Ideas for the Microbe Stage [Put your ideas in this thread]

Future Game Microbe Stage
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Having multiple algorithms would also be unnecessary because they would mostly be the same, which would be redundant. I think the algorithm should not be so concerned with the details of the environment. Rather, it should set basic rules which result in emergent adaption to the environment, whatever it is.

I think having detailed physics is overly complicated. The game could calculate movement speed based on the medium in which an organism lives (i.e. water or air), using the same calculation for both media but yielding different results due to the media being different. However, these media would only have general properties, as calculating their exact physics would be unnecessary. That way, drag would be important for aquatic creatures but irrelevant for terrestrial ones (i.e. the degree to which is reduces movement speed would be near zero). A thicker medium would produce more drag, and water is thicker than air. This is where atmospheric composition could be reckoned, I think.

I am uncertain how the game would calculate amphibious species. The algorithm would need to somehow track whether an organism is in water or on land or flying in the air, and I don’t know how that could be done. At the moment the algorithm can safely assume that all organisms are aquatic, but eventually that will not be true.

I don’t think merely renaming months would fix the problem, as they would still be months. A second is a universal unit of time, while a month is relative.

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You missed the part where month by month is only used to detect the best mutation to select. After the mutation is selected a longer time leap is calculated in a single step.

:+1:

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I mean, I guess you could do drag calculations for terrestrial creatures in addition to the gait inefficiency calculations that would have to be done. It would be kind of a waste of time, though.

Each calculation step is arbitrarily called a “month” right now. The breakdown of months into days and the division of a year into 12 months isn’t coded in at all, from what I’ve read in the dev forums.

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It wouldn’t be a waste of time for flying creatures. Drag is important for them.

I hadn’t considered that the “month” was not intended to be a 30-day Earth month. Yes, you’re right, the division of years into 12 months is not part of the algorithm. In that case, I suppose a name change is all that’s necessary. Perhaps vague terms like period, eon, age, epoch, etc. could be used.

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I was not sure where to put this idea, as there is a lot of threads dealing with organelle upgrades, but here we go. The idea I have about the organelle upgrades goes something like this.

Prokaryotic

As a prokaryotic, you would have access to the following organelles -

Proteins (Is that what they’re called?)
Metabolosomes
Chromatophores
Chemosynthisizing protiens
Rusticyanin
Nitrogenase

and Others
Vacuole
Cilia

Now to their upgrades:

Let’s start with something easy.
Vacuoles - Upgrading the efficiency of vacuoles would slightly increase their capacity. Having a vacuole also unlocks toxin vacuoles. One way this might be done is turning one of your vacuoles into a toxin vacuole. Toxin vacuoles can also be modified further, but we’ll get to that when speaking about the eukaryotes.

Cilia - Cilia can have their length, thickness and density (by that I mean how densely is the microbe covered in them), which would affect their efficiency and they can be turned into flagella. Turning them into flagella could be done in two ways, tell me which one is better. The first option we have is just simply unlocking a flagellum by upgrading the cilia and simply getting the option to place down a flagellum. The other way, which I am a fan of, but would be harder to code in, is simply just upgrading the length of one cilium until it’s classified as a flagellum. But I understand that would be A LOT of work and the payoff is not that great.

Flagella - similarly to cilia, flagella could have their length and shape altered in order to prioritize either maneuverability or speed. They could also be turned into a basic pilus.

Eukaryotic

Being eukaryotic would unlock some more upgrades and further flexibility.

Proteins - This is where it gets complicated. One approach we can try is simply upgrading chemosynthisizing protiens into chemoplast and so on. The other approach is replacing these organelles with endosymbiotic microbes, just as we have mitochondria (basically a bacterium full of metabolosomes) and chloroplasts (let’s say it’s a bacterium full of chromatophores) now. This brings up another question that has been brought up before - how should we tackle endosymbiosis? I don’t know. But it is planned, so I think this system might work. Or a mix of those two, where you can upgrade proteins into their “higher tier” version, but can also do endosymbiosis. One reason why I think the endosymbiosis is a great approach is because you could have even more alienesque organelles. What if your “mitochondrium” is not full of metabolosomes, but rusticyanin? What if it has two proteins? You get the point. This would require every organelle that’s accessible as an eukaryote now to have its “lower tier” version, just as (again) chemosynthisizing protiens into chemoplast .

Toxin vacuoles - Being eukaryotic would also allow you to tweak the toxins you produce even more (not sure if you should be able to tweak them as a prokaryotic). You would be able to chose their effect and perhaps even the way they propagate - does the vacuole simply open and the toxin just spills out, or does the vacuole contract shooting the toxin much further, but in a much more narrow line? Again, this would bring neat tweaks, interesting strategies and a uniqueness to every organism.

Basic pilus - Upgrading the pilus you get from upgrading the flagellum would be pretty similar to upgrading the toxin vacuole. You would be able to chose the “specialization” of your pilus - there was dozens of pilus variants being thrown around. Also, you would be able to alter its size/length.

TL;DR

Things that have the Eukaryote Trademark (e) are available only once you are eukaryotic.
Cilia --> Flagellum --> Pilus --> Cooler pili (e)
Vacuole --> Toxin vacuole --> Cooler toxin vacuoles (e)
Proteins --> Plastids OR Endosymbiosis (e)

Also, every organelle could be enhanced/changed slightly, such as the length and width of a flagellum.

As always, I’m gonna be really happy to hear any feedback and your opinions. Thanks for reading! Also, if I made any mistakes in the names of the organelles, let me know, I will edit it asap.

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54

Double-post necro
I would like to know your opinion regarding an idea that I’ve already mentioned in the Quick question thread a few days ago, but I feel like it should be here among other fellow microbe stage ideas.

I will be looking forward to any feedback, questions or improvement of this idea. I think this would not be the hardest thing to implement, would make more sense and would prevent deaths caused by the player not knowing which organelle does what, which might discourage some players.

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55

Yeah this is an interesting idea. Hopefully we’re doing dynamic tool tips for this release which will tell you if an organelle is useless in that biome. Hiding the organelles which are useless would be an interesting way of simplifying the learning process.

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56

I feel like implementation of plasmids could add a lot more depth to the game. If they were a prokaryote only thing, it would give a reason to hold off on the nucleus and open up a completely different play style.

Alternatively they could be a away to give your cell extra features, not necessarily in the editor, like a capsid.

They would also provide extra interaction with cells, other than stay away from the big ones and eat the small ones

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57

Yeah plasmids are a cool idea I think. It says here that some Eukaryotes use them I think.

Do you have suggestions for how they might work mechanically / gameplay wise? So for example I place some plasmids in my cell, what does that do? I conjugate with some other cell and maybe we swap plasmids, what does that do? Do I get more MP or do I get a bonus to the organelles the other cell was using or something?

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More progressive advancement. Games are more fun when you can unlock new things overtime. Right now, that’s only kind of true with the Nucleus

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Hmmm, good question. I think that there are 2 main ways that this could be taken:

  1. When exchanging plasmids, you’d get extra mp, say 20 or so (diminishing returns for balance would probably be needed), on top of the usual 100 as a way to increase the speed. This would make the game feel more dynamic, with evolution happening faster, although this is not exactly technically accurate.

  2. When exchanging plasmids, your cell could get an extra bonus (one time maybe) to make it stronger, for example you could gain a capsid for extra protection against say a pilus or toxins, or some sort of chemical to catalyse some reactions, to increase organelle efficiency, etc. Maybe you could pay MP to make said gain a permanent feature, maybe not. This would probably be more technically accurate, but would take decidedly more work to implement.

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60

Yeah interesting ideas.

We’ve talked quite a lot about MP bonuses. I am not sure how much they would feel cool but I agree they are easy to implement.

It would be nice to do something more interesting, kind of as you are talking about, with plasmids. I think also we don’t have nucleoids and the nucleus doesn’t do much, I’d like to have multicnuleates as that’s a cool thing on Earth.

So yeah maybe some bigger DNA system would be interesting, no idea how it might work, I guess there’s always the dreaded organelle unlocks.

One suggestion that has been around for a while is having “protein slots” in the nucleus which let you choose a few things for your cell to get a bonus for. Could be interesting, not sure. Anyway just thinking out loud mostly ha ha

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Time for some necromancy!

The latest video from Journey to the Microcosmos mentioned that a species of paramecium had toxic bacteria within it that it used to kill other, competing paramecium species. Perhaps endosymbiosis (if it is implemented) should include not only mitochondria and chloroplasts, but also toxin organelles (and perhaps all of the advanced eukaryote organelles).

Also, from what I understand, mitochondria appeared before nuclei and provided the energy that allowed cells to support nuclei, as the nucleus is relatively energy-intensive. If I am correct, then perhaps Thrive should be reworked so nuclei are unlocked after a certain energy production threshold is crossed. This threshold could be high enough that only mitochondrion/chloroplast/etc. bearers could pass it.

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62

I would like to have other colored chloplasts? I dont know how it would affect the gameplay but just for variation it would be niceChlorophyll table
Also it would be nice to affect the atmosfere before the microbe stage.

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63

Processes
You would start with basic processes, like anaerobic respiration, protein making, etc. You would be able to unlock new processes, by evolving them somehow, or conjugating with another cell. Conjugation would not be possible with a nucleus, or with a too distantly related species. This would allow you to unlock all processes that the other cell has, and that cell gets all of your processes.
Endosymbiosis
You would be able to absorp cells, and use their processes. You could change how effective a cell is at something, but increasing one process reduces the others. Endosymbiosis would allows you to specialise different organelles for different processes. You could also ‘conjugate’ with endosymbionts. If you got endosymbioted, you could also still play as the cell that absorped you (Because it would still have your DNA)
Nucleus
You could evolve a nucleus by creating a membrane around the cell’s DNA and then making it a nucleus (Or however the normal nucleus-making way will be). However, you could also get a nucleus by entering a large prokaryote, destroying its DNA, taking control, and becoming the nucleus.

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Do you know its better to post this in the microbe stage [put your ideas in this thread]?
https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/ideas-for-the-microbe-stage-put-your-ideas-in-this-thread/1885/63

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I’ll merge this thread with the another one as this seems exactly the same thing. It’s still fine to open discussion threads separately for specific features.

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In my opinion nucleus should also expand the zooming capabilities, you (as an archea) will see less of the world then with a nucleus, or maybe not it would just slimmer down the possibilities.
And also the toxin agents as some sort of “compound” that would decay over some period of time.
And are there already plans for a sucking pilus.

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67

I very much like the idea of a limited perspective being expanded over the course of the game. I think Will Wright had the right idea with powers of ten. Luca should not be able to sense much. I think the player should be blind to everything until he evolves sensory organs. The player should not know what the lux value of his biome is until he evolves eyespots. This should also apply for toxins, temperature, sound, etc. Humans cannot detect carbon monoxide, for example. If the ability to detect it became important enough, there would be evolutionary pressure in favor of humans who can smell it.

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68

In the shoutbox I asked about hydrogen metabolism, and Hhyyrylainen responded in the quick question thread by saying that he didn’t know about the topic. I responded with a lot of links, and meanwhile I read more information and created two concepts for an organelle I hope to see added to the game (alongside another atmospheric gas).

thrive hydrogenase

This is hydrogenase, an enzyme used by many microorganisms to oxidize or reduce hydrogen. Oxidation is what I am interested in here. Before the photosynthesizers changed Earth’s atmospheric composition, there was much more hydrogen in the atmosphere and oceans. This hydrogen was used by anaerobic organisms to generate energy. They were and are autotrophs and can form the basis of ecosystems. They are the plankton of an anaerobic world.

Hydrogen gas is two hydrogen atoms, and hydrogenase basically snaps them apart and uses the energy from that to drive cellular processes. At the center of hydrogenases (there are many) is either iron, nickel, or both, which means that the iron already in the game could be made more useful. The hydrogen is produced by nitrogenase, which is already in the game. As such, the addition of hydrogen as an atmospheric gas is overdue, I think. Nitrogenase should consume hydrogen sulfide and generate hydrogen gas as a byproduct, and hydrogenase should take that hydrogen gas and make ATP. Technically hydrogenases do not produce ATP, but rather NADP. However, I think this simplification is acceptable due to Thrive needing to be a fun video game. Also, iron is a catalyst in the reaction and is not consumed, but my concept has it being consumed in a small amount in order to create more interactions with iron. Besides, hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria do need to consume iron to begin the process.

Notice that the rate of ATP production in my concepts scales negatively with oxygen concentration. This is because oxygen binds to the iron and blocks hydrogen, thereby stopping energy production. Ultraviolet radiation messes with it too, but I was uncertain if having two negative modifiers would be any fun, so I made two concepts (one with lux and one without). I was uncertain how to represent a negative modifier in the equation part. I think this negative interaction would make the game much more interesting. I had difficulty finding any numbers for the efficiency of hydrogen oxidation. The only number I could find was 10,000 H+ per second.

Here are two sources which contain far more than enough information for Thrive about hydrogenase

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000527281300025X
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/hydrogenase

Here is a eukaryotic counterpart to hydrogenase: the hydrogenosome.

thrive hydrogenosome

This thing is a degenerate mitochondrion that lost the ability to function in oxygen and instead utilizes hydrogenase (and lots of other things that are too specific for Thrive). This means that anaerobes can have a powerhouse too! Almost all the species which use these are unicellular, though there are a few subterranean animals which are entirely anaerobic; they die in the prescence of oxygen and rely on hydrogenosomes like we rely on mitochondria. The hydrogenosome could also be used by a species which only occasionally lives in anoxic environments or lives on the border between oxygen and not-oxygen.

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