Stage Transitions

This is something I've been speculating on for a while, and I've decided to bring up. It's important we define when each of our stages begins and ends, because these transitions are quite important to the game and will also probably be quite tricky to actually implement.

Obviously, the start of the game is the start of the Microbe Stage. I would presume that the end of the Microbe Stage is when the player first attaches to another cell of their species, which would initiate the Multicellular stage.

Now I haven't seen anywhere where this is properly defines, so my idea is that the Multicellular stage would continue until the player's organism evolves the first thing you could call a brain. This would start the Aware Stage. However, there would also be an important transition from 2D to 3D in the middle of the multicellular stage. The game would go from showing a cluster of cells on a 2D plane, to a primitive multicellular organism in a 3D underwater environment, where the individual cells are no longer distinguishable. Also, the player's character will now be considered an organism, and not just a bunch of cells, so it will age, have energy, eat and drink, sleep, respirate, reproduce, etc.

The Aware Stage would continue until the player's species achieves sentience, triggering the start of the Awakening Stage. There would have to be some threshold of complexity in the behaviour editor that, when passed by the player, would identify the player's species as intelligent. This seems pretty arbitrary to me, but I can't think of an alternative.

The Awakening Stage would see processes like evolution, aging, instincts (like thirst and hunger) gradually turn off, in favour of the transition to RTS gameplay. After founding their first SC, the player will transition into the Society Stage.

The Society Stage would transition into the Industrial Stage with the discovery of the Research "Steam Power".

Again, this has not been clearly defined anywhere, so my idea is that the Space Stage would begin when the player's civilization first launches a Tech Object past the planet's low-orbit.

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We're especially going to have to lay out how the first transition will work considering that it will be the first one we will have to tackle, and I think it will be one of the most difficult.

The OP is how I imagined it mostly.
I would think that the space stage either starts with building and successfully launching a Spacecraft, either into orbit or into a planet. It gradually develops from there until it becomes more Sci-fi.
...It could also start with the first actual spacecraft capable of traveling a decent distance and maybe communicating with other races and the other means of space exploration are tech objects in Industrial Stage.

As for the transition to 2D to 3D, maybe it zooms out, but it is still from a top down view until you pan the camera? And the microbe parts would be slowly blocked out (become unavailable) while the multicellular parts (particularly "fish" and arthropod parts and then land animal parts, then maybe flying?) would be unlocked next.

Speaking of this, I think it would be good if there was an option that allows you to see what stage you are currently in. Of course, this is off by default and is not recommended for a more immersive experience, but it may help for bug fixing or making sure your game isn't bugged. Or whatever else you might want it for.

I imagine the transition between microbe and multicellular like this:
1 Microbe stage: the parts you add are organelles
2 Transition: when you attach to a cell of the same species
3 Early multicellular stage: the parts you add are other cells. Perhaps you can design different kinds of specialised cells with the microbe editor, and those different  specialised cells have different functions (feeding, movement, etc)
4 2-D world to 3-D world: when you reach certain number of cells. We would need here a system to transform specialised cells into organs
5 Late multicellular stage: the parts you add are organs, like legs, eyes or mouths

I'm going to try and address the issue of the 2D to 3D transition.

To begin with, it's not entirely accurate to call this transition a 2D to 3D transition. Although it's true that the current releases are designed in two dimensions, the core concept is that the microbe stage will be in fact three dimensional, but will give the illusion of being 2D. This will be done by having the entire Microbe Stage viewed from a top down perspective, and forcing all interactable entities to stay at the same depth in the water.



In the above diagram, notice that the entire Microbe Stage takes place on the ocean floor of the starting planet. The white line represents the plane across which the stage takes place. If you recall some of the earlier discussions on the Microbe Stage, this is the foreground (or was it the midground?), where all the action takes place. The seafloor below the fore/midground acts as the background for the duration of the Microbe Stage. The player will always spawn inside a rift, as seen in the image, which will act as a natural barrier to the microbial environment (because at this point nothing can go up or down, only side to side). What's more, nothing past the microbe stage will be simulated. The player will only find and interact with other microbes or multicellular colonies. You won't have instances of giant fish swimming into your microbial tidepool and interrupting everything.

Prior to the transition taking place, several processes will have occured:

• When the player's cell first attaches to another cell, the camera zooms out by a small amount. This is not very noticeable at first, but as the player continues to attach to cell after cell the camera will zoom out more and more. Eventually (at around, I'm thinking, 80-90 cells), before the 2D-3D transition takes place, the individual cells in the player's organism will no longer be distinguishable. There will now be a contiguous blob which is the player's organism. This blob will basically look like a jellyfish from a top-down perspective. It will be translucent, with a colouration matching the colouration of your Microbe (before it became a multicellular organism).
  
• Gameplay mechanics will have to change once the player becomes a multicellular organism, and then change again once the 2D-3D transition happens. We can worry about these later, for now I'm just looking at how to implement the graphical and functional changes.
  

So, upon reaching 100 cells in their multicellular organism, the transition takes places. The player does not receive a pop-up or cut-scene, and it will happen no matter what, so if the player doesn't want to trigger the transition they must stay below 100 cells. The following then takes place:

• The UI slides off-screen until the transition is over, when the new UI will slide onto the screen.
  
• The player loses control of their organism for the duration of the transition.
  
• The camera rotates to the side, as well as down, to reveal the depth and 3-dimensionality of the environment.
  
• The camera zooms out to a point
  
• All microbes and entities from the microbe stage are unloaded. Any that are on the screen swim away and fade out.
  
• New entities in the multicellular stage are loaded/populated in (most of this would have to happen right before the transition, so the player doesn't see it).
  
• Other multicellular colonies that were close to 100 cells are "boosted" to the next stage as well with the player.
  
• The player's organism's compound stores must be translated into equivalent amounts in multicellular organism terms.
  
• The game must randomly decide what species already exist on the planet and how far in evolution they are.*
  

*Regarding this, I think there are several solutions. One is to match the progress of other species with that of the player. Other species will only progress to the 3D multicellular stage when the player does. On the other hand, another tactic could be to let AI colonies advance to organisms whenever they reach 100 cells. This would mean that AI species could reach this transition before the player, which would mean that by the time the player reaches the transition these organisms will have evolved even past that. However, this would mean that the computer would have to use some sort of method to find out how much and in what ways these organisms had evolved in the time it took for the player to reach the 3D transition.

To Crovea, Seregon, Dani, or any of the other developers, does this clarify the transition well? Is there anything more to elaborate on? Any suggestions or revisions from the other devs?

Couldn't other colonies have a maximum amount of cells on top of your own.
That way they wouldn't get to big, and the computer could keep them around longer.

NickTheNick wrote:

The Society Stage would transition into the Industrial Stage with the discovery of the Research "Steam Power".

No love for water wheels? Those can lead to complex industry and technological progress, too. A few of those on any fast-enough river, and they could provide the primitive electrical needs of a pre-steam town. Not too efficient, but there you have it. Steamboats and trains wouldn't be available, though, so if transportation's an important factor in the stage transition, then so much for that.

@AwesomeSiebren: Any cell colony has a maximum of 100 cells. Past that it would become a 3D multicellular organism.

@MitochondriaBox: Water wheels come much earlier in the tech tree, which would mean that players would be entering the industrial age at a level of technology equal to the late ancient period of earth's history. What's more, the research Steam Power has several associated inventions that are also crucial to the industrial revolution, like agricultural engineering, assembly lines, and railroads.

I got a very good find. These threads are precisely on the topic we are discussing right now. If you want to partake in the current discussion on the microbe/multicellular and 2d/3d transitions, I strongly recommend reading these:

https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t525-early-multicellular-the-current-concept
https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t397-from-a-colony-of-cells-to-an-organism