With the existence of Multicellular, at least in some capacity, and the fact that you have to select a button to switch from Cell to Multicellular, I wanted to ask if there had been a change in philosophy by the Devs.
Back when I was following the game closely, around when this forum was made, it was said that the stages would seamlessly transition into each other.
I was curious if that was still the idea, and the current system is merely a placeholder until that can be done, or if the idea was scrapped in favour of clear boundaries between the stages?
This is one of the cases where I kind of need to say that, this might not change. What’s the alternative?
If we are talking about the switch from microbe to early multicellular, that is still super smooth (and if we didn’t want to allow the player to stay microbial as long as they want, the editor button could just directly take you to the multicellular editor rather than having a separate button).
When you first enter the multicellular editor everything is the same except when you expect to reach the cell editor, you are instead in the body plan editor and you can place another copy of your cell to form a permanent colony. Once you exit to the environment you start of as a bud that will grow into the full colony. So in the editor you see your microbial cell initially and when you exit the editor you are again playing as the same cell as you finished the microbe stage (or slightly altered if you used the microbe editor part of the multicellular editor to make further changes).
So if that isn’t smooth (other than requiring that one different button press when going to the editor), then I don’t know what is.
The later stage transitions are a lot rougher as they are prototypes. In fact I’m probably soon working on prototypes again and in there going on land will be a button that just teleports you there immediately, which is obviously not going to be the final thing. The plan is still to make the stage transitions as smooth and as little jarring as possible. But we need to accept that change from 2D view and movement to 3D movement with mouse look as well as the move from controlling an individual to the strategy view, will obviously not be as smooth as the other stage transitions.
As long as there are differences in gameplay between stages, there have to be moments in time when those changes in gameplay happen. So, absolutely seamless transitions are impossible, the best you will get is small enough steps.
I think the current transition from unicellular to multicellular (fully unicellular → colony forming → early multicellular → late multicellular) is already much more gradual than you will typically get in a game. Each of those steps is already pretty much a minimum gameplay-change step to take: one cell → multiple cells, identical cells → differentiated organism, microscopic distinct cells in 2D → macroscopic tissues in 3D).
Only in that last step could you perhaps separate the transition to tissues from the transition to 3D, but would that really have a point?
While I think the transition from cell to multicell is gradual enough mechanically, there is currently no incentive to not go from colony to multicellular as soon as possible, which makes it feel much less gradual, the only reason I don’t immediately is bad luck finding other cells. Maybe the colonial substage could last a bit longer? I mean, there are still things like slime molds around today that are still colonial, you should have a little incentive to stay (compared to the massive incentive that is half off all organelles).
Thank you for the rapid response, that makes a lot of sense, I was mainly wondering if this was an exception (due to the 2d to 3d jump as you’ve said) or if it was the new idea, thank you for clearing that up
Actually yes, I do think going from colonial to truly multicellular should take a few evolutionary steps in the editor, not just reaching a set number of cells in a colony. Perhaps the Binding agent organelle could be upgraded a few times to gradually increase the functionality of colonies?
i feel like a stage where you place clumps of cells in a 3D space with a dodecahedral grid(because it is a hexagon at 7 cross sections and tiles infinitely) and the clumps were 3 cells wide and a dodecahedron would be a good way to make going into 3D gradual
I have an idea of transition from microscopic to macroscopic should be a sort of effect in the editor.
Also maybe make the transition buttons use a sort of icon? Like atleast for me it’s a bit jarring that everything is a button with a sort icon. And if it didn’t make sense then just make it so when you hover it, it would show what the button does like “advance to multicellular stage”
Also the advance to land being a button feels a bit off imo.
I’m 90% sure there’s already a tooltip on the button.
That’s the entire point of the prototypes that they are easy to make so that we can have “all” the stages in the game (and not take multiple decades to get to the point where the last stage is added even as a basic version of it).
Do you guys plan for the enviromental tactors like pressure and oxygen levels and such to chabrw during time and affect the players creatures? If so how do you plan on doing that?
Edit: HOLY S- I THOUGHT THIS WAS THE QUICK QUESTION THREAD.
