So with patches implemented into the game and the planet generator hopefully coming soon, I thought it was about time the community came up with some more cool ideas for patches. Useful information to think about is:
How could the patch be generated realistically, i.e. what kind of geographical or other effect would cause this patch to exist? What are its variables, based on the ones already in the game? And: How will this patch affect gameplay, what makes it cool to play in? To be clear, I’ll mostly be talking about stuff useful for the microbe stage (water stuff), but you can post any biome in this thread.
Here are some of my ideas:
Atoll
An atoll is created when a ring of land appears in the middle of a larger body of water, seperating the insides of the ring from the rest of the ocean. Atolls are shallow, allowing lots of light to reach them. On Earth, they are primarily sustained by coral reefs, but in Thrive that will likely be different; Coral Reefs don’t exist yet in the cell stage. Without Coral, it is unlikely that an Atoll wil persist for very long (certainly not longer than one generation). They can still be created though: Volcanism can create temporary Atolls on planets with geological activity, and planets without that might have Atolls created by meteorite impacts creating craters.
Gameplay-wise I like the idea of Atolls as a temporary refuge. An Atoll won’t realistically last more than a single editor cycle, but it can give the player a useful place to migrate to to hide from predators for a generation. I imagine the UI would include some sort of countdown clock to indicate that the population of this patch will be dumped back where they came from when the atoll dissapears.
Beach
As the tides roll in they can moisturise the sand, creating a unique enviroment that acts as an intermediary between sea and land. IRL many creatures both micro- and macroscopic make their home in this unique enviroment. In Thrive I imagine beaches being accesible from the Estuary and Tidepool patches. They would be largely filled up with grains of sand (see the Microbe Scaling thread), giving microbes with pseudopods or movement pili ( How Bacteria “Walk” Across a Surface | The Scientist Magazine® (the-scientist.com)) an opportunity to ‘walk’ along surfaces. For most microbes the sand grains are a double-edged sword: They will limit movement, making it harder to get to compounds, but also harder for predators to get to you. I think it would be exciting to see what sort of microbes evolve on the beach, and how we can make the AI handle it.
What other ideas do you have for interesting patches? Lagoons, Banks, Lakes, Rivers? Ocean floors at more different depths? Let’s see how many biomes we can come up with.
The idea, which have been discussed many many times - hydrothermal vents. Ideal environment for chemoautotrophic organisms. And for many other creatures, who will eat them. I suppose, you know about them a lot, so, i’ll not tell about them.
Ice biom. I think, it should be appreciated. What’s interesting can it have?
New elements of gameplay. Cold environment creates many problems, you should solve. For photoautotrophic organism: lack of light because of ice. Why not? For every organism is big problem - cold. There are many different solvings: cryoprotectors to be harder than water, simple running to the next warm vent, using chemical reactions, simple staying at place of warm vent. I’m sure, if to watch more thoroughly, we find a lot of new things, we can realise.
New level of difficulty. Everything in 1 needs a lot of mutations, which cannot be done at one round.
I had something on mind but forgot…
Realism may be?
Anyway, i think ice biom is really interesting. In not nearest future…
Well those aren’t really biomes in the Thrive sense of a type of patch. A forest would start out as a patch of a geographically occurring biome. Only if plants naturally happen to grow there a lot would it become a forest. Life in Thrive is procedurally generated so it wouldn’t really make sense to hardcode it into biomes.
More than as i understand, we tell hete mostly about bioms in cell ctage.
doomlightning
(The Invisible Aztec Dodo God. Real Plant Enslaver, Ltd.)
6
I was thinking of 3 biomes that might fit the cellular phase:
Blue holes:
They are a type of open cave that are formed on beaches and filled with water, some because of low tide sometimes detaching from the sea and forming a kind of lake until the tide comes.
They are very deep and if I remember, sometimes a vacuum is created because of the changes in the tides.
Tombolo:
When alluvium accumulates in a kind of natural breakwater or in a shallow place, a tombolo is formed: a type of land bridge that blocks passage and if many are formed in the same place, then a lagoon is formed from them.
They are relatively shallow areas and quite beautiful
Gat:
Type of area area is strongly affected by the tidal effect. Flooded at a certain time, and during low tide, it is completely dry, it is a kind of beach that was proposed earlier, only more extreme.
Some of them can fit in with some of the days suggested earlier, and I think that will add beauty to the world
Elce interesting idea i’ve got when read lightning - grotto. It is as the microlocation with its bioms. Underwater caves with air pocket are really interesting.
They can have different air, ground. At future in multicellular stage it can be the first stage of protection against predators and exit to earth.