Multicellular Roadmap Planning

[Rathalos]

@hhyyrylainen

This is exactly what I had in mind when writing that reproduction modes item… So I’m not sure what you specifically thought that reproduction modes would be?

Huh, with the current option in the drop-down menu only being “Budding”, I might have hallucinated there being more modes listed/planned, like “fragmentation” and “binary fission”. (Though we do discussed this a little bit in that Multicellular concept thread.) So the “mode of reproduction” is exactly what the next generation new-borns look like and how that happens. Which isn’t necessarily hard-linked to asexual/sexual. Lizards have the rather complicated mode of embryogenesis in eggs, but some do that asexually.

So then the “sexual/asexual switch” would by itself purely be “do you need another organism to reproduce with yes/no”.

@hhyyrylainen

Also this was included in my different reproduction modes work item as a basically implicit prerequisite for sexual reproduction.

I didn’t want to directly set that as a requirement for sexual reproduction itself, because single-celled eukaryotes do perform sexual reproduction often, so requiring a specific unique cell type just for that might stray from the established science a bit too much.

@hhyyrylainen

But it sounds like you want there to be an extra cell type on top that has to be placed in the body plan to be able to use the more advanced reproduction modes?

Well, I was originally thinking of very simple “gonads” C. Elegans (1000 cells, 1 mm), but to be fair those specifically produce gametes (for sexual reproduction).

Reading more today, I think I actually overestimated the importance of specialised “reproduction focused cells” (that are part of the main body). Animals like placozoans and even simple bilaterians seem to just make gametes anywhere instead of specialised places. So gamete-producing specialised cells are then I would say an optional mechanic, improving sexual reproduction.
But obviously if we have some more complex forms of reproduction like “eggs” that would require its own special factory, sexual or not.

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A different matter is how we want to define sexual reproduction as a mechanic in the first place. Do we want to design gametes and then swim around as them? That does sound like a lot of work to implement.

@hhyyrylainen

I think it should be pretty easy to put that organelle back to multicellular, but we need some gameplay effect designed for it first.

True. And this is a bit inter-dependent with that movement speed rebalance. For example, we could make it so that as you grow larger, flagella are less effective, but muscles more so.

@hhyyrylainen

So rather than empty space left in the body plan, the player would need to place something to indicate a body cavity?

In terms of the code this could get really technical to implement, because right now multicellular creatures are only made up of cells. There can be nothing else except a thing that is a cell type within the body plan. So cavity parts likely would need to be represented as a “cell” type with a bunch of special handling. Another option that would be a lot easier to do would be something like a proper cell type that is just like a single vacuole or something, but obviously that would be a lot more jank than a custom different system. Though it would be way, way easier to program.

It would be nice if this (the cavities, at least) could be done by just leaving empty spaces, but I do not think the algorithmic method of translating editor designs to gameplay plays well with that. Both options you mention sound like two of the optional mechanics I suggested, respectively:

@Rathalos

• Non-cell parts: Things you can place in hexes in the Multicellular editor, that are not cells, but what you can place is dependent on existing (Probably adjacent) cells. Shells, stomach cavity, fluid-filled body cavity, Mesohyl/Mesoglea, mucus layer, cuticle, gel globs, etc.
• /“area of effect organelles”: Like above, but automatically present in the area surrounding a cell with the corresponding organelle, instead of separately placed.

I know both are these are complex and a lot of work, but I want to lay out our options both simple and complex to evaluate and choose between, given that what you wrote out still adds up to ~16 out of 32 weeks. That’s exactly why I put a lot of these in (optional).

I guess a third method would be to have any fully enclosed empty space in your design automatically “filled in” with some type of matrix, but I am pretty sure that is just complex in a different way.