The player should have a name generator. I think it’s quite strange for the player to go through the whole stage with the same species name. Many of us aren’t that good at giving their species scientific names so I think the player should have access to the name generator the ai cells are using.
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I guess we could add a dice button next to the name box to make a random new name.
Edit: opened an issue about this:
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I was looking at an article talking about how people found a 49.5 million-year-old tardigrade fossil in the US in 2011 and somehow came across the topic of ocelloids in certain species of plankton. For anyone who doesn’t know, they’re basically subcellular structures made up of organelles arranged in a specific way such that they are analogous to the eyes of vertebrates. They’re much more complex than the eyespot apparatus found in other single-celled organisms. Here’s the Wikipedia link if you want to read in further on the subject: Ocelloid - Wikipedia
I thought this was really cool and was wondering if anything was being planned for something of the sort in the microbe stage, if it could somehow give a slight advantage in finding compounds or other cells, or if it’s not important/relevant/too hard to implement/idk lol and sensory type stuff is only multicellular and on
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The start of the game throws a lot of options at the player at once. It would help, and also make more sense, to have organelles and features unlock over time, based on the cell’s circumstances. Things would unlock if they could provide an advantage in the microbe’s current environment (e.g. photosynthesis in areas with light), or that build on what features the microbe already has to further adapt to its niche (e.g. a stronger cell wall if the player has one already).
This makes sense scientifically, in terms of species having gradual adaptations for their environment and not jumping immediately to extremely different features. In addition, this would make the start of the game start out simpler and more accessible for the player before unfolding into greater complexity as they go.
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We already have plans to add conditional organelle unlocks to reduce the amount of organelles available at the start.
It’s again a case of us not having enough programmers to implement all the features that have been planned.
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I saw a post on the development forum talking about incentivising symmetry in the microbe stage and I wondered if there really should be an incentive to be symmetrical this early in the game.
Are unicellular organisms really that symmetrical? Many of them do appear to have a circular or almond-shaped membrane, but internally, not much symmetry is seen within organelles and micro-cellular compartments. And when you look at multicellular organisms under a microscope, the individual cellular units aren’t perfectly symmetrical either.
In the real world, symmetry is an advantage because of movement efficiency (make things more streamline) and sensory adaptations (make each eye/ear/nostril see/hear/smell things on the same plane to help something accurately judge distance). I think at such a microscopic scale however, it’s less important to be symmetrical since the distance between each organelle and cell function is so minuscule, and because the world of a cell is similarity minuscule. Much of the “jarring” asymmetrical quality of cells in today’s game appears to be due to the general way in which the membrane is calculated.
As such, I think symmetry should only really be a large factor in the later stages, which is generally where we see the importance of symmetrical body plans show up in Earth’s evolutionary history. After a certain point, you’re basically going to be sculpting a blob anyways, which makes symmetry much more intrinsically incentivised without the need to put in codified benefits encourage the player to be symmetrical.
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I’ve been considering the same stance on microbial symmetry myself, so I’m glad to say that I agree with you
It’s also worth mentioning that something like reduced cost using symmetry doesn’t work too well with the rigid cell part cost and placement from what I can tell. With the parts making a substantial difference in the cell’s abilities and size, it also gets somewhat awkward to balance compared to the more dynamic system we hope to see in later multicellular as each additional part represents a large leap in their respective process.
In multicellular, we are currently looking at a less rigid system where the body is freely sculpted, rather than being assembled from preset parts. So my hope is that system would be more readily receptive to the idea of beneficial symmetry without any notable difficulty.
That being said… I do recognize that there may be a chance that we could make it work in the microbe stage despite my feelings, nothing substantial but I just have a sense that there’s something there. Perhaps something like a symmetry cost reduction that is specific to each part instead of across the board. Regardless, I ultimately feel that it is not worth pursuing at this time.
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I have something i would like in the game:
Add a way to protect against poison. Maybe it could use atp and slow you down to cure the poison. Im getting really tired that later on in the game just getting poisoned by every enemy and not beeing able to do anything since they well… poison me wich usually ends with me dead after killing a few of them
Also increase health recovery its ridiculous how slow that is
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Actually, it reminds me about a biologist I met at a colloquium who stated that “life is about breaking symmetry”. I don’t recall all of his arguments, but he mentioned the fact that life is added entropy, which correlates with asymmetry. In fact, snowflakes are perfect fractals while humans are not really even symmetrical (granted, we have to arms/legs/eyes that are very similar, but not identical).
Granted, it’s not super convincing as is (and I am not fully convinced either), but this standpoint might be worth considering. Some day, though, because I agree with Buckly on the fact that it’s definitely not top-notch priority atm.
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I’ll take a look at health recovery speeds in my balance pass for the coming update.
As for defending yourself from toxins, there’s currently a few ways you can work around it;
- Use pili to block and deflect toxins fired at you
- Use a cell wall that is highly resistant to toxins
- Be fast enough to dodge the toxins entirely
- Have a high enough health to withstand toxins
If your intent is to eat a toxic cell, then you can try carefully poking it with a pilus, or have high enough health to survive eating it.
I might look into further ways to resist oxytoxy in the future, but right now it is not on my list of priorities
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Changing patch substance levels and oxygen resistance. At the start the game should have 95% nitrogen and 5% CO2 in all patches but as photosynthesis is upgraded to aerobic photosynthesis oxygen will go to 5% and 7 or so generations it has a huge increase to 20% and you need to evolve aerobic resistance or you will get a penalty so you only get half atp, and also a permanent health penalty so you need to evolve oxygen resistance. It will only take like 40 mp but you can evolve one in a generation.
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All eucariotic organelles should also perform some glycolisis, similarly to proteins, since they are floating in cytoplasm too.
Welcome to the thrive forums! Yes, I think this is a good idea in some organelles like the mitochondria but not in vacuoles or the nucleus.
This one looks great
I think there should be darkness inplemented in the microbe stage samehow. To make the biolumensent and some light sensitive organelles too.
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That will probably happen with Bioluminescent Vacuole (if thats how its spelled, im bad with long words), or maybe it just attracts other cells.
Is there a good way to either speed up or slow down “Game Speed” similar to the Civ series? I’m thinking influencing the speed at which background environmental processes happen is the best way to go about it, specifically around oxygen.
When oxygen levels on your planet start to be influenced by microbes, I’m sure there will be some sort of background process that kicks in after a certain point which ensures that a certain baseline oxygen level is reached so that aerobic activity is adequate; so much energy is dependent on the presence of oxygen. For example, for an average playthrough, if existing biotic processes do not reach an adequate oxygen level by generation 20 or something, the game will start forcing an oxygenation event. With this, I think a lot can be set up around the system pertaining to game speed in the planet generator. For example, if you want to, you can make it so that the back up oxygenation event happens by generation 10 to quickly get into the swing of things. Or you can make it so that the event happens by generation 50 so that the game is extended as much as possible.
I think once the first photosynthesiser evolves 100 million years is enough to reach oxygen equilibrium. So a game “speed” option would only work by just forcing a specific AI evolution if it hasn’t happened quick enough.
Hello I am new here so I don’t know everything that has been discussed here.
But I like the reply by ThriveLover which mentions oxygen resistance and toxicity.
Although we often view oxygen as something that gives life and life can’t exist without it, it is also toxic. Basically every organism is filled with enzymes and other defenses against oxygen. For early cells, sudden increase in oxygen level would be a threat instead of just a new good energy source.
I think there could be some oxidative stress mechanism - like some specific oxidative stress value proportional to the envirnomental oxygen concentration (and maybe other molecules like hydrogen peroxide, I don’t know if there are plans to add new compounds), and inversely proportional to the size of the cell/colony. If it gets too high, it will damage (or somehow penalise) the cell. There would definitely be cell parts for denfese against oxidative stress - like catalase in the protein category and peroxisome in the organelle category.
Something like that could force the player and AI to evolve diverse mechanisms to survive the high amounts of oxygen - some could stay anaerobic and live in low oxygen areas, some would invest in molecular defenses, some mitochondria, and embrace their new oxygen overlords. Some would have to get bigger or make multiple cells closer together to reduce the impact of the oxygen. Multicellularism might have actually been a reaction to the oxygen produced by photosynthesis
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So after playing a game for a while, my game lagged hard as my cell was massive and one cell’s population is in the millions. I think a lot of this could be solved by simplifying the cell visuals. Just because a cell has 20 organelles does not mean it has to show all of them. Simply having 1 show if they have it and then showing a few of the most common as large organelles will work just fine. For those 1 offs (nucleus excluded), just make them small.
As for the massive amounts of entities, most games only mark their positions unless they are in view of the player so no models need to be rendered. Not sure if thrive does this but if it doesn’t, that will fix most performance issues.
Edit: Forgot to mention scaling storage size. I think a good way to fix the lag caused by this at larger sizes is to remove the big bubble and just add it into to left sidebar. To check progress, you just see how near it is to a line on the bar that tells you the amount required to split. Once all requirements are met, then the split button appears. I think the issue right now is that ammonia and phosphate go into the left bar but are then subtracted to go into the wheel causing a lot of extra background use that is unessasary.