Unnamed Sci-fi Game- Demo as of 4/5

I for one would really love to see a sapient animal-person who lacks sentinance. One who is able to think and problem-solve but does not feel pain or fear death.

Anyway, the reason I ask my question is because there could be significant changes to their body internally and externally. I think everyone knows about the external changes (more or less) but for an internal example: herbivores tend to have more than one “stomach” which they name different things and have different tasks - like the crop and gizzard of an earthworm (but they all still aid in digestion of course). Various internal changes like entire new organs or lack-there-of would probably be very notable differences from natural humans.

Also are you just planning on using just animals or is there a possibility of adding plants? I think that would be interesting too, having a human that could eat, or if there’s lots of sunlight around his/her green skin could produce fuel for them and they wouldn’t have to eat.

Elephant for better memory??

I’m not sure if any of you have heared of crispr but if you haven’t it’s a ground-breaking discovery of how bacteria modify their own DNA and humans have just very recently started using it to attempt to modify other creatures, including ourselves. If you haven’t heard of it that is probably because the success rate is somewhere around 1/500 for humans or something like that (what I heard about an experiment that took place in China) but we’ve had better luck with other animals (maybe around 1/8 or 1/4 I’m thinking but I’m totally making those numbers up and may be very wrong).

Also, is there a name given to these new individuals? I was thinking maybe GMI (genetically modified individual), from “GMO”.

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Writing off physical changes might well be premature, but I completely get not wanting to give people bunny ears and buck teeth for a little extra topspeed.

In order to enact the sort of changes you’re talking about, some degree of physical alteration might well be necessary, but certainly your hybridised humans wouldn’t end up looking like their animal counterparts.

Let me give a couple of examples. Say you want your Humans to have better eyesight (a useful skill for any soldier, but certainly more useful for pilots, snipers etc) and you decide to think about what kind of skill-set you want to develop.

Cats and Dogs have good eyesight for hunting, but they are also colourblind, which isn’t ideal. Battlefield situations require that you give the individual operator as much information as possible, so I would instead suggest DNA from something like the Mantis Shrimp:

When you’re done vomiting at the thought of those eyes growing out of a Human face, don’t panic! They won’t have to look like this.

The Mantis Shrimp is (mostly incorrectly) assumed by many to be able to see many many more colours than the Human eye can, because while the Human eye has three different types of colour-sensing cones on the inside of its eyeball, the Mantis Shrimp has 16 different types of colour-receptive cone in their eyeballs.

In theory this makes them capable of perceiving an entire ocean of colours that the human mind is thoroughly incapable of processing.

In practice the Mantis Shrimp doesn’t have enough brainpower to really make use of these cones for that purpose, the extra cones are simply a way of lightening the mental load, making them able to process their environment quicker than other beings in their class.

Now if you splice human with the right selection of Shrimp DNA, you might be able to add in some of those new types of cone into the eye, theoretically increasing the types of light a Human can perceive (as long as you increase the processing power of the parts of the brain that process optic data).

What does this mean in practice?

A Human being that can see far into the infrared and ultraviolet ranges. One who can see colours no other Human can see. Possibly able to see different types of radiation and stellar phenomena that would utterly elude their mundane brethren.

What else can you do to improve those eyes?

How about just scaling them up. Give your sniper ‘anime eyes’ and the increased surface area means more cones and rods in the eyeball, essentially upping the resolution on their eyes.

So your anime-Shrimp sniper would be able to read a copy of War and Peace being read by a sophisticated amateur screenwriter in a coffee shop while sitting in a helicopter five miles away.

Without any sort of scope.

Sounds pretty useful, and it would necessitate some visual changes to your subject that wouldn’t necessarily translate to them looking more ‘shrimpy’.

Another fun-fact about the Mantis Shrimp, it attacks prey with a couple of forward limbs that it can use to strike with about 1,500 Newtons of force in about 3/4ths of a second.

In context this about matches the acceleration of a .22 rifle round. The force of this blow is so strong that it can boil the water around it, creating a flash of light and a flash of boiling bubbles. When these bubbles pop, they produce a shockwave that can register temperatures of up to several thousand Kelvin, which often kills the intended target even if the claws miss altogether.

These claws are so inhumanly tough that their cellular structure is being investigated as a possible source of next-generation body armour for infantry units.

For one last piece of context, if human beings had even a tenth of that ungodly strength in their arms, they would be able to huck a baseball into orbit.

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@Sashira I can’t believe I never thought of bees or jumping spiders- that would be brilliant. And, trust me, I appreciate the rambling.

@Kelvin Erm, no new name, but I like GMI. Not sure if the soldiers would, but it sounds like a term that would be used.

I hadn’t really considered the potential for altering organs: a polite reminder that I’m a writer, (usually a fantasy writer, so I’m used to making the rules rather than working with the established ones) not a scientist and am going to miss a lot of important details.

@Moreau Point well taken. I suppose some physical alterations might be in order.

Love mantis shrimps, they’re awesome. And now I really wish that I’d come to the forums before I’d started writing though :sweat: Looks like I have some tampering to do. Probably going to leave my sniper with the cat splice (no colorblindness for him, though it’s happened before), but I have more than one character that would make great use of the mantis shrimp’s unholy strength. Seriously, thanks for that!

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You’re quite welcome, but I would like to mention that strength doesn’t scale in this case. If a human being had the same muscle grouping and density, it would be exponentially less impressive than the Mantis Shrimp’s power. Square-Cube law and all that… Basically the bigger something gets, the more volume you need to fill it, increasing its mass and so on until it just collapses. That’s why you don’t have 8 foot tall insects, they’d be crushed by the weight of their own skeletons.

However when they’re just iddy-biddy, they can maintain higher carapace density and each pound of pressure they exert goes a lot further.

In real terms this is why an animal like Godzilla couldn’t exist in the real world. The weight of all that lizard would basically cause him to collapse into a gross gooey mess of guts and viscera under our gravity.

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@Moreau Right! I forgot that was a thing… I know I’ve discussed it with one of my friends, but I guess that the idea was cool enough that the creative part of my brain ran ahead of the part that took biology and has a vague understanding of physics :laughing:

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This sounds potentially very intriguing :smiley:

I’m not a science major either but I know some things so I can help where I can, and step aside where I can’t :stuck_out_tongue:

Interesting. How big a known universe are you thinking of? How fast is travel? As in, how many inhabited star systems are you thinking and how long do these trips take? :thinking:

That sounds fun to me :grin: I would be much more interested in such a role. Am I also genetically engineered, or just the soldiers?

Just to clarify ahead of time… gay relationship opportunities as well as heterosexual ones? :smile:

Wait, so were they modified before birth, so they were born and raised this way, or is this a modification that happens later in life? That would have some pretty significant implications.

Wouldn’t it be incredibly unlikely for extraterrestrial genetic material to be at all compatible with Earth DNA? :confused: Unless the lifeforms have some kind of common ancestor that spread across space (panspermia), they’d’ve had a completely unrelated development. Even if the DNA molecule would turn out to exist elsewhere, it could code using different bases… and those could build a different repertoire of amino acids and proteins… the whole genetic language could be structured in completely alien and incompatible way…

I could imagine that whether someone was engineered this way or had the genetic therapy later in life could affect this in a major way. If the modification happened after someone already grew up, their body is already largely formed, so changes would likely be subtle, like you’re suggesting here… maybe something like eyes with catlike pupils, for example, but not a full-scale rearrangement of the body. (Little touches like the pupil thing could be nifty if you want something that’s mostly invisible but could be noticed on closer inspection.) However, someone who actually grew up developing with this coding might have a more radical change.

Hmm, so are you largely sticking to mammals? I could see this being justified as the genetic codes would be more similar so the splicing would likely be easier… but if you want to venture further afield, that would open up some pretty interesting possibilities. (You could also have it so the mammal splices were invented earlier, and the more radical ones are much newer technology :grin:)

As far as intelligence goes, elephants are very smart, there are other primates, and dolphins and whales could be an interesting choice, especially if it would grant abilities for holding one’s breath underwater.

Outside of mammals, there are quite a few kinds of birds, and I’d very much second squids, because… I like squids, and getting to play a squidly doctor would make me very happy :blush:

Are you thinking the player would be able to choose the main character’s animal splice, or just have it predetermined?

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Oh I apologize for appearing rude or snobby if I did so, that was not my intention. This is an amazing idea and I’m just very excited to see this game come about. If you wish to just make new rules I totally understand and will not be offended.

If you ever need any non-biological technology/political advice (eg. Space travel, weaponry, transportation, computers/AI, even military tactics or interstellar politics), I would be happy to help. Sci-fi has always been a pet peeve of mine, especially when it’s done right :slight_smile: I also know a fair bit about economics, though I doubt that will be useful.

Honestly, haven’t thought too hard on the exact scale, but the trips aren’t too long for reasons elaborated on later in the story.

You can potentially be spliced, but there are potential social and physical complications.

Naturally, being queer myself!

While I’m here, I’ll give a run down of the definite RO’s:
Levine, F- Demisexual panromantic.
Harlow, M- Slight preference for men.
Markov, M- Pansexual.
Singh, F- Slight preference for women.
Redacted- Pansexual.

Yep, happens later in life, only after being recruited for the specific program- it’s not exactly common practice. Or, ah, used on humans anywhere else. And I’ve considered some minor physical changes, not many. I like the idea of cat-like pupils or slight pigment changes.

Yep, highly unlikely! However, people (mostly your boss) are curious and will try anything once.

I’ve actually been doing that for now, though there will be at least one character to have a reptilian splice.

That depends on what I come up with for potential splices. If people give me some good ideas that won’t throw me for too much of a loop (I’ve learned that branching is less fun for the writer than it is the reader, hehe) I’ll have multiple options, perhaps with greater risk/reward possibilities.

You didn’t at all! Sorry if I sounded irritated! I’m just realizing that I’m a little… out of my depth with this genre, you know? :smile:

You have no idea how much help I’m going to need in that department. When I put out the demo, I’m sure that you and others with a love of sci-fi will be a great help in fleshing out my universe, because right now it’s kind of science light :sweat:

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S’good question, that…

I second that question. Also, how is travel achieved? Do you have an FTL method? If so do you have a theory about how it works?

That would raise some very interesting questions, wouldn’t it? Does life have a universal code that can be tapped into at will? Or does each example of Life grow out of fundamentally different components that can in no way interact?

Without any non-Earth based examples we can’t know whether alien life even uses DNA, or that their DNA is based on the same stuff that ours is. However even if they are similar, they probably aren’t interchangeable, so a geneticist might well look at a particular species with an impressive natural ability and instead of trying to copy it over to our species try to recreate it from scratch out of our pre-existing genetic code.

Either way there’s quite a lot of philosophical questioning to do before you even get to that point, I suppose…

Actually Cepholopods would be an almost perfect place to pilfer genetic modifications from, their natural camouflage abilities would be pretty immediately useful, and some can produce venom into the bargain. An Octopus’ skin is basically a TV screen stretched over a mollusc, so it’s pretty impressive.

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I don’t know how much you want to commit yourself to this project, but I found Discord to be perfect for collaborations and creator-user interaction - I find chats like Discord to be much better for idea sharing/brain storming than forums :slight_smile:

Waiting anxiously for the demo!

So are you thinking, like, days, or hours? Are the ships going freely through space or is there a specific network, like wormholes or jumplines or whatever you’d want to call them, that they have to follow? :smile:

Yayyyy! :grinning: :confetti_ball:

Also, for someone with enhanced night vision, that could lead to eyes that do that glowy thing in the dark, but seem more normal in the light :thinking:

Sounds… dramatic :stuck_out_tongue:

Well, if you want to open up some additional potential plot hooks or extra drama, you could have it so that anything more divergent is especially risky and experimental, a very new development… thus leading to some special excitement and suspense with, say, the mantis shrimp person or a squid person :thinking:

Are you familiar with this website? Atomic Rockets - Atomic Rockets It has a lot of advice from both sciencey and science fictiony standpoints for science fiction writers… there’s a table of contents on the bottom of the page. Could be worth checking out if any of the topics it covers would be relevant to your purposes :slight_smile:

Maybe rather than direct splices, they’d have to work out a sort of translation system :thinking:

Yes :octopus: :smile: and then there’s the ink… they also do interesting things with hydrostatic skeletons and water jetting, but that’d be harder to translate into a human frame…

They also have eyes that are less vulnerable to aging problems, but that’s a fairly subtle advantage :stuck_out_tongue:

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This idea seems very neat! I adore the Sci-Fi genre and also really like the ideas you’ve got going here (especially being a bit of an oit side perspective on the whole soldiers and their actions. Could provide for some interesting moments of observation and interaction.)

I’m curious, though, (and this may have already been asked or stated before to which I apologize, I have to look throught the rest of this when I’m not haphazardly typing on my phone who’s keys never seem to click correctly), how well-received is the whole human experimentation aspect? I would imagine that there’s at least a few people who are against it (or at least the idea of it).

Speaking of genetic modification

[quote=“TSSL, post:26, topic:25363”]
Wouldn’t it be incredibly unlikely for extraterrestrial genetic material to be at all compatible with Earth DNA? :confused: Unless the lifeforms have some kind of common ancestor that spread across space (panspermia), they’d’ve had a completely unrelated development. Even if the DNA molecule would turn out to exist elsewhere, it could code using different bases… and those could build a different repertoire of amino acids and proteins… the whole genetic language could be structured in completely alien and incompatible way… [/quote]

What if you could reach a point in which you could sorta find a midway between the two different kinds of DNA considering that they used the same base? A point in which neither are like the originals completely but have been modified to such a point where they could be combined?

Like a futuristic version of (I believe it’s called) CRISPR (I’ll check that and that I’m using it correctly later when I’m not on my phone), that could change DNA until compatibility is achieved?

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I agree… and this leads me into something else I’d wonder about… how far in the future is this set? Is it fairly close, such that there would be many of the same groups… cultures, ideologies, political factions, philosophies, that kind of thing… or is it quite a bit further future, such that things are more radically different? Well, close enough that America is still a thing, I gather :thinking:

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It sounds like Tokyo Mew Mew in space. I loved that manga! I’m a biotechnology student, so you can ask me anything about genetic engineering.

There’s some discussion about splicing with alien DNA, so I’ll throw in my 2 cents.

If the aliens use DNA with the same four bases as the DNA on our planet, it can be turned into proteins by our systems. Aliens might modify proteins in a way that we can’t do, so they might not be usable for us, and you’ll have to engineer a new system of protein modification. This problem also happens when you try to produce human proteins in bacteria. For example the bacteria E. coli can’t naturally produce disulfide bonds, but humans can.

This problem (the same codon codes for a different amino acid in different organisms) can also happen in real life when you splice a gene from a very distantly related organism to another. It’s fixed by swapping codons so that they code for the right amino acids.

If the aliens don’t use DNA, but their version of DNA is similar enough to ours, splicing might still work, but there would be more mistakes. If it’s too different, it’s best to produce a lot of protein in alien animals and inject the proteins in your human supersoldiers.

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Days to weeks on average, though it takes longer if it’s an exploratory kind of travel. And they move freely.

Oh, that would be fun.

Exactly what I was going for!

Good question!

That’s a bit of a plot point. It’s been kept pretty quiet for now and while it’s not illegal, that’s mostly because it’s been kept quiet. But the MC is allowed to be vehemently against it and only joined the project in order to make sure that the soldiers are being properly taken care of, so to speak. Or they can be eager to make it commonplace, or they can sit on the fence and say that more research needs to be done.

That’s a thought… I’ll add that to my quickly growing list of ideas :grin:[quote=“TSSL, post:34, topic:25363”]
I agree… and this leads me into something else I’d wonder about… how far in the future is this set? Is it fairly close, such that there would be many of the same groups… cultures, ideologies, political factions, philosophies, that kind of thing… or is it quite a bit further future, such that things are more radically different? Well, close enough that America is still a thing, I gather
[/quote]
America is still a thing. It’s not set very far in the future, but enough so that things have changed. Probably not enough that you’ll be lost, but there are some differences.

@Lavender Interesting… Most of that went over my head but I think I get the gist.

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Oh, also, have you given any consideration to mechanical prosthetic modifications/augments (think Deus Ex/GItS)? Assuming Americans are focused on genetic modifications, maybe some other country (how much interactions are there going to be with other Terrans btw?) could focus on those instead? It could provide a counter to the genetic mods.

Sounds like they might use something like an Alcubierre Drive, which you might know better as a Warp Drive. Basically you can’t move anything with mass faster than the speed of light, you just can’t. Its a rule.

So an Alcubierre Drive basically cheats the universe out of that rule by reducing the actual distance you have to travel. The drive creates a ‘bubble’ with your ship in the middle. It contracts the space in front of it and expands the space behind, allowing the ship to move at sublight speed across large distances at a speed that looks like FTL to people watching from outside.

This is why God doesn’t play dice with the universe. Because scientists cheat.

Another thought I had. If these people have been fundamentally altered at the genetic level, how does that affect their personhood? Are they still classified as Humans? If not, doesn’t that void any legal rights they may have had?

A difficult position to be in, knowing your employer has the right to do whatever the hell they want to you and discard you if you cease to amuse them.

Many of these people are going to need expensive medical assistance for the rest of their lives, which they might not continue receiving if funding for the program dries up. Perhaps an added incentive to keep the paymasters sweet by delivering results…

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With all the genetic engineering around, if you haven’t already done so, you might want to think about genetic modifications of other animals and plants, too. Like food, special pets (my cat can glide! :smiley_cat:), work animals, or just weird experiments…

Spider silk could be interesting to mess with, too :thinking: very strong material, so if you can mass produce it, sounds useful :thinking: or even including it as a modification for a character… plus lots of other arthropods make interesting chemicals…

Okay. Still should be possible for explorers to have gone pretty far afield, then :thinking: one thing to note is that, with space being 3D, number of planets within a certain distance will increase with the cube rather than the square, so that can make distances more compact. It also means you have more fronteirs than one would on land. So all of this means that there’s a lot of room out there :grin:

One thing that could have a significant effect is how long this faster than light space travel has existed. Were any planets settled before its invention? If so, they’d’ve had more time to develop in relative isolation beforehand.

Well, here’s my feelings about this sort of thing, if it helps you develop character reaction possibilities…

I think that consent is key, most importantly. So people ought to be informed adults to be modified. I would also be very concerned about status and wealth issues, though… if wealthy people can get special enhancements, and form a new special class, that’s a problem. And, on the other side, if poorer people are exploited into risky modifications and recruited into special forces… this is also a problem.

Lifespan is another thing, if people are trying to discover immortality or just really long lives…

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Honey bees have an amazing sense of smell and sight! They would make really good splices for certain soldiers…

Check this out! Especially the part about sniffing out explosives…

Also, look at this (from http://www.beeculture.com/bees-see-matters/)

Bees also have the ability to see color much faster than humans. Their color vision is the fastest in the animal world-five times faster than humans.

I think these splices would make good scouts, especially the part about being able to see best [/i]while moving[/i] and also being able to detect and disarm bombs in an area before the rest of a team shows up and gets blown to bits… They can see into the ultra-violet range as well… :smile:

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