They are timetabled to have several ‘sleeping’ and ‘eating’ periods – currently sleeping for a period of half an hour at some point between 12pm and 4pm, eating at some point between 5am and 7am, and eating again for an hour at some point before 4pm and 6pm. In their virtual form the animals will move over the map, doing potential set activities at set different places. If the group has become separated meanwhile, they’ll team back up again when their paths next cross. Once players get close to this coded ‘virtual animal’ these deer will then spawn into the world as real animals – and once you retreat away they’ll revert to their virtual status so the game can take over their movement and activities once more. Though clearly once they are fully implemented the variation will be greater, and also dependent on stuff like the time of year. Our current group, for example, consists of one buck, several doe and some fawns. Right now, one virtual animal is a group of animals that’s been defined in a lua file.

Well basically throughout the day our deer will follow paths that our designers (and modders) can map out in our WorldEd tool – and in the vid you can see a virtual animal following a path.

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