Green Creeper

[impikmin]

It seems to me that creeper is somewhat of an animal, in that it has a central nervous system of sorts. If you isolate some creeper, it ceases to grow, and in many cases, it dies, or evaporates.
Instead of being like some giant fungus that dies once you cut the roots, maybe there could be a species of creeper that can act independently of an emitter. For instance, if you have a pool of creeper, and you eliminate all other creeper around it, it would continue to grow in the pool. And if you targeted the pool, creeper around it wouldn't 'sink back,' but rather continue growing, if at a slower pace.
The limitations of this new species would be that it grows slower and is more vulnerable to attack. In the right situation, this creeper could prove deadly, or even impossible to defeat. In the wrong situation, this creeper would be hopelessly pathetic. But it would be interesting to apply to various areas, yes?
Perhaps after beating everything on double down you could play levels with green creeper.

[TheBuilder]

why stop at just green creeper and one extra knind, go for any color u want and a bunch of different variables that can be turned on and off like:
does it evaporate if cut off from an emitter
does it continue to grow if cut off from an emitter
does it automatically flow back into low spots if those spots are emptied

so on and so forth.

[Aurzel]

it's just how the creeper is programmed, how it's designed i believe is that the emitter acts like a heat source while the creeper represents various degrees of heat intensity, which is why it 'evaporates' when cut off from an emitter and exposed to a surface area that's not covered in creeper, the heat slowly bleeds away (which is also why creeper never runs out if trapped in a pool with no bare ground showing in the pool)
if you wanted creeper that acted different you'd have to make a new program for it i would think

[TheBuilder]

ive read a topic containing virgilw's description of how the creeper was modled, and he could mabye just add variables like say " when not connected to source and if in large enough amount that a flow would be self heating" in layman's terms that says "if the creeper where to be cut off from its source and its a big enough collection of creeper that it would self regenerate.

[Aurzel]

you havent taken a physics class by any chance? heat doesnt self regenerate lol
but then i'm not a programmer so i cant tell you if it were possible to tell the creeper to do that

[TheBuilder]

im a seinor in high school and im takin physics right now, but, even if i wasn't i know that heat wont self regenerate anyway, but think about it this way, the creeper isn't meant to be exactly like heat or it would just make things warmer. lolz :D

[Aurzel]

it spreads like heat though, that's the point

[TheBuilder]

ya but then heat is not a "being" in any sense,  though i understand wat u mean.

but think about it, it would be another way to add interest to the game.

[Aurzel]

again, depends on how hard it would be for virgil to actually do it lol

[Mrmcdeath]

In real life heat needs 2 things.
1. Oxygen.
2. A fuel.

If a fire does not get these things then the fire dies out. Fire produces heat. Heat has to have a source. Otherwise there is no heat and that heat slowly goes away. Now put this theory to the creeper. The fire is the emitter and the heat is the creeper. If cut off from the emitter then the "heat" slowly goes away. Nuff Said.

[TheBuilder]

Yes i know i should shut up now, but the creeper IS NOT HEAT!, therefore it shouldn't have to act EXCATLY like heat.

[Kamron3]

You mean fire?

_k

[TheBuilder]

he said that the emitters were fire/source of heat and that the creeper was heat.

[mothwentbad]

Hmmm, that's true. There'd be an entirely different formula if the creeper reproduced like bacteria, if we wanted to be somewhat mathematical about it. It would be an accelerating "creep", and setting up your defenses in time would make an even more dramatic difference. It might not be hard to code in, though, just by having the creeper in each cell increase by 5% every 30 seconds or something, on top of all the usual rules for spreading out, even if life isn't exactly heat.

[NoobSauce]

I like the idea of creeper self-replicating.  Yes, the way creeper is programmed right now it is one big heat analogue, but in-universe, it's supposed to be an organism (or, quite possibly, the creation of an organism).  I would be very interested in a variant of creeper that doesn't need other creeper to survive.

Moth ninja'd me.  I say you're gonna need to take care not to let the creeper explode -- remember that real bacteria isn't unlimited in its growth (waste products, lack of food, etc.) and you'll get a very interesting, very tough to beat enemy.

Oh, and I'd advise against green because that's the color of Collectors.

Or, if you want to, you could have a player-controlled creeper of sorts...  at odds with the regular creeper XD  but I think that's an idea for another post.