Round 3: Insects

[Incadicey]

I choose butterfly because it would make flowers and wings more nessesary!

Later in development of course.

[AnarchCassius]

I think at this point we should accept those things are coming and the head choices don't affect the time scale.

From a programming POV, it makes the most sense to overhaul heads on in one big or several staged pushes in succession, so Quasar will probably do them all about the same time once the graphical fixes are stable and he moves on to more flexible genetics and physics.

Of course there is still the angle of stacking the pool of possible heads. That's one problem with this top-down part design. It's a lot easier to do for the programmer and computer, but you have to have good base data or it's garbage in garbage out. In other words since the heads ARE designed they need to be done in a way that best simulates the laws of head engineering as we know them in reality. At least for purposes of simulating Earth/our universe's evolutionary patterns.

Beaks are a good example of a step toward this. The beak becomes more beak-like and once you have a true beaked head it can specialize food type more easily than many other branches (unless this is my imagination). Teeth shift almost as quickly, but if your jaw itself is most of your mastication potential then adjusting the purpose usually takes a lot more drift.

Things implied by this: If we get butterflies remember that path can lead to bloodsuckers as well. Catapillars can become carnivorous with a few simple jaw modifications.

The tricky part is identifying possibilities that didn't occur on our fossil record but could have. Is a Predator/Halo Elite jaw viable? How would it evolve? What advantages would it have? (Actually I think some fish have clues to that particular line of research but you get the idea)

[sylverone]

The caterpillar face is in the list up there like it's so simple, like we all know what a caterpillar face looks like... and I think we can all agree it looks like this, right?:
[snip]
Oh wait, my bad, that's just coloring... it's actually this that we're all thinking of, right?:
[snip]
Or maybe this?:
[snip]
But those are so menacing, they might be mistaken for carnivore heads... I mean, whenever I think of a caterpillar peacefully fattening up on leaves, it goes without saying that this is always the first image that comes to mind:
[snip]

Squeeeeeeee they're beautiful! Wonderful! Hideous! Could you cross-post them to the BPVCT Suggestion Thread?

Sure.

[Quasar]

We got 2,633 visitors for the first week this time. Looks like we're well on track to get us a mantis head.

[AngerDomeAble]

4234 people have been to this thread and none of them voted for the ladybug I just want to put that out there.

[AnarchCassius]

It's a sweet little face and belongs to a deligent hunter of enemies of our specices, but it's got some stiff competition in this thread. I just have to say. In many other competitions I'd be voting for the ladybug, but... mantis.

[Quasar]

4645 on a saturday morning, I think we've got this one in the bag. Now I just gotta start plotting how to disentangle the mantis head from it's freakishly huge eyes while still keeping it recognisably mantis-y.

[Quasar]

And with 5,374 visitors for the fortnight, we're getting a Mantis head for 0.7.0!

[White parrot]

Now I just gotta start plotting how to disentangle the mantis head from it's freakishly huge eyes while still keeping it recognisably mantis-y.

See, that's why I didn't vote for this one.