Animal editor concept

Future Game Multicellular Stage
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This video is how I see the future creature editor (I wanted to upload a normal GIF, but it turned out to be so jackalish, only 4 MB for 120 frames, that it’s just terrible). In the upper left corner there is a three-dimensional model of the organism, it can be rotated, but I’m not so good at drawing to depict it, in the lower right corner there is a longitudinal section of the creature, divided into segments (or tagmas, as the player decides, there should be there is an option to connect segments into a group). In the center there is a cross-section of the selected segment, which can be changed (one of these days I will also make an animation with the process of editing a full-fledged three-layer animal with an intestine and nervous system and turning it from an urbilatia into a full-fledged bilateral animal). In the upper right corner you can see the tissue editor, in this case the body has only two of them - the epidermis and the epithelium, capable of endocytosis (more precisely, I make it so in the animation by adding endocytic cells). Having opened the tissue editor, when you hover over an area with tissue, a “plus” will appear next to the cell types, by clicking on which you can create a new cell type within this tissue. Clicking on a cell type opens a modified cell editor. Now you cannot display each organelle individually in the cell, however, if you have one or another organelle open, you can change its content in the cell or part of it (in this case we have mitochondria, smooth ER, granular ER, Golgi apparatus, cell center, a parameter responsible for the size of the cell/its part and also microvilli on the cell surface, all sliders are located on the right). Also, you can change some properties of the cell (section on the left), for example, the ability to endocytose, the ability to exocytose, the presence of a flagellum, the presence of cilia, the presence of a nucleus and the ability of the cell to divide after maturation. Obviously, these are not all the functions, just what came to my mind. Below this section, also on the left, there are tools: a knife for dividing the cell into sections (which are regulated like individual cells), which is demonstrated in the video, a mouse (for stretching and giving the cell a specific shape) and the “play” button, when clicked the cell “comes to life”, I just added it for fun. Above the cell itself there is a section with its proteome (you can put proteins in it, quite a lot of them, which are not basic and necessary for survival, but which will be produced in the cell; sliders determine their expression). In this case, I created a cell capable of endocytosis and the formation of pseudopodia, in which the nucleus and most of the organelles are located in the lower part, while the upper part serves for constant endocytosis of nutrients.

In the tissue editor, you can change the orientation of the cells (for example, all pointing in the same direction) as well as their position relative to each other (for example, to create a complex stratified epithelium). In one of the following videos, I will depict in more detail my vision of the organism editor (using the example of creating a bilaterally symmetrical animal from the simplest form of urbilatia), the tissue editor (using the example of creating epidermis, muscle tissue and bone), and will also demonstrate all the functions of the cell editor that are not shown (not all of them were described by me). I think it will turn out to be a kind of series of videos that I will post in this thread as they come out (with explanations)

And yes, I did this animation for 3 hours (until two in the morning)
Sorry for my English right away, I’m from Russia and I’m still using a translator to write texts, and although I’m already starting to be able to compose sentences, for now I just enter 99% of the text into the translator, sorry :frowning: :frowning:

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It is a nice touch that you put only the blue layer in the last segment. Maybe the orange layer has a gi tract, so the last segment would correspond to the post anal tail of chordates. Plants can use the same editor as animals. For example, a tree may have 3 segments, the lowest segment has roots attched to it randomly (and can vary in size and number depending on how the organism matures), the middle segment is the trunk and it has cylindrical symmetry, and the highest segment has randomly attached branches. The attached parts such as limbs, branches or eyes can be edited on their own and have their own segments as well. This can be iterative like that. Most animals species have a fixed number of parts such as limbs. Every part would be attached to a segment and moving it to another segment can cost a lot more mutation points or it may not be allowed.

It can be made vertical for species that are attached to a surface.

Another benefit of having iteration is that it can be used for representing zooids and ectosymbionts.

So, if we can’t evolve new organelles in multicellular, does this mean that a multicellular species that evolved from an ameboid cell that didn’t have flagella or cillia can’t have sperm cells or mechanoreceptors? Cilia can form Tongue (smell), nose (taste), digestive system,Right? This adds more ways to soft lock or hinder the game. Our ancestors must have had flagella, cillia and myofibril, all 3 of them. Or maybe we evolved from a chimeristic colony whose constituent species unified into a single species via horisontal gene transfer?

Why are individual cells divided into segments? Is it for making polynucleate cells such as muscle cells? Or is it for giving a non symmetric shape to a cell? If we need a cell that is smooth in one hemisphere and full of microvilli on the other, why not design that cell in the modified cell editor from scratch? Why the fruit ninja?

Schwann cells would be oriented towards the neuron cells. They and the neuron cell can be considered the segments of a single “cell” when placing them on a tissue or when pressing a + button for increasing the sensitivity of a sensory organ.

I can’t just decide to allow neuron cells to divide after maturation, right? It would also depend on other things such as how much it is specialised.

Is this for environmental tolerences? And how many proteins would there be, what do you think?

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In fact, this is quite controversial, since, most likely, it was the flagella of choanoflagellates that led to the emergence of eumetazoans as such, although I could be wrong. I’m not sure that an amoeboid organism will be able to create exactly an animal; it will more likely turn out to be something like slime molds than animals.
Regarding the fact that our ancestors had cilia, flagella, and myofibrils, you are partly right. Cilia, in fact, are just small eukaryotic flagella that perform synchronous rhythmic contractions (I could be wrong, but I remember this from invertebrate zoology and microbiology), and myofibrils are derivatives of the actin part of the cytoskeleton (actin fibers move the cell and its cell walls, while microtubules made of tubulin are something like a “freight train” or transport network), to which more myosin was simply added.

I’m extremely unhappy with the current cell editor, so I tried to make something more adequate. A cell is essentially a bag of fluid with organelles floating in it (yes, some of them can be attached, but this is the exception that proves the rule), rather than a rigid structure that can be seen in the game now. I still rather advocate that the evolutionary acquisition of one or another organelle wastes a large amount of DNA, but after that we can, like regulating the rigidity of the cytoskeleton, regulate the number of organelles in the cell. The Fruit Ninja is my rather lame way to make an asymmetrical cell (or, as you correctly noted, a multinucleated myocyte), which I came up with while making this animation because I realized that I couldn’t come up with anything else, if you have any ideas how to do this without resorting to the kind of cell editor we see now, I’m open to suggestions

No, of course you can, but this will lead to the fact that neural connections will constantly be broken and you won’t squeeze anything useful out of the nervous system, it simply won’t work (I haven’t figured out how to do this yet, of course, but that’s a question time)

This is to do digestion. For example, the cell secretes cellulase or chitinase into the stomach cavity, which leads to their breakdown. Of course, we will also need the ability to regulate the pH in different body cavities, and also make sure that different proteins require different pH values ​​to function (and the same with temperature). This will be an incentive for the player to complicate the gastrointestinal tract and divide it into sections, as well as develop homeothermy and endothermy for active animals

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Depends on the body. If we have, for example, some kind of polyp, then yes, it makes sense to make it vertical, however, if we are talking about, for example, some ascidian, then this is very controversial, since it is attached to the substrate like the middle of the body, while the pharynx looks up, and the anus looks to the side, that is, in fact, by making the position vertical, we will force the ascidian to look at the entrance of the gastrointestinal tract to the side, and not up

Just to demonstrate that segments can differ from each other

The plant is essentially structured like this, the upper segment is the shoot apical meristem, the lower segment is the root apical meristem, as well as two “dead” segments above them.

But this is already a bad idea, the shoots and leaves of plants are arranged rather spirally due to the stretching of cells and the transfer of auxin to a small group of cells, and, as I already said, this is a spiral pattern, quite similar to what we see, for example, in snails, although in this case helicity is achieved more due to physical influences rather than the determinism of cell lines and special fragmentation

The limb is a protrusion of ectoderm and mesoderm (limb bud) and, although it often has a clear structure and segmentation, my editor does not imply the presence of fragments or their editing, the limb is a lateral outgrowth of the body, a branch too, the chamber eye in chordates is a consequence of the interaction of the optic vesicle (protrusion of the neural tube) and the ectoderm of the head, which subsequently results in protrusion of the ocular ectoderm, formation of a cavity and lens. That is, neither an eye, nor a branch, nor a limb can be an attached part; it will always be just a protrusion or invagination of the body wall (of varying depths). I believe that there simply shouldn’t be any pattern for a limb or eye. The game may have a guide for creating basic structures such as a simple fin or a lever limb, an eye or a branch, but the only thing that should be generated automatically is the circulatory (without taking into account the heart), lymphatic and peripheral nervous systems, and all those things, since they are too complex so that a person could make them manually, however, limbs, eyes and all other structures should not be generated automatically or have pre-created patterns, my concept is based on the absence of restrictions in what the player does, the absence of fragments - only processes and invaginations ( may have closures, like eyes), and openings like the same gill slits, ducts, etc., etc. Simplicity and completeness are the fundamental features of my concept. You don’t need to create an organism from something ready-made, you are free to create, and all you need is the ability to segment and subdivide, as well as connect different things (for example, segment a limb, subdivide an eye into cameras, connect several segments into one) . In fact, these mechanics, as well as the ability to stretch, bulge and create tissue, are enough to create literally anything that exists on earth, this is “simplicity and completeness”

Why move a structure from one segment to another if you can cheaply copy some segment (this is a very simple mutation that occurs very often, including in people with variability in the number of caudal vertebrae)? The marking of the body, although it has a general plan that is almost unshakable, a change in the number of segments, their merging as a result of ontogenesis, a change in their length or thickness and all that - these are very simple mutations that can occur constantly and very cheaply, even cheaper than repurposing a finished organ into something new. I do not include here the limb of a vertebrate, which comes immediately from, if I’m not mistaken, five segments (this is evidenced by the innervation of the limb, there are 5 nerves per leg, the same with the arm), although the appearance of an additional limb bud can be arranged by adding elsewhere a certain transcription factor, this is what some frog parasites do when they penetrate tadpoles

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