I have to say that i love the ui of the signaling agent
- Nice rework for the engulfment. When the 3D membrane comes out, hopefully the dev team will create an animation for realistic engulfment (extending the membrane to reach out to the prey).
- Adding a radial menu for signaling is good. Just like for spamming vocalize commands in L4D2.
Thanks. It took me multiple hours to get the radial menu control done.
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Did you engulf your keyboard?
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I really like the idea of cells with tougher membranes taking specialized means to consume, right now being a pure carnivore isnât really viable due to how abundant producers are.
Also, for pili there really should be upgrades for them that are specialized for defense but donât work as weapons, because every time I try to use them with intent for protection, I end just killing everything nearby that isnât a threat, but still am not well protected.
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This PR looks like a Devblog (or a Mini Update)
I wanted to make it interesting to read!
Otherwise it wouldnât have been really much of anything to look at.
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Hyped for multicellular, but I have a question, from GDD it seems like there going to be a âbecome macroscopicâ button and a hard line between early and late multicellular, which sounds really janky, especially because there is no distinction in real-life; have you thought of any other ways to deal with this? Or at least, is it something you could switch back and forth between in-game?
Iâm not really sure what else could be done, but it doesnât sound quite right to me.
Maybe we can have a database of our ancestors, and we can go back to one of our ancestor. And start a new lineage.
It may not necessarily means we are going back in time, just as we are switching species.
The current idea is that once you possess enough cells, youâre organism will be converted into a solid shape that will act as the torso upon which you can attach complex shapes like limbs and such.
Itâs still unclear if this will be automatic, a gradual and deliberate transition, up to the playerâs discretion, or another stage entirely.
I originally designed the concepts with the idea that the 3D editor would be for the aware stage, and the multicellular would be 2D. But some say that the aware stage should be when you develop a nervous system. Itâs something weâll need to work out eventually
Edit: I completely misread the question somehow sorry.
We havenât really discussed the concept of scale in Thrive as of now, so thereâs not much I can say beyond speculation.
It might be as simple as a slider to tweak the size of the organism, or perhaps something beyond the playerâs control.
Scale can have a MASSIVE impact on the game, so we will probably need to have a discussion devoted entirely to the topic when the time is right. I suppose Iâll put it on my todo list to think up some conceptsâŚ
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I donât see how we can realistically keep rendering the cells as the player gets bigger and bigger, we need to at some point have some kind of cutoff for when big creatures are no longer made up of cells. Some have suggested that we have like a simplified âtextureâ or cell model that bigger creatures move to using first, but this requires extra optimization and work to make sure that the game can work with insane amount of cells. If you as a player play with a creature thatâs like 300 cells, and we want to spawn multiple other creatures of the same size, then we need the game to be able to handle tens of thousands of cells. Currently we limit the number of existing cells at once to a little over a 100 to limit the amount of caused lag. So I hope you can see whatâs the problem.
While doing the prototypes, Iâm not going to try to solve this problem, and instead use the simpler approach of having a hard cutoff when the player converts from a bunch of cells to millions / billions of cells at once (represented by metaballs).
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Actully most likely youâd have to make the switch within a single lifetime, like with external fertilization the blastopore or other rental stages might need visible cells.
how about a skin /scales like texture based of the most abundant cell wall type?
I mean the only real difference compared to just having a normal âskinâ type texture would be that the first metaball creatures would sort of look like they are made up of cells.
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And thatâs why we need a spaghetti lookin creature, to compliment the meatball creatures.
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spaghetti and meatballs, now⌠what about the sauce?
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At such a scale, it would be wise to follow how science catagorizes cells by groups. All life began as a collection of a few hundred cells in the form of tissues. The potential for microscopic muscle groups and proto organs like compound eyes could arise. Creating them from an entire group of cells, and in real time combine them into one " cell ". This would mitigate the processing burdon of a large creature.