I said that my next post was going to be about the visual recognition system of our creatures, but I’m beginning to realize that in order to understand the higher level functions like learning and cognition, a person needs a firm grounding in the basics first.
That being said, I have compiled a list of all the chemicals presently in the biology along with a few notes. Notes in bold are written by Steve and those which are underlined are from myself (@foggygoofball). You may notice that most drive chemicals are also paired with what I’ll call “precursor” chemicals which generally look like “*ase” and “*gen”. The chemicals in the list don’t follow a particular pattern, I believe that they are ordered in the sequence which Steve implemented them (with the notable exception of “phantin” which is a very recent addition).
The actual chemistry is very similar to creatures, a chemical reaction can have up to two reactants and two products but may have one or none as well(in the case that a chemical is consumed and leaves no byproduct) Reaction rates can also be tuned in order to adjust the amount of time it takes to react.
dioxide – CO2
oxygene – O2
hydroxy – H2O // [Water] (lost in sweat, etc. Gained by drinking, including ‘drinking’ raindrops)
hydrase – // [Water] (lost in sweat, etc. Gained by drinking, including ‘drinking’ raindrops)
hydrine – hydration, increases levels of hydroxy // [Water] (lost in sweat, etc. Gained by drinking, including ‘drinking’ raindrops)
fecanin – // [Poop waste product]
ureanin – // [Pee waste product]
fecoase – // [Eliminates poop]
urinase – // [Eliminates pee]
carboxy – // [Carbohydrates] (in food)
polypep – // [Proteins] (in food)
triglyc – body fat // [Fat] 0.5 is shown as normal sized, while smaller numbers make us look skinny and larger looks fat. See receptor to scale this appropriately.
glucose – blood sugar level
glucase – // [breaks down glucose]
glycgen – increases glucose
gonease – potentially triggers things like lactation and motherly instincts // [post-partem enzyme]
maleate – // [sick_healthy] generic health indicator. Sets facial expression, skin coloration, etc. when we’re sick. We slowly get better in realtime if undisturbed. Max sickness is fatal. As a drive it’s unipolar – any increase is good and any decrease is bad. But as an intrinsic it’s bipolar, so that we might express different things when we’re feeling unusually healthy.
phantin – the chemical which allows for bollys to decide whether or not they’d like to be seen. At present 5 creatures are downloaded from the cloud each time you sign in and depending on how shy, trepidacious or resentful they each are, they may or may not allow themselves to be visible.
mortine – chemical for signalling mortal danger (drowning, starvation, dehydration, severe injury, etc), if it’s concentration reaches a critical level, it will induce death
caldate – how warm or cool we feel // [Temperature axis] Subjective temperature, accounting for wind, etc. A concentration of 0.5 is what WE think is comfortable. So to make a creature that prefers warm conditions, modify the caldate EMITTER, so that a skin locus value of 0.5 produces a caldate concentration of less than 0.5 and feels cool to us.
apogate – // General sense of frustration. Most useful as an affect input to EXEC. Mouth actions cause frustration to rise when an action fails / times out, or it completes but we didn’t receive a reply to the signal (e.g. we successfully try to bite something which doesn’t have a response to that action). Raising frustration teaches us not to try doing this specific action to this object again. Potentially we can use this for other things, but it’s essentially just a way to teach us not to do pointless or frequently disappointing actions
hedoate – pain vs pleasure drive
thymate – fight or flight
eudrate – // [Sad_joyful axis]
dyniate – // [Tired_energetic axis] rises as we rest (i.e. when decay outweighs production from muscle use) Note: if decay is too fast or muscle use too slow, we’ll get LESS tired as we walk!
curiate – curiosity // [bored_overexcited axis]
vigilin – wakefulness, also controls deep/REM sleep
monoate – crowded/lonely indicator
philate – // [dislike_desire axis] Dislike (or disgust) goes away quite quickly and hence merely avoiding the source is a good behavior. Desire is an age-specific desire for something or someone. The rules change over time, so it might be a need for Mom when young, or a friend later, but it could be chocolate or catnip! It’s specifically intended to raise our interest in a specific object
thyogen – flight or fight, increase fight(precursor)
thymase – flight or fight, decrease fight(precursor)
eudigen – increase joy (precursor)
eudrase – decrease joy (precursor)
curigen – increase curiosity (precursor)
curiase – satisfy (decrease) curiosity (precursor)
monogen – increase need for companionship (loneliness precursor)
monoase – increase need to be alone (crowded precursor)
vigigen – raise alertness/wakefulness (precursor)
vignase – drowsy/decrease alertness (precursor)
dynigen – increase energy levels (hyperactivity? willingness to undergo strenuous activity) (precursor)
dyniase – decrease energy levels (lazyness precursor)
philgen – increase in desire (precursor)
philase – increase in disgust or derease in desire depending on context (precursor)
famiate – hunger
famigen – increase hunger (precursor)
famiase – decrease hunger (presursor)
sitiate – dryness/wetness // wet_dry is a measure of water balance, which is affected by sweating and drinking, but also by being out in the rain or going indoors. When it’s raining, our gut actually INCREASES our water level, as if we’re drinking the raindrops. So, if we’re very dry then we can learn to stay outside, but as we remain outside we’ll feel wetter and less thirsty, until we have an urge to go indoors.
sitigen – increase thirst (precursor)
sitiase – decrease thirst/ increase hydration (precursor)
hedogen – increase pleasure (precursor)
hedoase – decrease pleasure (precursor)
oratate – urge to speak, concentration rises steadily until a creature speaks and then quickly returns to zero. (this may not be in the finished simulation)
somatin – // [growth] somatin controls body size, puberty, etc. Spontaneously rises over REAL time. Reaching 1 DOESN’T necessarily mean we die, but represents the start of old age
andrgen – // [puberty] Starts to rise at puberty and stays high (although it might sag a bit as we get old). Present in BOTH sexes, but has different effects in each.
luteine – // [estrogen/testost] Enzyme that in females rapidly produces estrgen. In males it slowly produces testone instead.
lutease – // [stop ovulation] In females this enzyme suppresses ovulation throughout pregnancy.
estrgen – // [estrogen] Female hormone that is produced by luteine and consumed to make progest. Males don’t produce it.
progest – // [progesterone] Female hormone that rises and falls in a cycle and controls fertility (and female sex drive)
gonadin – // [gonadotrophin] Female hormone that rises throughout pregnancy and triggers birth
testone – // [testosterone] Male hormone that starts ramping up after puberty and the ramp gets reset every time we have sex. It’s equivalent to the amount of sperm available and hence fertility.
prlctin – // [sex satiation] reduces testone after sex.
I remember a while ago hearing talk about the parasympathetic nervous system (specifically the vagus nerve) & it’s relationship to the “fight-or-flight” response associated with the sympathetic nervous system. I forget the details, but he suggested “fight-or-flight” of the sympathetic could be combined with the “rest-and-digest” & “feed-and-breed” parasympathetic nervous system could be simplified into a single “fight-or-flight-or-fuck” response.
I’m not sure if that would work with the way thymate currently functions, but I thought it might be worth mentioning.
@robowaifu-technician Whoops – sorry. WordPress wanted me to moderate your post for some reason and I didn’t see it!
Yes, the vagus nerve is an interesting thing! Both the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems involve vagus signals. And I’ll raise your fight-flight-fuck to a fight-flight-fuck-freeze, because playing dead is another autonomic nervous system response. In politer biologist circles it’s known as the four F’s: Fight Flight Freeze and Reproduce…
Really, thymate (in phantasians) is more of a drive chemical. When it’s very low it means they’re fearful, and when it’s very high it means they’re angry. Both of these are bad states, so they try to achieve somewhere in the middle. But this has always bothered me. For most drives and emotional states there’s a fairly obvious opposite. hot-cold, tired-energetic, lonely-claustrophobic, sad-happy, etc. But what’s the opposite of anger? I’ve been trying to divide these things up along an axis, where one end is passive or avoidant, while the other end is active or seeking. So I decided that fear and anger fitted that scheme reasonably well – angry people are pushy and actively seek some kind of resolution, whereas fearful people are passive and avoid trouble. But I’m not entirely happy with that. Anger doesn’t really seem like the opposite of fear.
There have been several academic efforts to categorize emotions, but they fundamentally disagree with each other, and there are always these “odd man out” situations. Many of them can be accounted for as points on a surface, with positive-negative along the X axis, and active-passive on the Y axis, but chemicals are one-dimensional things, so I couldn’t find a good way to make a coherent scheme.
@steve the opposite of anger, that is a philisophical question?
I know of two common muttered phrases as opposite of anger, first would be the opposite of anger is indifference. Meaning anger is when you care to much and the opposite would be not caring at all.
This one would mean anger is misslead investment or wrong predictions of (mental) investment
The other one is the opposite of anger is love, based on the idea that anger can shift into love and the other way around.
But both feel incompleate or missing in some way or form.
For me anger mainly apears when things don’t go the way i want and i am not mentally able to comprehend it. That way the only option to regain control (or the illusion of control) would be anger.
However adrenaline makes this messy, since a lot of people can become addicted to anger because of the ‘positive’ effects it has on the body, during anger. Sometimes reinforces by positive experiences caused by anger outbursts.
Saw this in men and women, however the difference was clear, men seem to like the adrenaline itself and some seek something that can cause them anger because they “need” it to release it out if their system in the same way a smoker needs a cigarette, because otherwise their emotional state is to stable.
With women it seems to be more the stiering up of emotions in general and the removal of predictable behavioural patterns, some kind of novelty seeking. And reinforing that they are still cared about (in a negative way that shifts into a positive one)
Ofcourse my human observation is limited, others might expand on the patterns i observed.
However i think the answer will be found in “lower” life forms, how do animals experience anger? There it is mostly agression with a clear cause. Only our ‘higher’ brain functions allow for anger, maybe anger is our brain learning to be addicted to the positive signals of agressions?
After thinking more than 5 minutes about anger, i remembered an interesting tell tale. Of a japanese racing horse, goldship. A racing horse whos tallent was only matches by his attitude.
After his career, he became a breeding stud, if not the best breeding stud. Once he was taken for what he tought would he a breeding season. However it was ‘just’ fans who wanted to meat him.
He was happy and joyfull there but afterwards he was angry at his trainer for misleading him.
In that case, anger seems to be the opposite of predictability. When stuff are unpredictable (colide with our inner prediction of the world and what would happen) anger apears. However to much predictability is also undesirable, that’s why we seek novelty and love gambling.
this would also explain betraial, a more covert form of anger. Also someone acting against our predictions of their behaviour.
So maybe the opposite to anger would be predictability?
> the opposite of anger, that is a philisophical question?
It is! And you’ve explored some possible answers to it. But I think you’re right – we should look at non-human animals to try to understand its origins. I’m not even sure if it’s a meaningful term. Are anger and aggression the same thing? Which animals show aggression? Is attacking your natural prey aggression, or does hunting and eating a bird feel more like unwrapping and microwaving a meal, as far as a fox is concerned? When I get angry about injustice it makes me feel aggressive, but I don’t actually go out and attack people, so is the feeling I have different from the action I might take in response to it? It’s complicated.
Emotions and feelings are a massively under-researched subject, given that they totally dominate human existence!
@steve as a butchers son and two butchers nephew, who got my first rabbit around the age i got creatures.
the first time is exitement, joy, nosines but later it becomes like unwrapping a microwave meal
however anger apears when something unexpected happend (rabbit died before the harvest out of variois reasons)
and about an other animal that experienced revange (variation of anger?)
my dog jumped in the water killing water rats. However once one bite her in the nose, she did not expect that and was compleatly shocked.
we feared she would stop hunting them, the opposite happend. Suddenly it was personal for her and she made everything to get every single one of them
For most drives and emotional states there’s a fairly obvious opposite. hot-cold, tired-energetic, lonely-claustrophobic, sad-happy, etc. But what’s the opposite of anger?
I don’t really know about this one myself. With colors green & magneta are opposites on the color wheel, but magenta is only perceived because the red and blue cones in the eye are simulated at the same time, like white being a combination of all 3 cones. But white and black aren’t really “opposites” in that same sense, black is just the absence of visible light, not its opposite.
Similarly, there are nerves in the skin that feel heat & ones that feel cool. For an artificial being it’s easy enough to make temperature over a specific value register as hot & below it cold, but in reality the nerves only have so much resolution, so simulating both nerves, the thermal grill illusion, just causes pain. So perhaps too many mixed emotions should just be painful?
I think something like curiosity or eagerness would make more sense as an opposite of fear, if it needs one. I assume that in real life it’s not really a balance between two extremes and more just something you either have or don’t have, but I don’t know anything about like the chemistry of emotions, that’s just what it feels like to me.
The only time I remember getting seriously angry in a way that I could not label as some concoction of other feelings, that anger was caused by a mixture of high negative emotions that in part included fear. I’ve heard it said before that anger is a secondary emotion, which is to say something that arises as a response to other negative emotions instead of something that gets triggered directly by an experience. Think of how people tend to get more irritable when they’re tired, hungry, in pain, or otherwise overwhelmed. Perhaps anger could be triggered to increase when the culmination of other negative/exciting feelings are over a certain threshold?
If an opposite of anger is needed, I think something like apathy, lethargy, or depression would make sense. Like a lack of drive to act; physical and mental slowness, higher pressure needed to initiate tasks (like getting hungrier before trying to find food), that kind of thing.
