orteil42:

Nested is always really interesting to work on because it involves a buttload of research, from finding out what pearls are made of (it’s aragonite, a carbon-calcium-oxygen compound) to writing an instant meal generator (outputs range from “Starvin’ Dude - duck with beans“ to “Ogre King - pork and sprinkles“)

Nested 2 uses a special syntax for animals, which allows me to push the detail down to species-specific extra body parts in a way that i don’t need to declare a separate prototype for each of the (currently 467) animals in the game

for instance each hagfish spawns with a slime coating, no fins, and eyespots instead of eyes; in my code, this is done with “hagfish|body:slime|body:-simple eye|body:eyespot,2|body:-fin“

(there’s a limit to how specific my research gets tho, so while each fish should be correctly categorized as fresh- or saltwater, the internal organs of each bird mention a crop even when the specific species shouldn’t have one)

i understand all this stuff is more nerdy than fun so i’ll just finish by adding that the game will feature achievements awarded for finding rare and obscure stuff around the universe. thank you