Another option for differentiating the mucocyst is adjusting the ‘tint’ in the shader (shader_parameter/tint). Easily done in Godot:
Except tint is exclusively used to apply the species colour. Being able to specify another modifier on the colour based on organelle upgrades requires a new feature in the code that needs bits in quite many different systems.
what about separate models that are the same or similar shapes, and are just colored differently?
So you mean that parts of the model would have brightness diverging from the one of the base organelle?
If there’s a separate model, there’s no need to recolour it. A different texture on the same model would be possible.
Ok, so personally, I would prefer dilgr’s approach to the auto-evo report. Mostly because my biggest source of frustration with the report was simply that it never showed any image relating to any species it was talking about. So, I had no idea what it was referring to. Also, I feel that using a food web approach wouldn’t mesh well with how the other ui is organized, and it would simply get weird, messy, and hard to navigate as more species appear. I think that if a food web is shown, it should take up the whole tab after one species is clicked, highlighting its relationships with other species, or something of that nature.
Also It would be nice if when you hovered over points in the species population graph, it would show you what that species looked like at that point in time.
https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/final-design-for-hydrogenase/1121/8
Fun fact for everyone:
Hydrogenase enzymes are also used by certain microbes to oxidise hydrogen using oxygen in order to produce energy (so that’s the opposite direction from the reactions in the thread). Some of those are also autotrophs. Not really applicable to Thrive, since H2 is not modelled as a separate compound, but still fun to think about!
Wouldn’t hydrogenase be used to create things like hydrogen sacks?
Nitrogen metabolism also.
While it could certainly be a nice addition, I am rather sure that Sulfur Metabolism isn’t on the roadmap so it’s unlikely to get added in the foreseeable future.
First, I was iffy on shape guides, but ruminating on it for a few days, I think this could be a good way to give players a significant amount of creative freedom. Expanding on this instead of directly placing shape guides onto a creature, you can instead modify an existing tissue that is “close enough” and create a shape guide. By this method, the player will mostly be directly placing tissues, orfices, and internal tubes or pockets. Then modifying them into mouths, lungs, eyes, shells, etc.
With this system, you create eyes by creating light-sensitive cells via editing tissues, then place an orface over it, creating a divit, this then becomes an eye template which then can be modified further.
I really liked this method which results in something that feels emergant and results in something that works every step of the way, so I tried theorizing for other parts, but then I realized I had no idea how other things evolved and everything I search up has a lot of information that I don’t have the energy to fact check or dig through, so I think I’ll just leave it right here and hope someone else more knowledgeable picks it up.
What we can be sure about is that there will be lots of code to code for the macroscopic editor to work as intended.