After some recent brainstorming and discussion; I now believe I’ve nailed down a good and proper design for the macroscopic editor. A design that is far more streamlined and simple to use than the previous iterations at the very least.
I’ll be going over the general mechanics of the editor, and not necessarily deep into the fine details and balancing just yet. This is so that we can have a firm and solid foundation that we can further build upon moving forward.
ᶠᵒʳ ᶦᵐᵐᵉʳˢᶦᵛᵉ ʳᵉᵃᵈᶦⁿᵍ ˡᶦˢᵗᵉⁿ ᵗᵒ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵗʰᵉᵐᵉ ᵃˢ ʸᵒᵘ ˢᶜʳᵒˡˡ
The Structure Tab
The first tab the player will see when first entering the macroscopic stage; The structure tab allows players to assemble and shape their organism through the use of our favorite spherical objects, the metaballs.
As of my current designs, there are two categories of parts available in this tab; the Body parts, and Feature parts.
Body
The first and most important category of parts is the Body category, which contains parts used for creating the overall body-plan and animation skeleton of the organism. They are undoubtedly the most important, and need to be placed before anything else can be done in the editor. presenting the player with the following parts;
Central Metaball:
These metaballs act as the spine and primary body of the creature, and the platform upon which all other parts are attached. The organism must always have at least one primary metaball. To maintain a cohesive form, they can only be attached to other central balls and copying one will copy all secondary parts directly attached to it. Finally; central balls can only be attached in a direct chain pertaining to your organism’s symmetry (Bilateral would only be a straight chain. Think worm versus starfish). This is to prevent the central “spine” from branching out incohesively and potentially making for difficult procedural animation.
Distal Metaball:
These metaballs are used to form secondary details specific to the central metaball they are attached to, such as horns, branches, ears, or any other passive structure that might protrude from the organism’s body. Distal balls can not only be attached to central balls, but also limb and other distal balls as well. Their primary purpose is to provide additional shape to the organism while maintaining a cohesive form for gameplay purposes.
Limb Metaball:
Instead of providing a static shape like the previous two, the limb ball is used to form animated limbs for use in movement and environmental interaction, A single limb ball can create a stumpy leg, and attaching more can create joints for an increasingly sophisticated limb.
Recess Metaball:
Unlike the previous metaballs, the recess is a “negative” metaball, which means that instead of forming an anchor for the organism’s shape, it creates a pit or divot in the organism’s body. This allows players to create concave or other complex shapes that would otherwise be difficult to form with basic metaballs. Recess balls only effect the balls they are directly attached to (Assuming that’s possible…), allowing for some advanced editing techniques. You cannot attach any additional metaballs to a negative one.
Orifice Metaball:
Another negative metaball, the orifice ball looks identical to the aforementioned recess ball (Except maybe revealing exposed flesh or darkness in the created recess?) but with added mechanical functionality. These balls are used by the player to create functional mouths, nostrils, slime ducts, and more. Players will need to use orifice balls whenever they want to have a method of quickly exchanging resources with their external environment in larger amounts.
Features:
Unlike the body category, features encompass a broad assortment of parts that have specific shape or material appearances. These parts are placed directly on the skin of the organism (But will still be connected to a parent metaball corresponding to their placement) and are primarily used for providing cosmetic options for the players. Some parts however, may still provide changes to the organism’s stats.
Some examples of features are included below;
Fur clump:
A cosmetic part that can be used to create manes, crests, tail tufts, and more. The fur clump resembles a raised clump of fur rising from the organism’s body.
Scale Plates:
Thick raised scales that jut from the organism’s body; These plates can be used to provide organisms with a rugged armored look.
Shell:
Potentially an example of a more functional feature, the shell is a large mineral structure attached to an organism for defense. Soft bodied organisms may even potentially be able to withdraw themselves into their shell, while more solid creatures can only rely on it as a shield.
The exact specifics of features remain unclear for me. It may be better if they are included in the appearance tab instead, or perhaps they should be split into two different categories or even both tabs as well. I will need to discuss this at a later time.
The Rooting Plane:
With the inclusion of sessile life in Thrive, I had to consider how we might differentiate flora from fauna in Thrive. The distinction is not an easy feat, especially considering how truely alien worlds in Thrive may turn out. So for now, my only answer is the inclusion of a rooting plane.
This tool is used by players and AI alike to determine how much of an organism is submerged in the local substrate of it’s environment. Submerged portions of an organism are able to passively absorb nutrients and other materials from the substrate depending on their adaptations, but prevent the organism at large from moving from it’s place. AI would probably only utilize this feature if they have decided to become sessile in behavior, but players can place the rooting plane at any time by clicking the associated button and “placing” the plane at their preferred height.
The rooting plane basically separates the organism into two different environments, with the top half being exposed to atmopsheric elements and wildlife, while the lower half is protected from most threats and is able to tap into geological resources at the cost of limited respiratory efficiency and other resources.
Rooted species cannot move, and could be generated as part of the world’s terrain features and resources instead of active animals, allowing for the generation of what could potentially be described as forests, or at least shrub-lands. To maintain consistency, we could potentially discourage AI from flipping between the two states somehow and avoid walking tree situations between generations.
The Internals Tab
Next up is an equally important tab for the player; centered around organ customization. All of the cells designed by the player find a new home here, where they are used to assign special functions and processes to the metaball they are placed in.
To create an organ, the player must select one of their available tissue types and then left click on a valid metaball to place the organ. Selecting a tissue type will highlight any metaballs that already possess the tissue. Right clicking any metaball opens a context menu displaying all tissue types inside of it, allowing the player to delete or move them.
Each metaball (With the exception of limb, orifice, and recess balls which can contain none) can contain any number of organs. However; each additional organ will decrease the efficiency of all processes (Or perhaps some other form of malaise) tied to that specific metaball, so smart distribution of organs is important. Organ capacity between metaballs could potentially be limited by type, or perhaps size.
Orifice balls cannot directly contain specialized tissue types, and instead expose the tissue types of connected metaballs to the outside environment for better and worse. This allows your organism to eat and digest macroscopic foodstuffs, or to more easily respirate through thicker skin.
When the player first enters the macroscopic stage, all of their specialized cells (or at least the placed ones) will be clustered together inside of a single central metaball, so establishing a hard limit might complicate things, but soft caps might be too punishing as well. Play testing and prototyping might be needed before deciding on a specific course of action.
The Appearance Tab
Much like the membrane tab from the cell editor, the appearance tab is used to customize the outer covering of the organism. Unlike the previous stages however, the player is able to utilize multiple types of coverings as needed.
Integuments are specialized body coverings that shield (or expose) the organism from it’s environment. These will play the biggest role in adapting to new environmental conditions and thus allowing species to occupy a larger range. They can also help a species better survive attacks from predators, or passively absorb nutrients from their surroundings.
By selecting one of the available integuments, the player will then be able to click any metaball to apply their chosen coating to that part of the organism. This can allow players to create armored limbs, or exposed roots for their organism.
Right clicking a metaball while in this tab will select it, displaying it’s current color codes and the name of it’s current integuments. From this context menu, you can copy and paste integument/color options to other metaballs for ease of use.
I hope that these concepts adequately provide a stable and solidified plan for our macroscopic editor going forward, as well as easy to use for players. The macroscopic editor is the final organic editor in the game and possibly where players will be spending most of their time in the creature stages, so we must be very considerate about it’s accessibility and practicality.
I would like confirmation from our programming team about the feasibility of it’s implementation and the work that might be needed to make this concept a reality when possible, and of course I would like to hear everyone’s thoughts on the concept and how agreeable it is.
Should everyone be in favor of this, we can begin filling in the finer details of the editor, and finally move on to the gameplay side of the macroscopic stage.
