Midas is extensively targeted by mining companies for its abundant natural resources, but it absolutely cannot be overlooked for its biodiversity. As is often the case in situations like this, habitat loss and pollution has led to huge declines in plant and animal populations across the surface. Trickster's Xenobiological Research Crew has been working around the clock to collect as many individuals as they can to build up our artificial gene pool. After years of research, we have finally compiled a partial list of species on Midas.

Midean Trudgers
One branch of the planet's two dominant groups of animal life, Trudgers are near-omnipresent on the surface of Midas, even in otherwise hostile habitats. Though they vary in appearance across the globe, phenotypically they are quite similar: bipedal plantigrade locomotion counterbalanced with a heavy tail region and an apparently oversized head. Dissection of the latter reveals that the size is due to the partial incorporation of shoulder and upper-arm bones, leading to the startling revelation that they were originally quadrupedal or - more likely - upright bipeds.

Lacking a mandible bone, the vestigial forearms and hands act as graspers directing food towards the mouth orifice. The digestive process takes place at least partially outside the body with the secretion of aqua regia from glands to either side of the mouth (these glands can be carefully extracted and returned for research or used as impromptu grenades). Aqua regia is incredibly corrosive, able to dissolve most metals and - notably - gold. Perhaps as a consequence of this ability, Trudgers have an astoundingly efficient digestive process and are able to incorporate a diversity of elements into their physical structure.

Their skin, muscles and bones are dense with nodules of metal compounds, making them extremely resilient - not to mention valuable to collectors. A standard mining tool should suffice to extract most elements, but specific ingredients will have to be shipped back manually.

Heavy Trudger -


The plains Trudger is most commonly located along the band of plains biomes by Midas' equatorial region. Adapted for mostly flat, heavily vegetated habitats, the heavy Trudger is heavily muscled, with plentiful at deposits, but lacks in agility compared to its smaller cousins. Their meat is heavily marbled and much sought out - acquire it where possible.

Mountain Trudger -


The mountains of Midas are young, sharp edged and steep - all of which suits the mountain Trudger just fine. Light-weight, agile and streamlined, mountain Trudgers nimbly navigate even the sheerest cliffs of Midas. There is a market for their tough, soft pelts, but in general they're not worth the effort.

Armored Trudger -


These formidable beasts shelter in or near cavern environments, feeding on deep-rooted mosses and mineral pools. As a result of generations of this diet, their skin extrudes layers of mineral precipitate, rendering them significantly tougher than the average Trudger. These organic metallic compounds are highly valuable and should be forcibly extracted and shipped to us for research when possible.

Striding Trudger -


These behemoths take advantage of their height to acquire food from the tops of trees. Their great height keeps them safe from predators, but leaves them vulnerable to concentrated fire. Endangered due to over hunting and collateral damage, we recommend leaving the noble beasts alone.

Pygmy Forest Trudger -


These tiny beasts feed on nuts on fruit in Midas' temperate forests. With their varied diet and short gestation period, they can and will over run an area unless culled. Feel free to eliminate them.

Cave Trudger -


Equally small as the Pygmy Trudger, Cave Trudgers are the dour inhabitants of Midas' diverse cave system. Slow and sluggish, they have nevertheless developed a dense set of natural armor mimicking the rock formations native to the caves. Harmless in and of themselves, they are still worth culling for samples of their tissue.

Bog Trudger -


These dangerous organisms live in swamp ecosystems, half submerged in viscous mud, analogous to Terra's crocodiles. Though ponderous and awkward on land, their real threat lies in their specially adapted digestive glands. While most Trudgers secrete their digestive fluids, Bog Trudgers can expel it dozens of yards. The incredibly caustic fluid causes intense trauma on contact and additional damage as it adheres to the flesh. If one is careful, an extracted digestive organ can be worth a good deal.

Celadwen -


Despite their exotic appearance, Celadwen are directly related to the Trudger family. An examination of their skeletal structure demonstrates multiple directly analogous features, with the chief difference being the production of hydrogen gas in bladder structures across their bodies, allowing them to float. Their legs have gradually adapted from rudders allowing them rude control of their orientation to powerful - if awkward - wings.

Midean Crabs
Obviously not true crabs- though they share several analogous features, including exoskeletons and segmented legs, they are quadrupedal and completely terrestrial, and have a very complicated birthing process.

Rather than being direct live births or eggs, crabs are instead generated in a transitional gestational sac, which is usually affixed directly to a mineral structure. This tough, fleshy sac is anchored by roots sunk deep into rock in a process more closely resembling earth's plants. The minerals leeched out of the surrounding soil strata form the basis of the exoskeletal structure, leading to markedly different adaptations for each species of crab depending on where they are localized.

A juvenile crab, fresh from the the sac, immediately begins the process of gathering and metabolizing any nearby nutrients, whether they be animal, vegetable or mineral. Their shells are soft and relatively pliable at this stage, but there is a market to be found for their succulent flesh.

The transition from juvenile to adult crab is marked by the release of a gestational sac composed of excess genetic material - this sac, though initially quite small, it rapidly balloons in size as it takes up surrounding soil chemicals. With the release of the sac, the crab undergoes rapid hormonal metamorphosis to reach their adult stage. While the adult continues to grow and eat, it is living on borrowed time - the hormonal shift starts a slow process of decay in the crab, allowing it long enough to care for the juveniles before itself passing away. The average lifespan of a Midean Crab is a scant few years.

Aerial Crab -


Well known mostly for their juveniles, which are often visible taking wing at twilight and buzzing around bright lights. Due to their relative weight and velocity, this can lead to damage to telecommunications antennae, and they should be gunned down if they approach settlements or bunkers. Adult Aerials are somewhat frail and sickly, and are especially susceptible to damage to the calcified wing cases on their posteriors.

Iron Crab -


Juveniles occasionally visit the surface, but most often subterranean. Their gestational sacs draw from mineral heavy soil deep underground, leading to some peculiar and impressive adaptations. Notable both for theirs carapaces, which are indeed made of an organic iron-alloy matrix, as well as for their eyes, which are surfaced with an incredibly durable and iridescent lens. The carapace is most prized from adults, while the eyes are more valuable coming from juveniles, due to their pristine nature. In a pinch, the dorsal carapace of an adult crab can be used as a makeshift ballistic shield.

Plains Crab -


Incredibly common on the surface, these creatures are what most visitors of Midas would select if you asked them to point you out a crab. Fragile and omnipresent, most persons would think nothing of blasting one of them away. However, adult plains crabs are fiercely protective of their juveniles, and taking one of them on is a more daunting prospect. Take care when sheltering in surface caves, as they often contain one or more of their gestational sacs.

Grass Crab -


In a bizarre instance of commensalism, the Midaen Grass Crab lives its entire life in the grips of a highly specialized plant. Their gestational sac suspended high in the trees, the juvenile crabs feed on the life giving sap of the Scado tree. In the sap, however, lies the plants dormant gametes that immediately begin the process of converting the crab into the perfect host. From a young age the tree sprouts from the crabs armor plates, the rootlets sunk into muscle and lymph, sapping nutrients from its host. And yet the crab benefits from the arrangement also, benefitting from borrowed photosynthetic processes and a strengthened immune system. When an adult crab passes on, the Scado tree bursts from its corpse, expending stored energy reserves to grow tall and strong so that another generation will take advantage of it.

Plants
Midean plants are hugely variable and have developed a host of highly specialized seed dispersal techniques. This selection is but a small subset of the species on Midas, but its certainly given them a better chance at existence than they would have had otherwise.

Grass -


Green, fresh and springy, this prolific plant can be found all over Midas.

Sticky Grass -


Distantly related to common grass, this grass grows in stiff red bristles, occasionally pushing up a tough woody bladder full of adhesive chemicals. When jostled too hard by a passing creature, the bladder bursts open, filling the air with a fast-setting foam that quickly turns rock-hard. While even the weakest digging tool makes short work of it, many a hapless animal has suffocated and been consumed.

Armor Moss -


Often found growing on rock outcroppings and increasingly commonly on concrete structures, the moss leaches the mineral elements out of its substrates to form a tough, honeycombed shell. The armored plating can withstand repeated bomb blasts or missile fire, but succumbs quickly to heavy diggers.

Shooter -


The Midean Shooting vine orients its seed pod to movement and fires barbed seeds out with a powerful burst of gas. The seeds adhere to their target and stay attached as they travel, dropping off after a while and growing from its new vantage point. Its exceptional motility is shared by several other species on the planet, and appears to be a vestigial remnant of an ancient genetically modified ancestor.

Cannon Seed -


Native to the hilly terrain of the eastern continent, the Cannon Seed has a unique method of seed distribution. As it grows, the tough, leathery outer pod gradually fills with highly pressurized gas. Upon reaching maturity, the pod splits along the centre and fires and aerodynamic seed cone high into the air. As soon as the cone touches air a chemical reaction triggers, causing it to detonate dramatically and fire seeds in every direction.

Spinner -


Spinners grow slowly and deep into the arid soil, absorbing whatever it can. The stalk grows into a tight spiral, budding at its apex into a hard, horned fruit that grows while continuing to build torsional energy. As the fruit grows, it absorbs structural minerals from the stalk until at some point the tension from the spiral releases all at once, projecting the fruit off into the distance.

Flowers -


A variety of windflowers exists on Midas, many functionally identical to those on other garden worlds like earth.

Red Berries -


Seen mostly on lonely mountain peaks, these berries grow on tough, thick stalks. Intensely flavourful, they are highly sought by collectors and will fetch a hefty price at market, even in raw form. Processed, they sell for significantly more. They're also miraculous for medicinal purposes in a pinch.

Blue Berries -


Omnipresent on Midas, these berries taste like a cross between cantaloupe and raspberries with a dry texture like a pepper. Despite the exotic flavour, their commonness makes them low in value. That being said, they are highly medicinal and can be further refined to improve their ability to heal.

Orange Berries -


Found hanging from ceilings subsisting off condensation and mineral salts, these sour orange pods are surprisingly delicious and nutritious, especially for the desert traveller caught without supplies.

Scado Tree -

Tall and tough, Scado trees grow universally in the corpses of Grass Crabs, their commensalism partners. The sap flowing through the tree provides food and comfort for juvenile Grass Crabs, while simultaneously infecting them for the next iteration of the cycle.

Oh my GOD ANIMALS IN CC I LOVE YOU!

Yepppp. Realistically, there's nothing to them. They have no AI or anything, they just walk around and explode real good. I figure they can be worked into scenes, and I'll be adding stuff to them periodically (hopefully), but mostly they're just for decoration. Play around with em!

Very nice.

Lots of content.

this mod has been a work in progress I've been looking forward to for longer than minecraft has existed

so yeah good job on finishing it djinn

That is all. Very, very creative mod. Great work with it, although it would be much better with some sort of AI, like you said.

Poor animals when they will meet with one army on the left a the second army on the right......

Yeah, the ones you said have defensive measures should probably have defensive measures. Y'dig?

EDIT: For Mac users, this mod is FILLED with backslashes. Literally hundreds of them. I recommend a search/replace function searching for '\' and replacing with '/'.

Wow, I didn't know that was actually a problem with Macs! I'll make sure to update that in the next version.

Also yes, yes, I'll be adding weapons to those that need em in the next update, I just needed to release it or I'd never get it out there.

Man, it would be cool if the game procedurally generated wildlife spawns on maps that are set to allow wild life with some kind of lua value.

i think it would be awesome if there was a mode where you have a small squad of lost soldiers and you have to try and get them from one side to the other side of a very large, non looping map. and along the way is plains, caves, mountains, and hills all populated with highly lethal wildlife who can charge at your soldiers and rip them apart with there beastly teeth or alien defense mechanics (shooting infective spores into the air, burrowing and popping out when you get close, etc.) and at one point of the mission a hostile faction base that you have to get through blocks your path to the finish.

i have a feeling that if you add AI and give the creatures special ability's this mod will become big and map makers will love to use wild life in different missions and perhaps even make a mission like the one i described above.

I glanced at all the pictures and thought the mod looked pretty cool, so downloaded it, and went into a survival to see about placing things to see how it all worked. At first I thought the basic grasses and mosses to be kind of cool in now they spread. Next I planted a Spinner and watched in amusement as the stalk rose out of the ground and curled up and thought to myself that this is pretty neat, but then the head fell off and went spinning off and started a new plant and I was seriously impressed by the creativeness. I really like how things spread and grow, but I think they might do it a little too fast in both the individual plant's growth, and the rate at which they create new plants. The current rate is pretty good for demonstrating how cool the plants are, but I feel that for actual gameplay slowing them down a little might be nice.

One addition that I think would be pretty nice is some sort of herbicide/weed-killer/Agent Orange style tool and or bomb. I noticed that the map I was tinkering with was getting extraordinarily dense with foliage and found that Major's Gasu weapons from the Empire of the Rising Sun faction did an absolutely amazing job of clearing out the foliage.

FINALLY SOME BIODIVERSITY ON CC

Great mod, I really enjoy having non-humanoid aliens in the game. Also, you did a great job with plants, now some maps can feel much more natural and un-explored and that kind of stuff.

Hey man, this mod is EPIC... Oh, and i managed to kill well over a hundred of those giant Trudger dudes, just like you recommended. (You DID recommend that right...? Right?!)

So, On another note, I have always drooled over the fossils buried around. I would LOVE it if you could include at least one of those kickass-looking (Fish?) (Reptile? I don't 'ng know.). Anyways, the really dark ones. I would do it meself, but i have NO actor coding knowledge.

Ha, thanks for the anecdote. Yeah, the rates are pretty high as a demonstration, but they're really easy to change and I'll do so as I balance the rest of the critters out.

I'm also trying to find a way to limit the growth of the plants, although it'll be more likely that they'll be in the form of beacons that simply don't allow plants to grow within a certain radius of them rather than a specific tool to get rid of them.