Interesting points @Oliveriver
Imo
-
First you get a “summoning agent” which causes other members of your species to come and basically follow you around. I don’t think you should ever be forced to follow others around (because I don’t see that being very fun). I do think you should see other cells which “flock” by using this agent. When they are spawned they can be spawned in a group.
-
I think a colony of a single cell type then has to use a “binding” agent to bond the members together into a basic multicellular organism. Maybe other species should be able to do this before you can, not sure. After this is done you have <10 cells bonded together still using flagella / cilia to swim. All the cells now act in lockstep, so if you release an agent then all cells release it as one and you get a huge cloud of it.
It’s no problem to have small colonies and single cells still playing together as they will behave much the same. The cells can stay until the colonies get big enought they become invisible.
(What would be really slick, though probably technically impossible, would be if, any time, you could press a microscope button and see the cells a creature is made out of. That’s probably too hardcore though.)
-
Then you start specialising your cells into muscle, bone, nerve etc, ala this thread, (which is pretty long, td:dr; speciliase each cell by placing different organelles in them and use a pallette of specialised cells to create your multicellular creature).
-
When you have done this you can start moving in the softbody style from this thread and then basically when you get big enough that flagella / cillia are no longer visible and no longer contribute meaningfully to motion the cells disappear and you end up with a basic creature editor (something like that).
That’s how I’ve been imagining it going anyway.