The transition from microscopic to macroscopic

I’ve been thinking about the transition microscopic to macroscopic and I think I have a good way of implementing it. Expanding apon AstralArcher’s post
Intermediary Species Editor perhaps before and during that stage the player could start placing cells on top of eachother
with 2-3 layers the player can work with.

As the organism gets bigger the camera perspective could shift from 2d to 2.5d and eventually 3d. [Image]

As this occurs the creature gets access to greater and greater bilateral movement. Beaing able to move up qnd down in greater and greater amounts. If AstralArcher’s intermediate stage’s system was made scalable we could edit the transition to be as smooth or choppy as needed.

There is some problems with this approach though, one of them being how this would allow the player to evade their enemies easly by simple diving to s deeper level, this has multiple solutions.

  1. Have organisms spawn at multiple levels
  2. Give all organism the ability to dive down to the same level as the player
  3. Force the player to float back up to their original layer

I belive these mechanics would improve the transition between stages and perchance be a worthwhile addition to thrive, please let me know if there are any glaring issues.

I’m not super sure about this method, would there just be some invisible wall blocking movement past some point? That seems like it would probably be mechanically confusing, if you could just be stopped by nothing, especially because you wouldn’t necessarily have good spatial references. It doesn’t make a lot of sense in terms of irl cell movement either, even single celled bacteria can move in 3d, so making it be some sort of smoothly acquired quality, rather than a switch based on the way the game play has to change, doesn’t make too much sense.

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Yeah, the switch isn’t that realistic I’m mostly just trying to go for the smothest possible change. in terms of the movement I imagined more of a soft barrier, something more buoyant where the player gets pushed up the more they go down, the player character would also get further away from the camera and shaded like they’re in the background. I’m all ears for better ideas though

I remember that sadly, hhyyrylainen said on Thrive discord that a “multicellular intermediate” sub-stage is not planned for Thrive.

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This is a process that is still not known exactly how it happened and many researchers in the world are investigating this, since it is a subject of much research.
This is also a topic that has been discussed here several times and in many different directions. That’s why I aggrea in their position that such a step is not planned.

But it won’t be limited if it’s a possible mod for the game.

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I am hoping that this transistion will be added after the game is “finished” atleast.

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