What would be the benefit from a gameplay perspective to make it so that the glucose stops filling at an arbitrary point? Arbitrary in the sense that I’m almost certain we’ll get a bunch of questions about this from the community wondering why they can’t get their glucose filled up all the way. Getting the average player to understand and to use the process panel I think needs to be the first hurdle before considering this kind of change as I see this as mostly just increasing the game complexity without many new interesting gameplay aspects.
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If we remove the more complex forms of glucose storage, then the fix to consuming glucose to produce glucose could be as simple as limiting the cells ability to use gluconeogenesis to only on whatever complex carbohydrates they consume. This kinda already exists in the game as digestion, but I think calling it gluconeogenesis in prokaryotes is somewhat more realistic. For eukaryotes, the lysozomes would break down even more complex structures but the carbohydrates from the lysozomes would be broken down into glucose by gluconeogenesis. I tried making a graph with pyruvate being produced from glycolysis, but this would just create the loop again.
And yeah, excess ATP would be exactly what you said: Any ATP produced when the ATP bar is full and cannot be filled anymore would go towards complex carbohydrate storage, or if pyruvate were involved, gluconeogenesis for glucose storage. I’ll upload my other graph with pyruvate (but like I said I think this only makes the loop worse rn).
I’m starting to think that the main focus should be on separating light-capture and the calvin-cycle, allowing anyone to pick their autotrophic energy source while only needing RuBisCo to store that energy as glucose. This is where I started from with Rustycyanine and the more I think about it, the more feasable this part seems. Gluconeogenesis probably is just extra fluff until more complex forms of energy storage are available.
I would argue however that the complex carbohydrate storage is useful for cells that have to survive without autorophy or even autotrophs that have to survive the night. Glucose runs out far too fast, and storing it in a more compact form without needing to make your cell bigger and slower is a huge advantage. This was the problem I was facing without any chloroplasts or chemoplasts in the game. It’s fine to be a heterotroph in the early game without this, but later on glucose runs out suuuuper fast.
Summary:
- focus on separating autotrophic energy capture (thylakoids) and calvin cycle (RuBisCo)
- separate glycolysis (metabolosomes) and digestion(lipids, proteins, nucleotides like DNA etc)/gluconeogenesis (PEP carboxykinase).
This would mean both forms of energy production would be more niche, more separated, and be a bit later in the early game. This would work since glucose is freely available in the environment in the early game. It also introduces the a good pathway towards complex carbohydrate energy storage and a physical, visual reason for prokaryotic cells not being able to digest the same structures as eukaryotes can with lysozomes. I’ll try and make this a bit more obvious in a new map when I have time.
In the meantime, I found a website that can let us all collaborate on a map like this for free. I just made the bare bones of the diagram here, feel free to complete it and move things around to make it make sense. Add notes, ideas, problems etc. I’ll post it in the discord too.
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Now that I have had some sleep, I honestly don’t really think there is much of a benefit to never reaching 100% glucose. I’m not really sure what I was thinking. The benefit is more so in freeing up excess ATP to be used in other activities as energy storage becomes less urgent for the organism. This might make it so the player doesn’t naturally reach 100% glucose on their own, but could probably easily reach it by consuming prey or something otherwise.
I’m also pretty concerned about complexity… Right now we are looking at increased flexibility with glucose production and perhaps a greater sense of progression at the cost of requiring players to add yet another part to their cell to function well, and process interactions that might not be clear to players. There’s also the matter of totally rebalancing the game around a new reality where more production parts could potentially create ATP.
Is it worth it?
On the other hand, we could always just make all processes produce glucose from the get go. It’s the boring way, sure, but it’s easy for players to understand and avoids a bit of complexity.
Is that what we would want?
Something we could try prototyping I suppose.
I think
needs to be implemented first before it is really fruitful to continue this discussion.
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Oh damn, I didn’t realize you had already had all of these thoughts before! This balancing looks really good and was exactly the what I was thinking. Should I keep working on my own python model for the whole system? I think I can make it work I just need time. Then someone who knows C++ can implement it.
You can keep working on it, but keep in mind that I really don’t want to skip doing the simpler change that was thought up the last time this topic of glucose storage stuff was brought up. I think we’ll get a bunch of insight regarding this topic if that gluconeogenesis organelle is added and we let the players experience it and report back how it changed the game.
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Simple is the goal! Imo having RuBisCo for CO2 conversion to glucose as well as Glucose Phosphatase would be 10/10. But as you say, it might be hard for me to see how user-friendly that might be until it’s tested.
Looked a bit more at this from a theory side, and gluconeogenesis takes place in the cytoplasm of bacteria and both in the cytoplasm and in the mitochondria in eukaryotes from what I have gathered. If it makes more sense to use a completely different organelle in the game then continue, but include a protein complex for prokaryotes maybe?
I’d love to write small descriptions of the real life equivalents to the game’s version of metabolism to keep up with the educational side of things if this is something you think may work.
If we want to add a microbe feature that is not based on a new organelle (here I use the organelle to refer to all placeable organelles and also prokaryotic parts), we need new systems design for the editor and mutations etc. So it is much, much easier add a new organelle for a new feature. That’s why the gluconeogenesis feature is specified as being done by a new organelle that is to be added to the game. I personally wouldn’t lock that part behind the nucleus so all microbes would be allowed to have that part.
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