In my example I think they retain their yellow coloration somewhat well, even though they are green, they are in an in-between of the hues. Plus, it’s closer to the color displayed on it’s icon, which is already green. But if it’s a problem, ammonia could be green instead, since afaik it has no coloration IRL.
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Could we just change ammonia’s color into something more distinct than orange since that’s not it’s real-life color? How far should we go?
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Honestly a perfectly valid fork, obviously more of a mod idea but it could be the start of a general tune-up to make the game match your personal taste and a mod would get outdated as soon as the versions got too different.
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That usually being the very next version.
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Would be kind enough to paste an image of your changed colors for better feedback?
It initially bothered me a little bit when I started playing that the H2S icon was greenish, but the H2S clouds are yellow. I normally don’t notice it anymore since I more interested in what is going on the rest of screen than looking at the compound icons.
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You did not change the color of the Sulfur Chunk, too, right? Since in the top image, it looks like a Radioactive chunk.
It’s a radioactive chunk
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Sulphur chunks might be a problem to recolor, but it shouldn’t be too hard…
What if we recolor the H2S icon to be yellow/gold, instead? That should also work.
I guess that’d be easier to implement, but it wouldn’t solve the issue of ammonia and h2s clouds looking too similar for some…
Has anyone else suggested a colorblind mode or setting for the game?
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We would definitely use getting such a mode with good symbolage for colors, but the question remains if the developers would be willing to develop it…
Perhaps we should move this topic to a different thread since it isn’t especially related to this update
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Well then going back to this update:
Do you think there should exist a nonlawk prokaryotic version of the melanosome?
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You mean just Melanin granules? They are produced in some Prokaryotes, so it should be included in the game.
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The question is if the developers will be willing to add them…
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Thanks for the feedback again.
I intentionally made the effect very weak to not force players to use the system, but I do plan on like doubling the max negative effects for the next release.
Yep, I’m also planning this. I didn’t make the effects more linear as I ran out of time to implement the system fully in time for 0.8.1.
Yeah… I managed to eventually fix the infinite MP exploits with the tolerances, but I couldn’t at the same time get the sliders to move backwards when at near 0 MP. If you move the sliders back before hitting the hard stop, then it works correctly and refunds MP.
Well the cost is the opportunity cost of not being able to do as many other edits. I can crank up the MP cost for the sliders if people keep thinking they are without downsides.
Once in the next release the tolerances feature is more complete, organelles will provide tolerances. So photosynthesisers get UV resistance for free but other cells need to spend a bunch of MP on it, if they also want it.
First it used to be so that clicking them did nothing. I put in opening the evolutionary tree as a placeholder, but the ultimate goal is that clicking on a species will open that species’ Thriveopedia page. The reason it doesn’t do that yet is that the per species Thriveopedia pages have not been implemented yet.
In reality rusticyanin should depend on both oxygen and carbon dioxide. To make it useful in the game we had to remove the oxygen requirement, but the carbon dioxide requirement is still kept for realism and it doesn’t really break the iron gameplay so it can stay.
Quite a long standing bug. I think this is the relevant issue for it:
I thought that it was a fine enough implementation as that way it can hook into the process panel automatically, and we don’t need a bunch of separate code components to track how much radiation something has taken in and a cooldown for radiation damage. That all gets perfectly handled by internally simulating radiation as appearing as a compound inside cells that decays either naturally (causing damage if too high at the same time) or through the melanosome consuming it.
How should it work differently?
That’s always the case when we don’t add anything that breaks the save compatibility or would have major gameplay drawbacks if an old save was continued.
We accept pull requests for fixes and new features (as long as its some feature we are willing to accept).
There’s been mods that have worked for over a year (though the ECS refactor finally broke them). Mods don’t just magically break based on the number of changes in the game. They only break when some part of the game they modified or dependent on working exactly as it was changes.
Yes, but we don’t have the programming implementation effort available to do so. We have had colourblind filters in the game almost ever since the change to Godot. Those could be added as they were not much programming effort.
But if anyone wants to make PRs about improving various aspects in terms of accessibility, I will accept those.
We actually don’t. It was first researched that only an eukaryotic thing in real life has managed to evolve radiosynthesis. Based on that we made the decision to only have eukaryotic variant of the organelle in the game. Only after that we brainstormed up the idea of melanin being the thing the radiotrophy organelle in the game will be modelled on. So it doesn’t matter at all that melanin equivalents exist in bacteria if they cannot get energy from radioactivity.
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Which is hard to predict when such a change might be made…
Ah, I think I see where the confusion is coming from now! There are actually broadly speaking two types of “iron oxidation” metabolism frequently used by bacteria. The first is a light dependent reaction that oxidises iron and uses the energy to produce biomass (glucose), to be converted into ATP by your metabolism of choice. This reaction actually also requires light, but take that as you will. The second is a more straightforward oxidation of iron to produce energy. Can indeed use oxygen, and that’s probably the most effective, but other options are very much used as well, such as nitrate (which falls outside Thrive simulation). So one’s a bit similar to a Hydrogenosome vs a metabolosome. Simplifying a bit to what we care about (what’s within [ ] is for clarity, but not simulated in Thrive):
- CO2 + Fe(II) + light → Glucose [+ Fe(III)]
- CO2 + O2 → Glucose [+ Fe(III)]
or for example
Fe(II) [+ O2 + NO3] → ATP [+ Fe(III) + NO2]
So really, having a simple Iron → ATP conversion is more accurate. (If you wanted to be fancy, have it become more effective if there is oxygen, automatically or via a variant organelle/upgrade). What you’ve got right now is unfortunately the combined elements of two different real systems which, when put together, are actually not realistic.
Summary
Humans actually can oxidise Iron using just CO2 without light! …by heating it to over 1300 degrees Celsius. You can guess that this is not an energy-producing process.
Hmmm, I guess they just stand out compared to all the other features that cost mp to change, but also always have a cost or trade-off. Organelles have osmoregulation and reproduction cost; moving the membrane rigidity slider costs mp, but also has the mobility vs health trade-off; etc. Even the temperature and pressure tolerances on the same screen, added in the same update, clearly do have a trade-off. You can even pay mp to lower your oxygen tolerance again, even though there is no reason to do so.
The best way to think of (ionising) radiation is simply light that hurts you while you’re standing it. With the radioactive material (the rock, in this case) being a lightbulb giving off said deadly light. When things are “radioactively contaminated” really they’re just covered in tiny deadly lightbulbs. That radioactive dust is what you might see people being “scrubbed off” in the movies.
So really the most accurate way would be to have it work like the sunlight meter, but of course have it fill more the closer you are to the radioactive source instead of depending on the time of day. That’s an instant correlation to the current distance, no build up or decay. You would take damage every “tick” (like when you’re out of ATP), with the severity depending on how filled the bar is (probably starting from a minimum value). So it’s the damage that accumulates when you stay to close to the rock, not “the radiation”. The melanosome would be like a chloroplast but using the radiation meter instead of the sunlight meter.
This would actually also have the benefit of giving more immediate feedback to the player: Ouch, too close → player moves away → pain stops right away.
Extra
I guess technically if the radioactive rock was dissolving, you could be absorbing radioactive material in an accumulating way? (swallowing the deadly lightbulbs) That’s more similar to what you implemented (though it would realistically be a “compound cloud” instead of a circle). But really that would happen on top of that direct exposure I mentioned previously. Any significant amount absorbed would kill any cell really quickly, you can’t get rid of it fast, and the melanosome would not speed that up.
Of course that’s just talking about what’s accurate and realistic. You decide for yourselves whether that is worth it. It’s not like the general public playing the game likely has a very accurate understanding of radiation and radioactive material in the first place. 
I suppose if you wanted to something for prokaryotes could be implemented as non-LAWK. It’s not like we have any evidence that suggests they would be unable to evolve something like that. Though to be fair that is also because it seems from the literature that our understanding of the radiosynthesis mechanism is still extremely limited. Seems like on the mechanism so far they didn’t get much farther than “it’s probably at least partially melanin, which might be doing something similar to chlorophyll”.
Now, going back to my general feedback:
Thermosynthesis:
I like it! The system is interesting and different. It seems pretty accurate to what I can understand from proposed thermosynthetic mechanisms (though the game actually raises questions with me about this as a viable mechanism). Unfortunately I think it is a bit weak right now.
- Since you (accurately, I think) only produce ATP while heating up and ATP is (very accurately) not a storage mechanism, there are gaps in your energy production. Obviously you need to cool down so that you can heat up again, and during this time you run out of ATP and have to limp back to higher temperatures while taking damage.
- So obviously you need another energy source. And since thermosynthase does not produce glucose and we cannot convert ATP into glucose, this has to be one of the other main energy sources. This means thermosynthesis cannot stand on its own as a survival strategy. (I wonder if miche auto-evo was written to recognize that same fact)
- I would like to tell you whether after all that trouble the ATP production is worth it, but I am not quite sure yet. It seems like the actual production when it’s working is about double what it says in the editor? Problem is that whatever you power with it, you need an equal amount of ATP production from other sources to cover the cold spots.
Overall, right now I just throw this in sometimes when auto-evo suggests it to keep my population up, and then I hope it reduces my resource consumption a bit as I pass over hot and cold spots unnoticed.
Radiosynthesis:
Putting aside for a moment my issues with the radiation mechanic discussed earlier.
Overall this seems more powerful than thermosynthesis, and is definitely usable. At first I thought it was worse:
- It has a similar problem in that you cannot bank the ATP production in a specific location as glucose for use elsewhere.
- The rocks seem to last very short compared to for example big iron chunks.
- I thought unlike iron, you could not take the radiation with you. It drained away very fast.
- This would suggest it again not working as a stand-alone strategy.
Then I tried it again with a much larger cell and realized the capacity for radiation absorption somehow seems to depend on either size or storage. (even though it’s in the environment tab, it indeed acts like a compound)
- So you can absorb a bunch of radiation and then swim around for a minute while “digesting” it for ATP. Immersion wise I don’t like that, but it does make it more usable!
- The ATP production is actually very chunky, so it feels worthwhile.
When you can’t store as much this is actually more unique, an ATP production method you can really only use while staying in one location. When you can store sufficient amounts of it, it actually behaves more similarly to iron metabolism.
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