Hello, I have a problem at the multicellular stage. The thing is that when the organism grows, pieces (for example, iron), other cells and many other things often get stuck between the cells. I have a possible solution to the problem: 1. make the distance between the cells smaller or 2. add new cells smoothly, that is, with some animation, and not just instantaneous appearance. Thank you for understanding
4 Likes
Welcome to the forum Ivan!
To my awareness this is supposed to be added in some form before the development moves on to the multicellular stage in 2026:
2 Likes
That’s unrelated. That issue is for an animation when a single cell splits, for example when returning from the editor. Even once that is done it will not have an impact on the multicellular stage.
4 Likes
Welcome, @Ivan! I have encountered a similar problem, but this bug is sometimes useful for entrapping large resource chunks inside your Multicellular organism. Other times, this bug can get annoying. With the previous Multicellular placement bug being solved for the next release, one can hope more Multicellular bugs get solved as development for the game progresses.
3 Likes
So we would have to create a new cell-creation animation for multicellular stage organisms from scratch, or could parts of the post-editor animation in the microbe stage be reused?
2 Likes
Welcome to the Forum, Ivan. Officially, Thrive is still focusing on the Microscopic stage right now. It will likely be some time before that issue gets addressed. Although, also on the road to 1.0.0, there is the intracellular matrix issue, which I understand to be something to fill the gap in between cells, which might be related to fixing the issue you mentioned.
2 Likes
That issue is about the graphics so it will just visually fill in the gaps but there won’t actually (yet) be anything in the physics engine sense in the gaps. Even if there was something in the gaps the way physics engines work that could still trap and interlock physics bodies. Only 2 single bodies, that are made up of a single shape each, can overlap safely and be able to untangle themselves easily. Microbe cell colonies are made up of a bunch of sub-shapes which is why things can get stuck in them in the first place.
3 Likes
So we’d have to simplify the colonies down to a single polygon for a hitbox for the best results…
So something simple like a hexagon?
1 Like
I think more complex polygons will be needed. They might also need to be of such formats that allow concave shapes and forms.
1 Like
I can’t even imagine how much the players would complain about invisible parts of cell colonies hitting stuff if an entire cell colony would only have a physics shape that is a hexagon…
3 Likes
We must make sure “solutions” don’t create new problems.
…By the way, should we want to allow players to purposefully make their organisms be hollow?
3 Likes
I have definitely made multicellular creatures that are essentially swimming mouths. Some tough cells with spikes at the front as teeth with a gap between them and engulfment-capable cells in a hollow behind it. I think that would be a nice thing to exist.
I guess the only true way to completely fix this phenomenon is to have a single hitbox for multicellular creatures that updates whenever a cell is added. Which I am not sure is even possible, or desirable given the different interactions different cells within the organism should have when hit.
Or perhaps(?): extend the hitbox of the cells in the organism to touch/overlap. And when a foreign cell ends up trapped inside, flip a switch that makes it ignore hitboxes until it is completely out?
2 Likes
Cells need their own hitboxes or otherwise large cells from foreign species won’t be able to engulf them as they can currently.
2 Likes