I know terrain is currently in the works. Here’s some ideas I had for terrain elements in various patches.
Volcanic vent
An actual volcanic vent. In this case, it’s something in the background below the cells, above which there’s a big stream of iron and hydrogen sulfide, along with anything else that might reasonably emerge from a volcanic vent.
A vent pillar, maybe. I don’t know how volcanic vents work, fully, but I know they look something like a big pillar with smoke coming off the top. So maybe you could run into one where your cell is at the level of the wall of the vent, rather than its opening, and so there’s not much smoke but there is a wall to attach to.
Sea floor
Sizeable chunk of marine snow, although that would only make sense in multicellular stage.
Outcropping of rock of random size and shape, possibly with caves of random size and shape to hide in.
In multicellular stage, some sort of coral-like structure.
Open sea patches
Current of water with a lot of planktonic cells in it. You can move around while in the current, but it’s very difficult to fight or escape.
How much terrain and of what kind is planned for later?
I actually would disagree with that, as I think the cells would be too small to reasonably be able to get to the bottom of a vent, and would likely be positioned in the middle of a stream instead, though it might be possible for there to be a wall next to a stream, which would function as a combination of the vent pillar and the volcanic vent. Of course, it would be important to note that things that we consider as flat in our day to day lives wouldn’t be as such in the world of the microscopic. Shown below is a close up of shale, from claysandminerals.com, showing that most rocks aren’t as smooth as they look.
Considering this, I think that there would need to be many different terrains to even simply add a single type of rock to Thrive, as all rocks have rather complex structures upon closer inspection. This also means that the devs likely wouldn’t need to pay much mind to what’s adjacent to any given terrain structure, at least in the microbe stage, because everything is so small that the chance of seeing more than one structure in a cell’s lifetime would be infinitesimal, unless there are many small structures, in which case, there would likely be a much greater chance of encountering a large amount. Because of this, I think it would be a good idea to consider the intricate dynamics of things such as rocks, and seeing how you could implement it into Thrive.
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Deathwake
(i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)
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