A Question About Microbial Gameplay...

How is the evolution of organelles going to work? I've searched around the site and the wiki but I haven't really found a clear answer. I know we're going to apply an "assimilation" of organelles, but to what extent? Are all organelles going to be able to be "assimilated", or only certain ones? Is direct editing going to have anything to do with it? What about auto-evo?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can clear this up for me

R136a1 wrote:

How is the evolution of organelles going to work? I've searched around the site and the wiki but I haven't really found a clear answer. I know we're going to apply an "assimilation" of organelles, but to what extent? Are all organelles going to be able to be "assimilated", or only certain ones? Is direct editing going to have anything to do with it? What about auto-evo?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can clear this up for me

From what I remember, there are things you can absorb which, when you absorb enough, you assimilate that part. Exactly how this works we haven't decided, but this would probably just be your cell absorbing one of them, and the part then floats around inside the cell before taking its place on the cell, going wherever it should be. Then it is a permanent part of your cell. There wont be direct editing, and auto-evo should decide the positioning of the parts.

I'm not sure where the current concept is, but if anyone has a link, the concept should be more complete than my memory.

The Uteen wrote:

R136a1 wrote:

How is the evolution of organelles going to work? I've searched around the site and the wiki but I haven't really found a clear answer. I know we're going to apply an "assimilation" of organelles, but to what extent? Are all organelles going to be able to be "assimilated", or only certain ones? Is direct editing going to have anything to do with it? What about auto-evo?

Thanks in advance to anyone who can clear this up for me

From what I remember, there are things you can absorb which, when you absorb enough, you assimilate that part. Exactly how this works we haven't decided, but this would probably just be your cell absorbing one of them, and the part then floats around inside the cell before taking its place on the cell, going wherever it should be. Then it is a permanent part of your cell. There wont be direct editing, and auto-evo should decide the positioning of the parts.

I'm not sure where the current concept is, but if anyone has a link, the concept should be more complete than my memory.

Is this going to be how it'll work for all organelles, or just certain ones (i.e. the analogues of Mitochondria and Chloroplasts)?

R136a1 wrote:

Is this going to be how it'll work for all organelles, or just certain ones (i.e. the analogues of Mitochondria and Chloroplasts)?

I think it was going to be only certain ones. Some of them will have to evolve from what I understand. After all, some things had to start somewhere. Mitochondria did not just pop into existance.

You've called us on this. We don't currently have a mode for doing this, but here's my idea:

You start as a container. Basically, you have digestive bits in your cell, can split up into more cells, but die if you don't take in enough matter to repair/sustain you, and can't reproduce unless you can get enough matter.
That said, there are other proto-cells, some of which are basically little sugar factories (chloroplasts) and some of which are ATP factories (mitochondria.)
You're a proto cell unless you arrange symbiosis with a mitochondrion and optional other things such as chloroplasts.
As to how that all starts, I haven't the foggiest, probably because no one really knows how all that happened - cells don't make good fossils.

On the other hand, we might just start out your basic Eukaryote. Or we could start as a Prokaryote and just leave integration to chance.

I like the idea of starting out as a basic eukaryote, with some basic organelles such as ribosomes, a cytoskeleton, and a nucleus.

I also like the idea of mitochondria and chloroplasts evolving from endosymbiosis, and organelles like Cillia and Flagella evolving from parts of the cytoskeleton.

The part I'm stuck on is how more complicated organelles such as the ER or the Golgi Body could evolve.

I don't think they should come from endosymbiots since they're nothing like any other cells that I've heard of (Mitochondria and Chloroplasts sort of look like the prokaryotes they came from, plus they have their own DNA).

I also don't think the cell should start with them because it'd take a lot away from cellular gameplay (All that the player would be able to do to progress would be gain mitochondria and optional chloroplasts, evolve optional movement mechanisms like Cillia or Flagella, and figure out how to become multicellular - that doesn't seem like very much to me). Plus, it doesn't seem right for the "origin of (multicellular) life" to be so elaborate right at the beginning - it takes away that feeling of accomplishment from nurturing your simple little cell into a complex, efficient, almost-multicellular creature.

However, I don't see how Auto-Evo could come up with such structures on its own without it being a very quick transition (Generation E you're a simple cell, Generation F oh look you have an ER - It just seems too sudden, there's no in-between).

Does anyone have any ideas on how this could work?

Since noone really have said to you how it will be solved code-wise i can tell you that:

I think it will be solved with dynamically moving vertices, and then it adds more vertices as you progress.