I would say that changes the question to “Why does this work well in gameplay for these players when auto-evo says it should not”, but I think the answer to that is it does not, really. Because that means it will take a player a lot longer to gather enough compounds to reproduce. Some people just like to make large cells.
I know I have repeated this many in times in many places, so I hope I am not boring anyone, but a “total species biomass” counter simply calculated by {total (predicted) population x size} might let those people have their “Happy green number go up” without compromising too much on the actual population number important for the simulation.
I think that would make at least some difference, not sure if it’s worth the work.
Right now the transition from editor to patch is actually astonishingly fast (at least on my machine, I have no idea how it goes for others), it barely even fades to black unlike the transition from patch to editor. Personally, I would not mind a short black screen before it fades in, could even show the patch name like is already the case now. I would just consider it a loading screen if I saw something like that. (Besides, there’s already a freeze for the autosave anyway)
It would make the experience/transition a bit less fast/“snappy” which could be a downside, but whether that is a bad thing is a matter of taste, I think.
Ah, I think I get it now: Center of rotation has to be the “main cell”, which has to be the first cell to bud off. Therefore setting the center of mass as the point of rotation would require whatever cell happens to be in the middle of the full-grown organism to be the first cell to bud off, is that correct?
Well, setting the growth order yourself would be a nice upgrade regardless, but please allow me another unreasonable question:
Is it possible to change the main cell during gameplay, setting it to whatever cell is closest to the middle whenever you gain or lose a cell? Or is that already what you meant, but you need the aforementioned issue on github resolved so that there is an explicitly set “first cell” since it probably won’t be the “main cell” anymore when you enter the editor?
I suppose showing the raw energy intake with a green arrow next to it might work as well, and that would tie itself more tightly to explaining how the auto-evo system works.
Yes, the rotation center (and camera focus) cell needs to be the bud cell.
The microbe colony code has had so many bugs (and still does) that I’m very suspicious that code for changing the colony leader to be another cell on the fly is not going to be very simple. In technical terms that would require internally to disband the colony entirely, adjust the microbe that is the player’s cell to point to a different object, and then rebuild the entire colony around it, which might be possible, or Godot will just hate it and increase the rate at which it crashes in the physics system, or randomly cause cells to detach again.
Respectfully disagree. The more varied cell types you have, the less of an impact changing organelles in one cell type has on the overall organism, so I think it’s fair (even necessary) to allow the player to make more of those changes. I think streamlining the process of cell design puts more focus on the macro organism since you have more room for error and don’t need to worry as much about the fine details.
I’m afraid keeping the same cost would needlessly slow down the game. Imagine having to spend three or four generations designing a new cell and then not even having enough points to place it.
I think it’s fine as is, but maybe there are alternatives? Perhaps epigenetics gives each cell type its own MP pool or a small amount of bonus MP, or perhaps developing sexual reproduction later down the line could give you bonus MP for the whole organism.
Right now the transition from editor to patch is actually astonishingly fast (at least on my machine, I have no idea how it goes for others), it barely even fades to black unlike the transition from patch to editor. Personally, I would not mind a short black screen before it fades in, could even show the patch name like is already the case now. I would just consider it a loading screen if I saw something like that. (Besides, there’s already a freeze for the autosave anyway)
Agree. I already suggested an animated transition screen to communicate the passage of time and help the player get into the right headspace after leaving the editor. Hiding loading screens is another use for things like that.
The bugged values remain after pressing Next and then going back into the cell editor. Fortunately, everything resets after playing another generation. Unfortunately, this problem is not exclusive to multicellular.
For the millionth time, my goal is to keep the immediate surroundings of the player the same after exiting the editor to keep some continuity.
Sorry, I don’t know how much this has been talked about in the past, but since this is a feedback thread, I second the opinion that this is a bit weird. I’m afraid I just don’t see why preserving continuity over 100 million years is important, though you’ve already heard me say that.
The microbe colony code has had so many bugs (and still does) that I’m very suspicious that code for changing the colony leader to be another cell on the fly is not going to be very simple.
Is this also the case for changing the order in which cells are created during gameplay (currently determined by the order in which they are placed)? It would be nice to allow the player to control that too if possible.
That’s not what I was asking. I was trying to ask if you remembered what you did and what happened in the game when that issue popped up. If you can answer that accurately it can help an absolute ton in tracking down what causes the issue.
A fun update, but I have a question about something: I became multicellular and heavily specialised my colony, there are 3 types of “stomach” cells all with 60% efficiency for the type of membrane I specialised them for. When I go to engulf a cell with a Chitin Membrane, it passes though my Stem Cell (as it can’t digest chitin), goes through into the Lipase Stomach but then ‘exits’ my cell (no longer failing to engulf) and either get’s stuck between cells or shoots out in a way which looks like a glitch. The Chitin cell doesn’t pass through into the Chitinase Stomach even though it is connected to the Lipase Stomach. Is that intended?
Engulfing seems to be really janky for multicellular (and colony to an extent) at the moment, so expect some bugs in there. Granted, focus is on the microbe stage currently so not much usually goes into the later stages for big mechanic changes like this. Proper multicellular digestive system where ingested materials move from cell-to-cell in particular is currently not implemented, perhaps this will be in the coming releases so stay tuned.
First of all I’m one of those people who was about 12 years old when spore came out and was disappointed. I still love biology and I’m now in a phd program. I’ve been playing this game for a few months it is already more fun and feels much more complete than the spore cell stage. Even without any other stages it seems to be shaping up to be an amazing “precambrian simulator” and even educational tool and that’s fantastic. It is what I’ve always wanted.
positive feedback on new version
I made a world where glucose drops off quickly so it reached 0% everywhere, and also increased AI mutation rate. After about 20 generations the coasts featured very large (I’m size 33 and they’re about 2-4x bigger) photosynthesizing eukaryotes with lots of spikes and toxin organelles. I think that’s completely awesome. There were also a good mix of smaller microbes.
First item of negative feedback: too little glucose from engulfment due to being "full"
It seems that when you engulf a cell they stay inside for as long as necessary to extract all compounds. This can be problematic because most of the time they contain much less glucose than other compounds, so you’ll stop gaining glucose (and if you’re a large predatory cell start burning it again quickly) and won’t be able to engulf anything new because your cell is full. You can actually starve while full of engulfed cells and engulfing new ones as quickly as possible.
I understand that if you wanted to get ammonia and phosphate, you should be able to get as much as you can, but since this state of affairs basically makes predatory gameplay impossible (depending on the ecosystem and the amount of glucose in the other cells), I think it’s a big deal.
A simple solution could be to add a button to eject whatever is currently inside you. I know that lysosomes speed up digestion and this problem could be seen as a justified punishment for not investing in them enough, but I don’t think it should be punished that severely - instead the punishment could in fact be that you’re forced to eject it earlier and therefore not gain as much from your food (also just as a note, the speed and efficiency modifiers given by each lysosome seem tiny).
Also, I’m not sure if this is intentional but you seem to get fewer resources from killing a cell and engulfing the remains, than by engulfing the whole thing. Is this to nerf the pilus and toxins? I think it makes sense and actually kind of agree with it, just something I noticed that wasn’t clearly explained. I can also confirm something Rathalos said: sometimes cells that are visually significantly smaller than you are not engulfable.
second item of negative feedback: emergent food webs don't really happen and I think ATP-producing autotrophs are to blame
While on the topic of predation I want to give feedback on what I see as a larger issue and something that will be important for Thrive’s further development into the macroscopic realm (sorry if it’s a little far afield for this thread): the movement of energy across the food web. Rathalos brought up part of this earlier:
As auto-evo seems to have gotten better and we’re moving towards bigger and multicellular player species, it is imperative to design the game such that emergent food webs are constructed without relying on unrealistic free glucose in the environment which should really only exist for the very beginning of the game.
The direct ATP production from iron and temperature gradients not only doesn’t contribute towards food webs, but actively hurts them because it provides a competing safer niche since predators are less likely to evolve to consume cells that don’t produce glucose (at least this is presumably how it will work eventually, I don’t know if it simulates it that deeply currently).
Here are my two simple proposals:
Going off what Rathalos mentioned about organic carbon being prevalent in cells: simply rename “glucose” to “carbohydrates”. That would
Be more agnostic to the alien hypothetical environments the game is trying to simulate
Scientifically justify gaining an additional quantity of carb/glucose above and beyond the stored carb/glucose in engulfed cells (and factor this into auto-evo as well)
Further justify Rathalos’ suggestion that phosphates can be gained from carbohydrate compounds in engulfed prey
Secondly and most importantly: change rusticyanin and thermosynthase/plast (and all eventual forms of autotrophy) to produce carb/glucose instead of ATP directly
Here’s the science behind it: even though rusticyanin and the hypothetical thermosynthase should technically produce ATP and not a carb directly, it would make sense for the organism to immediately store most of that ATP energy, because the whole current situation of only using ATP is not realistic to begin with.
Realistically, there is extremely fast ATP turnover in all cells, which is part of the reason glucose is used in the first place as it is an intermediate form of energy. Additionally, carbohydrates are used for structural/protein modification purposes. Technically yes, those organelles/enzymes would be directly producing ATP, but this can be abstracted out in the game to just produce carbs. Even though it’s an abstraction, it’s actually more realistic.
When I made my world with 0% glucose everywhere, I noticed that total populations of all species combined reached equilibrium at far lower levels than what I’m used to when it stays a lot longer (only 1-3 thousand max per patch even in coastal, tidepool etc). I think this is because
Out of the 4 autotrophic options, the 2 that produce glucose are disadvantaged by the fact that they promote evolution of predators whereas the other 2 currently don’t. In the long run auto-evo may favor ATP autotrophs for this reason alone.
Glucose producers need to invest in respiring cell parts to make use of it which the auto-evo sees (correctly) as extra cost, while the ATP producing autotrophs skip that requirement.
Most significantly, since extra ATP cannot be stored currently the “chemical potential energy” of the environment is not being extracted as efficiently as it could be. My understanding is that the game makes ATP production scale up to match consumption, but if that’s wrong and it is ever actually above consumption then it’s even worse because energy is actually being lost. A combination of these factors is why I think the populations settled at such low levels.
As a final bonus, renaming glucose to carbs and making all autotrophs produce it will open the door to representing lipid species in game and introducing forms of energy storage. This too will become necessary for development of the macroscopic stage (fat tissue), and will further balance predation/make it viable, helping to address the earlier point I raised.
TLDR: This game is an evolution simulator. In order to do that you need robust emergent food webs, and in order for that to happen autotrophs must produce energy that is store-able and consumable by heterotrophs, otherwise there is no base to the food chain.
Thanks again for all the hard work on what is currently and is becoming a great game!
I think this would be a pretty nice feature to add. I’ve opened a Github issue for it:
Well the cell corpse chunks will immediately start to vent out compound clouds which will dissipate. So even if all the resources where dropped on death, there’d be a disadvantage that way.
This is not how auto-evo currently works. Prey items directly contribute to the energy intake of the predator.
I’ll mention again that a full auto-evo explanation would basically just be a transliteration of the auto-evo code into English, which would take a lot of effort to do in the first place and then keep up to date.
I’ll just give the simple explanation that the population of a species is the energy intake divided by the cost per individual. Energy intake is calculated from various environmental energy sources as well as predation (which doesn’t take into account what compounds the prey might contain, it just calculates some fraction of that species energy based on a bunch of variables to give as extra energy to the predator species).
There seems to be a 50% discount on organelles in the multicellular prototype. I think I don’t quite like this. You’ve already gained the tremendous ability to rapidly change the size and shape of your organism as well as change its performance by choosing which cell types to place in which amounts. I think the focus should be more on that aspect, and the modification of cells themselves could stay as expensive as before.
If anything, I would ask for more of a discount, building a specialized cell of any size still requires multiple edit cycles. and that’s after duplicating the stem cell to make a stripped-down base cell you can duplicate and modify into specialized cell which is presently the most efficient way of doing it if you intend to have multiple specialized cell types. I currently run through over half a dozen edit cycles before i even add a second cell to my multicell creature.
I’ll playtest this and see if it’s excessively burdensome or if it’s a good challenge to present to the player if they wish to streamline their cell. I’d like to hear more feedback from more users about this on here. A solution I can think of is having it so that rotating while completely stationary doesn’t take ATP to do.
what about having options? Give the play the option using q and e for example, and yeah, you’d have to change the toxin spit button, or the mouse cursor?
There already are options, you can change them in the main menu and from there on you can also change every keybind (including toxins) in the inputs tab to any button you want
