It seems pretty likely at this point that TFC2 will feature lots of animals. And, to do justice to this, I feel like there should be a better system in place than the Vanilla system of spawning animals once and that being all you get.
Basic Principle:
With this in mind, I propose that there should be an island-based system for spawning wild animals. Essentially, when an island generates it would generate a list of species that can spawn on that island, based on climate zones, and probably some randomization. Then, based on the numbers of hexes meeting certain requirements (altitude, tree cover etc.) it would determine how many of each species of herbivore it could support. Then, based on that, it would look at a food web to see how many of each species of predator the prey population could support. This should probably be made to favor a larger number of predators than would be realistic, because otherwise we would never see any predators. The island would then generate with the correct number of animals spread across it, with some bias for various locations based on the type of animal (i.e. bears could be more likely to spawn near rivers and fish from them (which would be really cool)). Then, if the count of the animals becomes unbalanced, due to the player hunting, or predators killing prey animals the population could regenerate through random spawns. (Alternatively, animals could start to reproduce when the balance was messed up, but because of the limitations of chunks loading and unloading, and the likelihood of animals being separated from mates, this probably wouldn't work.) This system would ensure that an island will never be over hunted, and that you will never be able to completely clear an area of bears etc.
For Example:
Disclaimer: All numbers and animals used in this are examples, and wouldn't be used in a final plan, as the animals may/may not be included and may/may not actually spawn temperately
Step 1: An island generates with a temperate climate, and flat terrain. The list of animals that can spawn on such islands includes bears, deer, sheep, cows, boars, bison, goats, cougars,wolves, squirrels, rats and raccoons.
Step 2: A randomizer determines that only sheep, bison, goats, cougars, wolves, squirrels and raccoons can spawn on the island, making sure to choose at least one large predator, and a few large herbivores and decoration animals.
Step 3: The island has 307 land hexes. Each bison needs 20 hexes, while sheep and goats only need 8 hexes a piece. Each type of animal is allocated 102 land hexes. As such, the island can support 12 sheep, 12 goats and 5 bison.
Step 4: Each wolf needs 4 prey animals, and each cougar needs 10 prey animals. The island can support a total of 27 prey animals. Thus, there are 13 prey animals available for each, meaning the island can support 1 cougar and 3 wolves.
Step 5: The animals spawn in the island with the world generation, with reasonable spacing between the groups. Squirrels and Raccoons spawn and despawn similarly to most hostile mobs in vanilla, and could be kept from despawning by players by some method like the nametag.
Now that the island has generated, say that the player hunts down and kills a bison. Now that there are only 4 bison, a 5th bison will be able to spawn. Because animals generally spawn in herds, the game could either spawn it with a herd, impregnate a bison at random, or wait until more are killed and form a new herd. If a cougar or wolf kills a sheep or goat, the process would be much the same. Now, say that the player successfully domesticates two sheep, and begins to breed them. Soon, the player ends up with 7 captive sheep, bringing the island's total population up to 10 sheep. Now when the wild sheep are killed off, they do not respawn in the wild and eventually only the domesticated sheep are left, but there are now 20 sheep, far more than the island would normally support.
At this point, I am not sure what should happen, but there are a few options.
- A: Nothing would happen aside from no more sheep spawns.
- B: As the number of sheep reaches the island limit, they begin to use up the hexes allocated to the bison and goats, causing them to stop spawning.
- C: As the population of sheep increases, the island becomes able to support more cougars.
So what I am asking with this, is should the actions of the player influence the balance of the environment? I am personally all for that idea, because it is always cool when actions like that mess with the environment, but it would mean the population capacity for each type of animal would have to be dynamic, rather than being calculated once when the island was generated.
Anyway, I have typed now for long enough, and would like to know what you guys think and hear some other ideas.
EDIT: Also, I meant to put this under suggestions. let me see if I can move it or not…