At the beginning of thrive there should be a way to change some of the features of your starting planet to allow for unique organisims to evolve like the density of the atmosphere to either place limitations on your organisim’s potential size or let your organisim and others become larger than the blue whales that inhabit earth’s oceans. You could also shape the planet into an almost entirely oceanic world with few land masses or a world that has no oceans at all and rather has several 300 meter deep swamps as an alternative to oceans. Things like this could be possible in the final stage of thrive before your species ascends so you can cater your civilisation’s planets to the needs of their citizens via terraforming if the planet editor is acknowledged as a feature in the finished version of thrive. You could also form structures that would make your home world unique to other worlds such as a labyrinth of volcanic pillars near the coast of a continent or island or giant craters that resemble areas where tiny planets have struck the surface of your own planet earlier in its development.
I was thinking of making a topic about this, it’s like you read my mind! Anyways, I agree you be able to at least change the oxygen level, gravity, water content and other such things.
As I’ve mentioned earlier in this thread, I’d personally like to see the system Rimworld uses for pawns. Instead of allowing you to choose the planet’s stats exactly as you’d like, you can randomize your planet as often as you want. This way, you’ll never get the ‘perfect planet’, you’ll just get the planet you’ll settle for, increasing replayability and hindering min-maxing. (Though of course, if you want to mix-max hard enough you could always spends half an hour randomizing the planet until you get something really good, like I’ve done on occasion in Rimworld) Actually designing a planet is more for when you’ve reached the Ascension stage and have unlocked god tools.
Maybe if you complete the game (ascending) you can play again, but be able to design your Planet. Kind of like your life was created by an earlier life form.
I like that idea, but I also think atleast some options should be available to the player. If you combined your idea with a few generic specifications - for example, indicating you want a predominantly polar/temperate/arid planet with stable/volatile geographical fluctuations - I think that could combine replay-ability and player choice. I do agree that the majority of your planet should be variable however, in order to fully use the game’s evolution concepts and keep every playthrough fresh.
Perhaps a combination between Civilization V and Rimworld is a good analogy.
I like the idea of not showing the player what their planet is like until they develop eyes to be able to look at it.
For replayability, though, I think we should have buttons to select certain type of planet if you don’t want a fully random planet.
Partially related - we could theoretically even pick a size of the solar system’s star now (just from an array of the star types like this " string StarSize [] = {O, B, A, F, G, K, M }; " and pick one randomly) and then base the color of the chloroplast on the star (there are actually two ways how to pick the color - see this video, he goes in-depth and it’s a really interesting video). I, hopefully correctly assume that the array itself shouldn’t be hard and then we’d just apply one of the two colors over a gray texture of the chloroplast (maybe the player might even choose, the NPC’s might be seen with either of them). Whadday’allsay? Sorry if the array doesn’t make sense, I’m still very much a beginner.
The size of the star could also determine the distance your Planet is from the star. This would also partially affect heat. Another thing, based on atmosphere composition, the sky should be a different color. (At least I think that’s how it works)
Definitely, he also speaks about that in the video, but that would be more complicated and we wouldn’t probably get to see any effect of that until late multicellular.
- Hi everyone, I recently got acquainted with thrive, so I want to share my idea. I want to offer a more complete editing of the planet and, in general, the system in which this very planet will exist. First, the choice of a star, that is, what type it will be and how many of them there will be, for example, a red dwarf and a blue giant, then what kind of habitable planet will there be rings or satellites and actually what type of rocky or oceanic or even a gas giant, and already from the star and the planet will depend on how the species will evolve. And the last thing is how the color of the soil will depend on the star
The color of the soil depends on the mineral it is made from, it doesn’t depend on the star. Unless its filled with photosynthetic pigment or it is suspended in air.
Maybe as apart of the Planet Editor it could be made that the planet could be on the title screen for whatever one’s current save is. That could be an option for a planet editor to show this idea of mine.
That would be a cool idea! But what would be shown at the game’s first load before you made any saves?
I love the idea of being able to set your planet to a resource lacking wasteland for a fun challenge or being on a rouge planet where it starts out as normal but as your planet loses heat freezing becomes a issue and you can get trapped beneath ice sheets or lose your atmosphere like a insanely hard difficulty
I think that the rogue planet idea would make it near impossible to evolve a sapient species as eventually you’d have to retreat to places which do not support sapient life.
Well the default title screens as of now since my idea should be able to be toggled on or off.
I guess that could work.
Would the planet have it’s appearance changed by factors such as a civilization?
I don’t know. But if the devs could implement that then that would be awesome and a quick way to remind the player of their progress so far.
Artificial lights would in the bare minimum need to be a part of this.
Perhaps in society/industrial/early space stage the player’s country would be highlighted on this planet view?
How much artificial light would a society stage city have? I am fairly certain the steam engine predates the light bulb by over 150 years, arguably much more. An ancient roman inventor had what might be called a small steam powered engine in the first century. The Industrial Revolution started with a different steam engine in 1606, the first light bulb was in 1761, and they weren’t practical until the late 1800’s.
Still, highlighting the area your city is in, even if its not very visible, would be interesting.
Edit: What I would love to see from the planet editor is a handful of meaningful choices like:
- Number of Moons: Effects Tide, Eclipses, Religion, and Night Visibility, and adds Visual Appeal to your sky, as well as giving you something “close” to try to explore in the early space stage.
- Distance from the Sun/s: Effects Temperature, Year Length, and Season Length
- Rotational Speed: (Would replace current Day/Night length setting)
- Axis Tilt: Effects how Day/Night Cycle changes seasonally and latitudinally
Beyond those though, I would be happy to wait until Ascension, assuming the suggested feature of making a copy of planet you come across in space and starting a new save file on it becomes a thing . I would have real fun spending hours designing my own future starting planets then. But having more than a handful of broad choices should probably wait.