I was just reading discourse threads and I had this question in my head while looking at @gridnick`s avatar: does anybody know how will fauna behave in SH? I love the idea of wild animals wandering around our village, some scared of your villagers, some hostile to them. Imagine wild mammoth shuffling at the edge of your screen, so cool! For now, both critters and sheeps just emerge from nothingness. Will it be like that for ever or can I hope to see living animals moving through the map?
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Hey Argen, iâm glad to say most of what you suggest will probably make it into end game mechanics 
Although this is mostly true, right now there are a small amount of animals that do indeed spawn and remain âwonderingâ until caught.
You and me both and iâm pretty sure this is in the plans.
Now what needs to be discussed is the exact balance. For example we know that there will be a âbunny clanâ that implies they will all stay in one area. Should mammoths move around in herds or should they walk around by themselves. Also the density of animals is a big factor. Although they make the game come alive and add depth they also increase the amount of memory the game needs to store. These and many other points can be discussed still
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My hope is that the current Shepherd magically summons random sheep for pasture!! concept of animals will eventually be replaced by actual critters and creatures visible in the world; the smaller creatures weâve seen can be an exception to this, but their spawning should be based on biomes/amount of trees in an area/preexisting critters of the same type/etc. (Iâll be honest, Iâve yet to see a sheep in-game, just because of the necessity of the Shepherd in the first place, and my avoidance of the class due to the recent bugs I heard about being associated with it)
With the recent -huge- improvement to gameplay continuation, weâre at least progressing in the right direction! Maybe in a few alphas weâll see authentic animals starting to be added in.
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We can also make use of convenient caves to spawn animals regularly. For example fox caves, bear caves, cow caves only kidding on that one 
That way trappers can become more of a science, and spawning wonât be sudden and âpoof inhibitingâ
And now for the 64$ question, how will animals despawn? without which the lands will be overpopulated.
[quote=âTurtleSquish, post:4, topic:11381â]And now for the 64$ question, how will animals despawn? without which the lands will be overpopulated.
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My guess is theyâll just stop spawning after a specified limit 
Also, thanks for promising respond! I look forward to see this game blossom soo much :3
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That would be a very good solution for the the current version of the game. But we have been promised infinite worlds in the future. Already I think you can see the problem.
[quote=âTurtleSquish, post:6, topic:11381â]Already I think you can see the problem.
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To be quite frank - I donât 
I see it this way - while you scout more and more of the map, it keeps growing as it generates, and while it does that, it also generates some âspawn points (or rather spawn fields)â for certain entities. So if your scouts discover new tract of forest, it will be automaticly generated with some spawning points. To make newly discovered lands not look deserted there could be also randomed some animals, spawning inside their spawning areas. For example, you discover piece of land, where game generated a spawning point for maximum 10 sheeps. As you see it, game also generate the random number of sheeps being there from the start (from 0 to 10, or to be more reasonable - from 2 to 10, for obvious biological reasons 
). Does it make any sense?
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Plenty. Your system is also as I see it. However you run into the problem of needing to despawn the animals otherwise your game will die due to lag. When, how, and most importantly can you save certain animals which you want around?
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I donât really know anything about optimalization or lag reduction so I guess you might be right. Lets hope boys and girl (? 
) from team Radi will manage to make something like this happen without burning our graphics cards 
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Empire Earth created a sort of âlimitâ on animal populationsâin a given map, animals would be spawned in a âherdâ, which would continue to regrow to a certain number (letâs say eight). If one animal got hunting or killed, the herd could produce a baby animal that would eventually grow to the same size as the adults (itâs a lot simpler of a mechanic than I make it out to be, but it works!).
In addition, there could be prey-predator relations between animals (and yes, I believe that this CAN still be done in a cute way!). Considering Radiantâs desire to make the economic portion of Stonehearth as fleshed out as combat and building, we might need them to create scenarios to threaten crops and livestock (for example, long ago they mentioned the possible issue of rabbits eating your vegetables).
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ive always imagined mammoths to be solitary creaturesâŚ
[quote=â8BitCrab, post:11, topic:11381â]
ive always imagined mammoths to be solitary creaturesâŚ
[/quote]after some looking Iâve found that they are herd animals (as i expected) but i think stone hearth should have them as one mammoth with x amount of baby mammoths
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Iâm afraid the problem with that is infinite worlds. After you explore a certain amount the animal number has to keep growing and growing.
this is a great idea, however it might be costly to our poor little computers to have all these things going on
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Why is that? Populations in real life tend to have a sort of âcut-offâ point, where the amount of food/resources/ shelter isnât enough to sustain population. Once that point is hit, either thereâs a rapid decline to a point of restability (or at the worst, continues to fall until extinction), or the population growth evens out. Domestication then takes those requirements and puts it into human (the playerâs) hands, and those limitations are artificially exceeded and larger populations can be sustained. (The natural populations also wouldnât be the same size, and could vary with the generated world).
The problem with infinite worlds and continuously revealing new resources extends to every other feature intended to be added to the game, too. As more land and components/resources are introduced into a game session (and in ever-increasing numbers), thereâs always the issue of memory demands and performance issues. Itâs just an issue of doing it in a way that seems dynamic without adding a whole lot of processing behind it.
Exactly, but other resources donât move around and act by themselves. Not to mention the whole reason I mentioned infinite worlds is because eventually your going to need to despawn animals, and that is where my question comes in. How will animals despawn? a poof? do into caves and never come out? predator prey? etc.
Personally, Iâd go with a spawn situation similar to Minecraft where it largely remains stable, or some sort of Fog of War. Weâll have the same issues with moving units/creatures from other settlements and towns in the future, which will also entail a lot more coding and pathfinding than a grazing herd of sheep. I honestly canât see Stonehearth WITHOUT a Fog of War in the future, given both the gameplay opportunities it provides and the consequent cut of processing demands (and therefore, larger worlds in the end). I honestly donât think animals should normally despawn, unless itâs done in a subtle way. Again, smaller creatures like critters and birds can disappear fairly easily in the game world, but something larger like a sheep, cow, or mammoth is going to be missed if it just suddenly âdespawnsâ, even if itâs in the wild. Thatâs partially why I liked the âpopulation lineâ in Empire Earth, since it allowed animals groups to repopulate (and not overpopulate the world), and didnât need a predator system to maintain. Granted, some of those avoided âproblemsâ could be features to the game in the future, but this would be a fairly self-sufficient system to start out with at this point in development.
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ahem that would be yak
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[quote=â8BitCrab, post:17, topic:11381â]
ahem that would be yak
[/quote]Thank you for mentioning me
[quote=âAtralane, post:16, topic:11381â]
cow
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Now now @Atralane you donât have to be so rude you know that cows will never be in the game and yaks will always be here, I have overthrown @KingMooCow and yaks rule the discourse now 
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I would like to eventually see no spawning or despawning, just population dynamics and such. I refer people to this post here (and that topic generally).
I think by unloading and loading due to fog of war or some such, the infinite world does not have to be a problem. It could work something like Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress, in that regard.
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If I recall back in alpha one they spawned with the world but been so long idk any more.