprising amount of energy stored in plant material.  All you have to do is dry it out and burn it to find out how much.

Suppose a rock bass plant takes energy, say geothermal, and turns it into a material with a higher energy state.  It would look just like rock but it really isn\'t.  Then a rock-based animal eating the rock based plant converts it back to lower energy state in its metabolism.  I still don\'t believe that just any old rock especially old rocks have hardly any energy at all that can be reduced to produce work.

Having just one rock based player character and no other rock based life makes no sense.  You have something that complex appear out of nowhere isn\'t very plausible.  Their most certainly would have to be in entire rock-based ecosystem probably an elaborate one.  It would also be reasonable for the rock-based ecosystem to feed off plant based material for energy or just go the geothermal idea.  

Anyway, it works if there is in a fair amount of energy input.  Or a player character that\'s rock-based would only be active once a year or so.  The rest of the time would have to be spent sleeping digesting low energy rock.

Coincidentally it\'s also quite fun to make up a ecosystems like that.  Interesting brainstorming anyway.

That\'s my argument.

[Jalix Amundus]

All the plants and things could visibly regrow at phenomenal rates due to the lights from the crystal. You know, like that\'s just how things work...it\'s all the light....see...ok....I\'m just gonna shut up now...

[Fish]

Rock based ecosystem.

I thought I?d give it a start.  Readers may not agree with any part of this however if they write down why they don?t agree with it that?s the point of this.  Just to get it started.

I thought I?d base my version of a rock based ecosystem of the life form called in extremophile.  It?s a life form that list deep in the Earth.  Under pressures and temperatures that are extreme.  Thus the name.  They don\'t live on photosynthesis of any type.  Instead they synthesize energy that can be found in the rock.  Or as many single cell life forms will split within a couple of days extremophiles can slow it down to once in 100,000 years.  When conditions are right they can split as rapidly as anything else.  They?re a neat life form to study, there is reason to believe that the Earth?s life started with these life forms.  There are quite a few web sites on these life forms if you want to read further.

So the idea is that extremophiles are the basic building block of rock based life.  They harvest the energy.  However it is way to diffuse.  So there?s an intermediate fungus style life form that harvest the extremophiles to build itself.  It?s basically in the form of a root system.  The roots go very deep into the planet to seek out its food.  When it comes time for them to flower they produce a rock in an open space that other rock based life forms can eat.  When the fruit is ready to eat it emits heat which is the reason why all rock based animal?s can see in the infrared spectrum. It is exceedingly high-energy food.  The rock based animal moves around replanting spores after eating the fruit.  This would also mean that all rock based life forms would have the ability to shut down for extended periods of time if need be.  That probably look like any other fieldstone until they got up and walked around.

This doesn?t mean rock based life forms only eat rock based fungus.  There could also be a rock based trap that eats things that trip into it.  Another rock based carnivore will spring out at you from a wall.  But the most evil one of all merely shoots a small thin spike into a carbon based animal that is really its young that slowly devours you over a long period of time.  And cure disease doesn?t fix it.  After all it?s only a rock.

That is the start of the idea.  It has a lot more to go.

[Aztec_Brave]

Well, I was highly sceptical when I read about the rock ecosystem. I\'m still not entirely sure. Howerver after a bit of thought I\'ve realized it could fill a very big hole.

MINING!!!

In most games you have mines. Or ore bearing rock or something. In real life this would be mind and then the people would dig deeper/push off somewhere else. This could be quite frustrating in game (although it could also add depth to it), with new mines constantly having to be found.

This could all be sorted out by regrowing mines. Trees regrow, plants regrow. Why should miners be denied the advantages of lumberjacks and farmers. Regrowing mines make a miners life stable, as he doesn\'t constantly have to find new mines, but he still can\'t mine like crazy, because everything dies when you harvest it obsessivly (coughAmazoncough). It also gives a realistic explanation of the bottomless mines (well, realistic if you bend the rules a little.

[hook]

well, we started with trees and other vegetation ...now we\'re in mines? ...i think since we have live rocks walking along (kran!) we could also have rock and crystal plants, that\'d grow slower, but could live in the darkness (the crystal ones even produce light themselves) ...that would look great!!!

back to the large tree: i REALLY want to see it, so please someone say volunteer for it, or i\'ll do it ...it\'ll take me probably a year or so, since i\'m new to blender, but it\'d be made eventually ...or at least someone make a sketch/plan of it ...i\'m even worse at 2d art

[Fish]

You could always base it on a redwood tree.  They are truly massive tree.

http://search.gallery.yahoo.com/search/corbis?p=redwood

If you\'re looking for different kind of tree you can search through this.

http://www.wdt.qc.ca/FORMAT/Search.html

I think the best way to do this would be to get a camera find a tree and can\'t take a picture at every angle you can get.  Rather than get a 2-D artists impression of tree base it on a real one.  There\'s plenty of them around.

The best time to take pictures of trees is probably winter.  Branch structure is really what you need.

[hook]

well the problem is that it wouldn\'t look like a normal tree ...large as a castle ...shaped as a hill, maybe a bit like a castle ...with braches reaching the ground, that would be the walls of this tree-castle ...branches thick with colourful leaves, so there would be ornaments with golden, silver and crystal leaves of different colours all over the place, sometimes forming pictures of a peaceful union between all the races, sometimes only older pictures from the past concerning the history of separate races ...maybe even different floors in it ...imagine having this tree in the middle of a great forest, but still to be seen from the near-bye mountain

the rooms with the race-history \"frescos\" would be meant as guest-rooms for people of those races, the \"peaceful union\" room(s) would be meant for meetings. of course you could walk freely all over the place, even sleep in any of the guest-rooms you like the most, it\'s just that ever race would probably like sleeping in the room that\'s the closest to them and their ways ...so every of those guest-rooms would have a few race-specific features, to make it more at home for the race sleeping/living in it (ex. stone floor and furniture in the dwarvern rooms)

...this would be a very big project to undertake ...so i\'d be glad of any help i can get ...because this\'ll take me years to complete!!! ...even with help

so now that i explained my idea/dream about it, i\'d love to have some people on the team, since making this a one-person project would be an illusion

all who are interested in helping go to this thread

[Skain]

I dont understand what u need help with? this just a fictional story thing for the storyside-rpg hook, or are you actually wanting to create it for use in planeshift?

[Fish]

You could base it on a Banyan tree.  This is a tree where it limbs dip to the ground and grow roots.  They make beautiful picturesque arches.  I saw several in Hawaii.  You could make it so they\'re framed out to make homes.  Using the basic tree for structure.

http://www.redbeet.com/pictures/banyan_tree

http://www.public.asu.edu/~dianeb/banyan.html

This will give you an idea what they look like.  But the other component a really large tree in the center going straight up could be a different type of tree.  They don\'t necessarily have to be the same one.

[zinder]

I like the idea of those heat-based fungus-rocks . But i think those are more for caves and places without light.

For places with light i would prefer rock-based life on electricity. It will be more similar to normal life forms. There are plant-likes with a surface of solar cells. They use the electricity as energy source to build their structure. They would look a little like plants, but since rock isnt transparent  they would only have one layer of sheets. Their fruits are like batteries, two pure metals in an electrolyte, a spore and rock around it.

The animal-like life would eat the whole fruit to get the metals and drink the electrolyte. Or they would suck the electricity out of the friut. They then use it to move and live.

The rock life would use piezo effects to move and as nerves they would have veins of pure metals.

[Fish]

Cool concept!  You\'re suggesting that rock plants be photovores.

One way to do it is the same way lichen works.  It\'s the combination of fungus and algae that work in tandem.  But in this case you would have one component be a solar cell the other component be a storage system.  The advantage being that the storage system could be in one spot in a solar cell component could spread up walls around corners all over the place and ship the power back to the storage cell.  Both systems need each other because at night a small trickle charge could be sent back through the solar cell to keep it alive.  The storage system would also provide rock nutrient to the whole system.  They could be farmed by rock creatures.  They would know things like you\'re not supposed to take all the cells out or the whole system dies.

I lichen it!

[Bombyz]

This is gonna be cool Probably.
But what if this happens:
A man walks into the deep forest and finds a mushroom. He finds it safe, when its poisonous.

Anyway, its cool. Flower gardens behind/in front of houses...its cool.
But if the limbs of the huge tree droop, then couldnt you walk up on them? If you could, then there could be tree houses.

[hook]

Originally posted by Skain
I dont understand what u need help with? this just a fictional story thing for the storyside-rpg hook, or are you actually wanting to create it for use in planeshift?

i want to create it, i like this idea so much, and i know it\'s so much work to do it, so the devs won\'t have time to make it, i\'ll have to get a very into it crew with which we\'ll make this \"tree-castle\" (=current codename), and in a year or so (hopefully that short!) we\'ll present it to the devs, and hope that they plant it in a beautiful place ...so, care to join?

[Skain]

sure count me in, ill set up our own msg board later, n we can sort out who does what on it.