Mythruna

As an agricultural afficionado in games like these, I love when my job gets harder. I believe I discussed fungal infestations before, but I just had an idea. I love dark, creepy environments and, well, there's nothing quite like black mold coating all of your crops... and the surrounding forest. This is nothing like Minecraft's mushroom biome, mind you. It's a plague that creates a toxic haze in the form of spores. A careless farmer could end up getting killed by this blight in his own home, and there's no telling what it can do with a corpse besides just eating it. Who needs necromancy when you can string dead bodies like puppets, after all?

I haven't thought too much about the specific mechanics by which the mold would spread and appear, but it may be caused by a lack of biodiversity. If you only have fir trees, grass, and corn plants in an area, then the mold would quickly overtake the corn and eventually begin spreading to the fir trees and grass; albeit slowly.

Of course, giant ants may cultivate super fungi of their own. Maybe not biome destroying blight, but more benign fungus. It's quite common for ants to cultivate mold in real life, and they seem to have a pretty good understanding of how to nurture the molds they are mutualists with.

These sorts of "natural disasters" are kind of an interesting idea... especially if the mechanics can be done well (read: fair).

Balance is the spice of life, after all.

I guess I never thought about how to get rid of the mold, but I wager torching it would do the trick. For a more tactful approach, drying out the mold would work.


Man, imagining a landscape coated in mold is just so cool for some reason...

I meant fair in the sense that there should be a way to guard against it if you know it can happen... and the "happening" should be slow enough that you can detect and stop it.  If the game doesn't provide some expectation of security for the experienced players then they will fear wandering away.  If despite all proper precautions, the player goes adventuring for a month in game time and comes back they should have a realistic expectation that their farm isn't a big black mess.

Just like in Minecraft, it can take a while to learn all of the ins and outs but it's mostly possible to build a 100% secure base that won't be full of zombies when you get back.

So fair = avoidable surprises.  No "suddenly Godzilla" moments, a la Sim City.

Oh, well that's easy. :3

Don't have 20 acres of just one crop, in this case. It can only quickly spread to like plants which I either said in the op or the second post, so keeping the crop variety high will greatly slow the spread of the black mold. This is a kind of nature-strikes-back thing. Low diversity in a biome or a farm increases the virility of the mold, essentially(Since low diversity normally means you're the one who killed everything. :P). It encourages you to plant more than one crop, rotate them regularly, and preserve the landscape around you if you're a farmer by trade. That's the goal of this idea, at least.

... But I guess greenhouses would help prevent widespread infestation, too.

And I guess you could cook the mold to make poisons and acid.

Some more random ideas:

The Mythrunian earth is a living thing, which is why there can be rich ecosystems underground feeding off of the life energy.

Corpse moss: Similar to mold, but without poisoning. Originates from dead animals, but can easily parasitize almost anything given time. Corpse moss organisms often possess acidic pustules that explode on contact.

...the corpses that the giant ants don't carry away for some reason... though maybe they are breeding their own corpse moss. :)

It would probably have the consistency and... aroma... of carrion, so it wouldn't surprise me. It would imply that these ants have resistance to acid, too. Perhaps they could be like the Woodland ants that spit acid to scare off predators.


Some more ideas:
- Biome shifts based on energy imbalances. Basically, if you start dumping buckets of dark energy or heat energy into an area... it should slowly change to adapt to the changing conditions. So for instance, an alium may mutate into a sparkbloom if electricity is being constantly added to its environment. This makes it so you won't destroy ecosystems by errantly throwing fireballs around... but you won't be making it safer, either

- Blood fog; a thick but harmless, scent obscuring fog created by corpse moss. The blood fog might be collectable as a medicinal compound. Blood fog stains its' surroundings red, but only appears around large colonies of blood moss. The blood fog only propagates corpse moss on *dead* animals, meaning it won't infest plants, only paint them red. Once corpse moss completely consumes the dead animal, it will root itself and begin photosynthesizing.

- A gravity well block, that can be powered to function with Super Mario Galaxy logic. Perhaps best if each block only worked in one direction. It would add an interesting game play element and would really spice up player made puzzles and the like... if it's well designed.

- Dynamic slopes. I started thinking about this because of the bridge update in Wurm online. You could arrange the dynamic slope blocks and they adjusted themselves accordingly. I.E. You place 2 dynamic slopes facing the same direction and they adjust into upper and lower half slopes, placing 5 would make a 5*1 slope set, etc.

Another idea: Sculpting/carving Basically, you'd be able to use a chisel or other implements to create intricate depictions. The biggest challenge to making a system like this is control of course, but it would also mean people would have complete control over the aesthetic of an area or object. In essence, it would also overcome the greatest challenge to creative building in voxel games.

This would be difficult to do because of -- well, everything about it. That said, it'd make Mythruna stand out artistically.

I was just thinking about rain. How do you intend on formatting rain and snow events? Will storms be handled as a binary value like Minecraft or will they have different levels of severity? (I.E Drizzle, light showers, heavy rain, thunderstorm)

Different levels of severity... and parts of the world may have rain when others don't, etc..  Silly to rain in the desert most times, for example.

Weather will be based on a relatively simple climate + weather pattern model... but it will be based on a model.  It will be combining a few low frequency fractals, one of which moves/changes over time.  So for example, if one town has rain at the moment then you might be able to count on some town to the east getting that rain in a game hour or two depending on prevailing weather.

At least that's the plan.

I would cry if that ever stopped being the plan.

The idea of a mold covering a place is interesting but the way you are describing it doesn't seem very realistic. 
A mold attacking grass and trees?  Seems a bit far fetched.  Plus mold is prettier as a blue color like that lint stuff you get out of a dryer. 
Black mold is scary and sounds like something that would come out of a cave.

... It isn't realistic. That's why I'm suggesting this in a forum for a fantasy themed game.

The black mold isn't supposed to be pretty, its' very nature makes it extremely deadly... and having black mold that isn't black isn't very realistic.

(http://spock.fcs.uga.edu/ext/housing/images/mold_banner.jpg)

Maybe it could be representing a dark magic source leaking from the afterlife part of the world in the game :D

A lot of that ceiling mold looks grey and brown as well.  Not just black.
I like how it's polka dot designed though.

But still, there are already going to be wild animals, the risk of dying of hunger or thirst or the elements, who knows what else...

And now you want to introduce another way for people to die?  You really are eager to get people killed off in this game huh?

The black fungus can only grow under a specific circumstance, at first. You need very low plant diversity; meaning a massive farm that ONLY has carrots would be extremely vulnerable. The black mold can't appear in urban settings or in nature. The incubation period is quite long anyway, so it takes months before it becomes a threat.

I don't mean to nitpick but the picture is of black mold on the ceiling of someone's house.  That sounds pretty urban to me.

Well, you see, this isn't the black mold we know and love.

This is Mythrunian black mold.

So to be clear, your saying this would just effect plants and not peoples houses?

the black stuff you see in that image is all just reproductive tissue. It would presumably parasitize the roots of a crop and overtake it after some time; then spread onto other similar crops. They can overwhelm only one kind of plant because they adapted to it when the farmer removed all other plants.

All that said, a house isn't alive, and doesn't have an immune system, obviously. Black mold can use wood... among other things... as food. So yes, your home is at risk... if you allow the mold to infest a field of crops and sit long enough to spread to your house.

Use fire to burn away the mold. Problem solved.

Mold is very moist. :P