Posted by Matt Raehl on April 21, 2001 at 11:49:42:
Would it be acceptable to have a variable in our Creature class that marked a creature as being dead or not. This doesn't seem unreasonable or unrealistic at all. Say a creature is killed by another, or dies ... It sits there, dead, and waits for the "ecosystem" to "decompose" it. As long as the dead creatures are removed at the end of each tick. I mean, I'm sure carnivores encouter dead, eaten creatures in the wild all the time, and they chose not to eat them, because they are dead and eaten already. Same with herbivores and plants.