Most members agree that Thrive should attempt to be as realistic as possible, but there are many cases we need to sacrifice some of that realism to make a fun game. We should create a list somewhere for players wishing to know the inaccuracies and for us to know for the future when we try finding and removing unnecessary sacrifices.
This has been made into a wiki post, so feel free to edit this list. It is also on the wiki.
Types:
Unrealistic adaptations or mechanics-driven inaccuracies are deviations from what is possible either to make the game richer.
Inaccurate adaptations or simplicity-driven inaccuracies are simplifications of the reality for either computational purposes or simply to avoid a ton of micromanagement because this is unfriendly to most players.
Unrealistic adaptations:
Color - irl cells are clear if they don’t have pigment and are hard to see without dye.
Binding Agents - they don’t work like in the game, they get produced in the Golgi Body, get sent right to the membrane, and create an extracellular matrix.
Toxin makes no physical sense whatsoever. Toxin would not be shot in bolts like that without some dedicated mechanism. In reality, the toxin would just be a cloud, or a directed stream (maybe).
Proteins should be like specks of dust, in-game they are very big.
Signaling Agent does not exist. At the very least it doesn’t work like in-game. Ever
Reproduction - the way it works in-game is incorrect and bad and more resemblant to cancer. Mitosis happens all at once in a very controlled fashion IRL.
Inaccurate adaptations:
There are tons of microbes in a single place, not a handful.
Real evolution algorithms are very sophisticated so Auto Evo isn’t the best representation of an Evo sim.
Color - irl cells are clear if they don’t have pigment and hard to see without dye.
Binding Agents - they don’t work like in the game, they get produced in the Golgi Body, get sent right to the membrane, and create an extracellular matrix.
Proteins - should be like specks of dust, in game they are very big.
Amount - usually there are tons of microbes in a single place, not a handful.
Toxin - the Toxin makes no physical sense whatsoever. Toxin would not be shot in bolts like that without some dedicated mechanism to do so. In reality, the toxin would just be a cloud, or a directed stream (maybe).
Reproduction - the way it works in game is incorrect and bad and more resemblant of cancer. Mitosis happens all at once in a very controlled fashion irl.
Auto Evo - Real evolution algorithms are very sophisticated, and involve generous amounts of calculus. Me and maybe a very tiny number of other devs are the only ones who really understand calculus and the main programmers with the most commits don’t. So, Auto Evo isn’t the best representation of an evo sim.
Signaling Agent - does not exist. At the very least it doesn’t work like in game. Everything related to cell signaling and reception is handled by proteins embedded in the membrane.
I’d beg to differ here. I think this mixes two things : unrealistic adaptation (mechanics-driven) and inaccurate adaptations (simplicity-driven). Unrealistic adaptation are deviation from what is possible to make the game richer and less fastidious; inaccurate adaptations are simplifications of the reality for either computational purposes or simply to avoid a ton of micromanagement, because this is unfriendly to most players.
The latter is something entirely acceptable by scientific standards. No model depicts the whole picture, and this is anyway not the purpose of a model. Its purpose is to depict and predict phenomenons of interest. That is nicely achieved by auto-evo (save for a few bugs), and all we have to do is increase the accuracy. Yet this does not equate to necessarily resorting to calculus: we are currently using time skips of hundreds of millions of years, and that allows for a lot of simplifications due to permanent regime. You may see an example in the end of part 1 for my compound diffusion model (which still has part 2 as a draft, by the way).
We can definitely work on the former, mechanics-driven adaptation, such as signalling agent which do not affect the player because we do not yet agree on how to make it enjoyable.
Why does this distinction matter? Because the reasons behind it are very different, and they should be treated accordingly. Simplified aspects requires theoretical and algorithmic input while unrealistic aspects need to find a proper gameplay mechanics brought forward by a game design perspective.
This is definitely true. I was not clear when making the thread, but I was referring to things like Toxin and the Signaling Agent (unrealistic adaptation), where we have taken some very large liberties. In time I would love to see them be replaced with things that have more of a basis in reality. I’m sure it can be done, but no one has thought of a way that would remain fun. This is more of a way to remember these liberties with the hope that in time we will find a better solution.
While I hope that in time we can replace some of the simplicity-driven inaccuracies, hoping to remove those entirely would be unrealistic in itself.
Right, I entirely agree with you, and I think that is overall a good idea. I’d also say we may actually list both types of adaptations, because both need to be fixed at this stage of development. I’d simply argue that we make the distinction clear (because even though it is clear in our minds now it could no longer be so in a year from now). Just listing them under two different categories with a few words to explain these would be sufficient I guess.