Miscellaneous Bugs And Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread Thread

The OE CC says that when you design a piece to the end of a limb, they can be designated as a grasper, a foot, or a walking grasper, so I believe that answers your question.

EDIT: But also, to a gamer, what is the advantage of using the pseudopod, aside from its energy efficiency, are there any other things that could possibly endear a player to that form of propulsion?

Immortal_Dragon wrote:

\EDIT: But also, to a gamer, what is the advantage of using the pseudopod, aside from its energy efficiency, are there any other things that could possibly endear a player to that form of propulsion?

Implying casuals will play this game. Their to busy with their "CAWA DOOTY" so nothing to endear maybe it makes a little noise or something.

Jimexmore, if you have nothing constructive to post, please do not post anything. This is a recurring issue with you.

Immortal_Dragon wrote:

EDIT: But also, to a gamer, what is the advantage of using the pseudopod, aside from its energy efficiency, are there any other things that could possibly endear a player to that form of propulsion?

I suppose that energy efficiency would be its only upside. But I would imagine that would be a fairly nice upside, I would imagine larger cells being almost forced to use pseudopodia just so that the ATP required to move doesn't kill the cell. Maybe it also consumes other species of microbes more efficiently that a mouth opening.

But that also means if there's no food nearby then you wait, and wait. And this only applies for larger food objects, since its essentially turned into a vacuole during the phagocytosis. It shouldnt be really effective with the way things are going to function in thrive.

I suppose that depends on the consumption of ATP by moving your pseudopod. But my problem with pseudopods deal with how useful it would prove to be vs the effort it would take to program it. I've heard it could be a default option, but your starting microbe would be fairly small I would imagine.

Doing a quick thought, the only thing I would imagine being the advantage of a pseudopod capable of phagocytosis would to just continually digest a microbe for long periods of time in a life cycle. Waiting isn't a problem as long as you can eventually get that one cell and continually digest it. Looking at this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvOz4V699gk
shows me that these pseudopods can be fairly quick and strong in catching prey. So maybe it would reward ambush style attacks and possibly allow for a greater damage threshold to make up for how slow these can be. So in short, the possible benefits of a pseudopod is that your cell does not have to eat as often as the cells it consumes.

But would it really be worth programming in the end? We already have to deal with our grid based editor, so how are we supposed to make the dynamic cell shape required for pseudopods? How would we manipulate it?

My own thoughts would be that it would be nice if we can find a way for it to function, just to allow the option for players but we do not invest resources in it at this current moment.

Even so, the actual gameplay part of the stage isn't dealing with the grid, the edges will be automatically smoothed out or something to that degree.

As for movement, why not when the player/tester inputs a direction the edge closest to that direction will stretch towards it? I am not sure, I don't have programming knowledge.

Pseudopods could be used to get out of possible currents. Or catch small bacteria. Or spread your agents. Pseudopods should be a bit stronger than flagella or cilla in the sense that the cell would be harder to knock around in a mad rush for the last bit of glucose. Just some ideas on how players might feel like using pseudopods.

Guys, pseudopodia just means the shifting of your cell's shape for movement in a direction. Every cell is capable of it, but only cells with no flagellum or cilia use it. That's basically it.

We know Nick, to my knowledge, what we're discussing is the implementation of how pseudopodia will work(by this I intend to mean coding wise), and how it compares to the other forms of propulsion, since it involves shifting of the cell's shape, and I'll be the first to admit a mistake if it sounded like the discussion of a part.

Ok so if youre saying that it has low energy consumption, even though youll digest a large amount of food, all that energy...well...itll be too much then. Since there is glucose floating around (in decent amounts) like i feel all the phagocytosis would do is just cap the energybar. And let's not exaggerate the power of pseudopods guys. They're actually not that great (except in specific situations, like white blood cells). Your player would want to probably be using cilia or flagella since it lets them explore more, and like isn't really exciting. Understand also, in those science videos we post the conditions are not environmental (not in vivo) its all in vitro. which means there may/maynot be solutions slowing down the cells.
Overall I think like Nick mentioned, looking at it from a coding perspective, it would require too much effort to make a "realistic" pseudopodic like movement that allows "Realistic" phagocytosis. Plus I don't see how pseudopods could evolve to greater pseudopods, which would essentially ruin the gameplay. (It'll be at a point whre everything can run away from you because your movement isnt fast enough.)
I'm not sure how you guys feel, but I say we keep psuedopodic movement as a basic default (to avoid detailed coding), and not go into too much detail, rather focusing on other things.

If it means anything, I agree.

I have a few questions i would like to have answered if thats ok, sorry if there is too many:

1.In the creature stages of the game other creatures evolve to suit their environment. In the later rts stages of the game, do these creatures still remain the way they evolved?

2.Can you name other creatures in the world, in the creature stages and/or the later stages as well? Or does the game randomly name them for you?

3. Can plants evolve on your planet in the same way as creatures do?

4.Is it possible to have another planet in your solar system evolve life, even intelligent life?

5.In the galactic point of view, what are the chances of coming across another alien species? Naturally it shouldn't be too high (like in spore).

Thanks to anyone who can answer these.

Lightning_Scarz wrote:

I have a few questions i would like to have answered if thats ok, sorry if there is too many:

1.In the creature stages of the game other creatures evolve to suit their environment. In the later rts stages of the game, do these creatures still remain the way they evolved?

2.Can you name other creatures in the world, in the creature stages and/or the later stages as well? Or does the game randomly name them for you?

3. Can plants evolve on your planet in the same way as creatures do?

4.Is it possible to have another planet in your solar system evolve life, even intelligent life?

5.In the galactic point of view, what are the chances of coming across another alien species? Naturally it shouldn't be too high (like in spore).

Thanks to anyone who can answer these.

1. I do not understand the question. Of course they remain the same, why would they change. Also, they wont evolve in the later stages due to the time scale.

2. I will let somebody else answer this instead of me

3. Yes, obviously

4. Technically yes

5. Spore had a chance so high that it was literally one of the things that ruined the space stage for me. It would probably be very rare and late-game.

I will answer Question 2.

Yes, the game will come up with a name for you, but you can change it, especially if you're going to fossilize it into the Thrive Encyclopedia.

EDIT: another microbe question from me, with the possible different sizes of microbes that could be made/encountered, and with these microbes engulfing each other, what I am wondering is that if there is some kind of limit on the size of what the player's cell could engulf, and by extension the AI cells.

I have noticed that there is very little talk on bioluminescence. It could be used in almost all stages in one way or another. For example, it is first introduced during Microbe Stage and is used as a very early communication, in Aware Stage it can be used to light up your creatures world and make them look awesome :P, In Awakening Stage it could be used to communicate with other of your species and in late Industrial Stage and Space Stage utilized for genetic engineering. We will most likely use it at one point or another (mostly likely Aware Stage because, let's face it there is something about cool glowing creature that bring out the 5 year old in us :P) and we really have not touched upon it. How will it work? How else can we utilized it?  Discuss my minions :twisted: :P !

You did not need to start a new thread to bring this up, it belongs on the misc. thread. A mod will move this.

Bioluminescence will have the effects of communication in microbe stage. I am not sure what it will do in Aware Stage, it may have a communication effect there too with the Behavior Editor. I don't see how it would relate to genetic engineering in later stages though.

Immortal_Dragon wrote:

You did not need to start a new thread to bring this up, it belongs on the misc. thread. A mod will move this.

Bioluminescence will have the effects of communication in microbe stage. I am not sure what it will do in Aware Stage, it may have a communication effect there too with the Behavior Editor. I don't see how it would relate to genetic engineering in later stages though.

Well I suppose you could create an organism with a form of bioluminescence that flashes repeatedly in a manner akin to morse code for a form of silent yet sight based communication. I am curious how it would be implemented as a form of communication in the microbe stage. Generally there isn't enough complexity for a form of bioluminescence to be used as communication, with most microbes using different chemical if anything to communicate between members of its own species, especially since the eyespot found on species such as euglena generally works in an on/off state (I think, correct if wrong) to determine whether or not it is in sunlight.

But all in all, bioluminescence is a nice addition to have rather than a necessity in the game. If we have time we could likely add it, but I wouldn't imagine this being something we focus on.

But this does bring up an interesting point, are we creating these stages in a manner like a skeletal framework to flesh out after we lay the foundations (all the stages) or is the plan to create everything from the ground up? Will we try to make an indepth microbe stage before moving on to the multicellular or will we lay the foundations of the microbe stage to allow for later expansion and continue to work on the next stage?

Immortal_Dragon wrote:

I will answer Question 2.

Yes, the game will come up with a name for you, but you can change it, especially if you're going to fossilize it into the Thrive Encyclopedia.

EDIT: another microbe question from me, with the possible different sizes of microbes that could be made/encountered, and with these microbes engulfing each other, what I am wondering is that if there is some kind of limit on the size of what the player's cell could engulf, and by extension the AI cells.

What do you mean Fossilize? is there going to be a form of acheology/palentology in thrive (that would be SOOOO cool)

No, I meant that Fossilize is the way creatures/tech the player sees can be saved into the encyclopedia of all the creations in Thrive, since they are all going to be created procedurally, no two planets will be the same.

Immortal_Dragon wrote:

I don't see how it would relate to genetic engineering in later stages though.

In real life when genetic engineering, there is a chance of a gene not making it through. Instead of having to sequins the animal's genome you can just pop out the UV lamp to check for the gene. In the game we could add a 50/50 chance of the gene that you added made it into the organism so we could use bioluminescence to check for it.

That sounds rather complex.

Just to ask, since I haven't found it anywhere, what coding language are we using for Thrive?

Aiosian_Doctor_Xenox wrote:

Just to ask, since I haven't found it anywhere, what coding language are we using for Thrive?

C++ with Lua.

K tnx.

Now I know what to learn so I can try to help in a few more ways.