Liza Knipscher (a game developer)

Every so often, two similar species will show up simultaneously (here, the big orange guys and the brightly colored orange/blue/green fellers). It's interesting to watch them over time, to see if one group disappears or if they breed together, and it's fun to guess why any species thrives

#gamedev

In all seriousness, a fun fact about me is that every time a good horror movie comes out, I immediately read the most detailed synopsis I can find online, then proceed to never watch the movie

You can also look these up online!

implemented midi

Also I was doing more research on this and so far the ocean sunfish is the animal I’ve found with the biggest difference between adult size and offspring size/count. The adults can weigh up to a ton, and females can lay up to 300 million eggs at a time!

Never stop! This is great!

Was enjoying a nice rain cloud, and then THIS GUY showed up with a handshell and distracted me

#gamedev

Grass spreads to adjacent spaces when they're watered. This was fairly complex to implement, especially since the hills on this moon are randomly added when the moon is generated

Oh that’s great! I think about large fish and octopuses in regards to “big animal, many small eggs” but I didn’t realize sauropods did the same thing! Do you have a favorite example species?

One question I ask myself a lot as I develop this game about ecosystem and evolution is: why don’t elephants lay a thousand tiny eggs every month, rapidly overwhelming the planet with mouse-sized offspring? Science simply doesn’t know*

*This is not true

Tree family

#gamedev

Fella with a weird-shaped head

Magical fish

Riding around on his friend's back, then suddenly deciding to play dead

(These aren't behaviors that are programmed in; that's just what it looks like to me)

One of the coolest things that happens when I leave the sim alone long enough is that distinct species appear. Right now, though, the only creatures that manage this feat are those that can reproduce by cheating the energy and reproduction systems, so it isn't really survival of the fittest

Busy little moon

#screenshotsaturday

Is that a forest I see over the horizon? Nope, just giant animals with trees growing out of their head again

The shape of this critter's head reminds me that I need to add various bugs and beetles

Three shots of a green-silver colored caiman wreathed in 4-6 colorful yellow and orange butterflies. He blinks in two of the shots, looking delighted somehow, while the butterflies swarm his head. CREDIT: Mark Cowan.

This photograph series by Mark Cowan documents a phenomenon called 'lachryphagy' ("tear-feeding").

The caiman excretes salt in their tears & the butterflies need the precious minerals for their metabolism & reproduction.

So, they're feeding on crocodilian tears.

(📷: Mark Cowan, Curtin Uni.)

The random animal generator surprised me with a CatDog

Digital painting, a bipedal robot in the wild

Digital painting, a bipedal robot in the wild

Digital painting, a bipedal robot in the wild doing jazz hands

Robodudes from like a thousand years ago

Hovering ominously

Quick Unity tip: if you find you're spending a lot of time manually updating prefabs in identical ways (e.g. adding box colliders to a hundred prefabs, one at a time), you can usually write a script to automate that workflow. It's worth learning how to do it if you haven't before

Yes!! I’m working on a big update for Cookie Gardening right now; I should post about it more

(David Attenborough voice) Winking Treetopus

Macrophotograph of a Peacock Fly (Callopistromyia sp) resting on a slightly weathered metal beam. The fly holds its patterned wings upright in an elaborate, fan-like display, appearing almost butterfly-like. Each wing is intricately marked with shades of dark brown, black, white, and subtle hints of iridescent blue, creating a mosaic-like camouflage pattern. The fly’s body is robust and heavily speckled in shades of brown, black, and cream. Bright, vivid orange-red eyes stand out distinctly on its head, along with delicate antennae and fine bristles visible along its legs and thorax. The textured metal beam beneath it has faint scratches and rust streaks, providing contrast that highlights the detail and coloration of the insect.

A Peacock Fly (Callopistromyia sp.) showing off the beautiful display on those wings! They strut around waving their wings and doing a little wiggle, an amazing behavior right in your own backyard.

#Invert #Diptera #bugsky 🌿 #entomology

Oh no! The moon got taken over by frog-rays

#gamedev

Oh totally, Unity does not come with Villager Pile Awareness. I have the same experience of game dev, i.e. the cool flashy stuff is a fun but very limited part of what it takes to get a complicated project functioning

I love watching an animal from a very zoomed-out camera. It makes the moon look like a tiny diorama

Getting closer and closer to achieving my goal (i.e. randomly generating a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater)