So I didn’t really know where to put this, so I just put it here for now. I was bored yesterday, so I decided to draw out outlines for a scene that could be used once your creature enters the Aware Stage. This is not even needed at the moment, but I still made it for fun.
Edit: Forgot to say, those red circles would be creatures that belong to a more advanced species.
Nice concept, however, there will probably be no cutscenes between stages, just the initial one when you start a new game.
While that may be true, it would still be cool to have sort of transitions instead of a loading screen, but yes, you are probably right. 
The devs are planning on making the transitions between every stage as subtle and smooth as possible. Also, there has been a debate about you being always the first one to go into the next stage, due to time scales constantly changing (for example during only one of your microbial evolution an entire civilization would have enough time to rise and then fall again).
I didn’t even think of that, thanks for the information, I was gonna remake the scene later, so this helps.
I will probably redirect you to @QuantumCrab, as he’s the “cutscene guy”, so you can consult him about do’s and dont’s. Good luck Blendering!
Thanks man 
(20 characters ouch)
Thrive could actually have dynamic difficulty system. Basically, if the player is absolutely apex and is more or less bored, the other species might experience higher evolution rates, but when the player struggles to survive, the evolution of other species slows down a bit. Might be doable even with environmental changes - if the player is doing too well, the conditions are changing more rapidly and if the player struggles, the conditions help them out a bit. What do you say?
oof, I dont like that this thread was lost like this for so long.
anyways I have some suggestions for the UI.
first I think your ATP level should be shown in a way that you can watch it from the corner of your eye instead of glancing over and searching for it. this has killed me a couple of times, either I run out of ATP and dont realize it like if I can only move in short bursts and I end up hurting myself or I have to take my eyes off of what im doing to look at it and i get eaten or I run into a colony of toxic slinging bacteria.
Secondly id like a progress bar that tells me what I need in order to evolve and how much. it can get annoying not knowing how much components you need to evolve and makes it feel like im aimlessly swimming around, it also makes me feel anxious for some reason.
thirdly in the editor id like it if the organelle tool tip told me how much atp ill get for my environment or at least a key like “at 20% O2 you get 35 atp” or something instead of just saying it varies.
that is all thank you.
that would actualy make kind of sense.
if something is working then it doesnt need to change, so say a species is doing real good compared to the player then they wouldn’t need to change since they have the optimal strategy/build for those conditons. However, if they do bad then they evolve more often because they need to try different things to get toward the top
i have a cool idea! (well, 2 actually) the first one is making a new starting cutscene. something i really liked about the spore starting cutscene and the pasnpermia cutscene is it shows how your species got there (in this case, from the asteroid), so the normal starting cutscene (hydrothermal vents and warm little pond) should also show how your species was created. one thing i imagined would be amino acids (or different molecules) forming into the shape of the prokaryotic cell you start each game with. and it could be tweaked so for vents it shows them forming in the, well, hydrothermal vents and for the warm pond, the same thing but in a different place.
my second idea is again, about cutscenes, and it is cutscenes between stages. “But that is impossible, since every player has a different species, and you cant have a cutscene for septillions of possible combinations!” then do what spore did! make what i call a “Dynamic cutscene” basically just a animation. so what i have in mind is: from microbe to multicellular stage, show 5 binded player cells forming into the base multicellular organism with some epic music. from multicellular to macroscopic stage, show the player organism slowly growing more and more cells, until the camera zooms out and we see it has grown into the base macroscopic organism. from macroscopic to aware stage, show the player organism growing a brain (this may change since idk if the player will place the brain, im confused), so instead show the player organism suddenly become aware of his sorroundings. from aware to awakening stage, show the player organism suddenly become sentient, picks up a stick or stone, and the camera fades out. from awakening to society stage, show the player organism standing infront of the society center, and call for other of the player species, and they come together into the society center, forming a society. from society to industrial, show the inside of the factory, the player species first discovering some industrial technology. from industrial to space, thats already in the game (the rocket launch), and from space to ascension, thats already in the game too.
i just really love cutscenes/animation cutscenes, so i would be soo incredibly happy if they added these into the game! (or maybe change them to fit better)
i re-posted it here since this isnt really about the microbe stage only…
I’m pretty sure it’s the fatty acids / lipids that make up a cell’s membrane generally, especially LUCA’s…
Also it takes a long time to make even such a short cutscene, bear in mind.
So would that be shedding 2 cells off the thing? Also the player may enter multicellular with many more cells attached than just 5.
This is supposed to be based off what you got going in multicellular so there wouldn’t be a “base macroscopic organism”
these are just my basic imaginations of what the cutscenes could be, and all your points are valid, i just wanted to say that i would like having cutscenes like in spore between stages
That greatly depends on the amount of 3D modellers and animators the devs have at hand, perchance it can wait till their count increases so that resources can be spent on those cutaways.
ofc, i didnt except them to implement them anytime soon
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those early cutscenes only appeared during aware development
