Organelle Unlocks

Gameplay
33

I think this is a pretty simple but functional way of implementing the unlocking system without requiring any additional editor tabs or menus which is pretty nice, as we want to try our best in keeping the amount of menus and tabs as low as we can. The simplicity also means this concept should be easy to understand, as well as build upon with additional functionality should we find it lacking.
An important thing to consider here, is that our organelle upgrade system is likely to handle the majority of the unlocks and upgrades that would otherwise be handled by this system, so since organelle unlocks is only really going to involve the initial parts, I think having such a simple system is perfectly suitable for the time being.

My only real concern about this is that having a large initial cost on alot of parts could potentially be frustrating as it could feel like the player is wasting a valuable editor session on no immediate gain. I feel like if that turns out to be a real problem, we could potentially try having the cost smaller but only allow the player to place the unlocked parts in the session after the one they unlocked it in.

34

So it’s been a long while since I or anyone else has approached the concept of organelle unlocks. With the recent discussion of upgrades in mind, I have decided to go ahead and reapproach this feature in hopes of finalizing it’s concept. We’ve had gacha mechanics, “tech trees”, endosymbiosis, and more proposed in the past; But I feel that unlocks should be a relatively simple and dependable affair, promising a sense of discovery while always remaining predictable and dependable.

After some thinking, I have come up with three primary unlocking conditions:

  1. Situational: Part or upgrade is unlocked based on the player’s current location. (EX: Unlocking thylakoids in patches with light.)
    This condition would be tied to parts that wouldn’t really have any use at all to the player until they meet the situational requirements.

  2. Relative: Part or upgrade is unlocked by placing/evolving an associated prerequisite part. (Ex: The nucleus unlocking membrane-organelles.)
    This condition would typically be used for more complex parts presumably derived from previous ones.

  3. Earned: Part or upgrade is earned by the player by performing a goal or spending an upfront MP cost. (EX: Player engulfs a photosynthesizing bacteria, unlocking chloroplasts. OR spends 80 MP to unlock chloroplasts).

Many parts and upgrades will require atleast one of these conditions to be fullfilled to be revealed. Some however, may require multiple steps to be unlocked (Such as membrane organelles requiring both a nucleus and engulfing an associated prey species.).

Before a part or upgrade is unlocked, the icon will be entirely hidden from the part list in order to prevent confusion or overwhelming new players with an expansive list of parts.

UnlockingConcept1
UnlockingConcept11920×1080 227 KB

Only by fulfilling the conditions listed above will new parts be revealed to the players, hopefully providing them with a sense of discovery and progress as they play the game and evolve their organism.
While locked parts will be hidden in the editor, the Thrivepedia will always contain information on all parts, as well as contain information on how to unlock them.

Some parts, like membrane-bound organelles relying on specific species archetypes to be available to the player may include conditions that depend more on chance. In order to ensure that the player will always have the option to unlock them, players should be presented with the option to buy access to the parts, skipping any additional requirements.

UnlockingConcept2
UnlockingConcept21947×1095 265 KB

This should help prevent any potential frustration that could be felt by failing to locate the unlocking requirements normally.

HHyyrylainen suggested in discord that there could be an option to enable or disable “New player mode” which would reveal all parts and their unlocking conditions from the start, making for a more suitable experience for veteran players.

I would like to hear what everyone thinks of this concept!
If everything proves to be satisfactory and in order, we shall proceed to discussing which parts need to be locked, as well as how they shall be unlocked.

Edit: After some discussion in the developer chatroom, we have determined that it may be better to provide players with a strong hint that there are currently undiscovered/locked parts. As put by Untrusted, we need a “carrot on a stick” to keep players hooked on unlocking parts. Without that bait, players may not realize that there are unlockables at all and become discouraged.

We spent some time debating how exactly to pull this off, but finally came to the common ground of creating a promising “Undiscovered” icon within the parts list.

UnlockingConcept3
UnlockingConcept31920×1080 231 KB

This icon will exist within each category as long as undiscovered parts remain, and will display a tooltip informing the player of such when hovered over. No matter how many things the player unlocks this icon will remain until there are no longer anything left for the player to discover.

1 Like
35

Continuing on this discussion, I have charted out the basic unlocking conditions of each part as intuitively as I could think of at the time.

Thylakoid:
Evolve in a patch with Lux levels beyond 0%.

Nitrogenase:
Evolve in a patch with less than 5% ammonia.

Oxytoxisome:
Kill 5 cells
Be killed by a cell 3 times.

Flagellum:
Produce 10 more ATP than you consume.
Or reach a speed below 30.

Predatory Pilus:
Kill 5 cells.
Or be killed by a cell 3 times.

Mitochondrion, Chloroplast, Chemoplast, and Nitrogen-Fixing Plastid:
Revealed when nucleus is evolved.
Unlocked by spending 100 MP or engulfing a bacteria containing more metabolosomes than any other protein.
Can also be unlocked by engulfing the organelle dropped by other cells on death.

Toxin Vacuole:
Unlocked by possessing a nucleus and oxytoxisome.
Maybe this would be better unlocked through upgrades?

My hopes is that these conditions won’t be too difficult to reach as these are all relatively basic parts. Things such as upgrades may potentially have more niche requirements.
Parts that are not included in this list will be unlocked by default.

Please let me know if you have any disagreements or alternative ideas!

36

Assuming that we have (at least similar in spirit) conditions for the AI to evolve parts, this is going to cause it to be very likely for that to not evolve much. Unless we have a lot of patches with that little ammonia. I think that because if auto-evo simulates the reproduction speed, the migration algorithm will basically skip over a patch with low ammonia, unless it is very favourable otherwise.

I think this kind of condition should be avoided. Instead I’d imagine that this would be related to new player mode, where this organelle would just flat out be locked for like the first 3 generations or so. This specific organelle can’t be locked for very long as it’s most useful in early game.

Other than that the conditions before the nucleus bound ones sound good to me.

I think this goes too close to the endosymbiosis concept. I think these conditions should be left out until the endosymbiosis concept is done. Then these organelles being locked would naturally come through that.

I think this could be more interesting if there was an additional (or maybe alternative?) condition that if you are in an empty patch you can’t evolve this, only when there are other species to hunt present. That would effectively keep it locked the first few generations before the player starts to encounter other cells.

37

I can understand that, though my idea was that in the future should ammonia levels change over time than this would become an option in times of particular scarcity.

Also, All patches outside of the vents average around 4% ammonia in the current version of Thrive, so the moment the player leaves the vents they would unlock this.

In a way this actually is my newest endosymbiosis concept. Though if you feel that this isn’t how it should be done I am fine with further discussion on it outside of the unlocking system.

The conditions involve killing and being killed by cells, which cannot happen in empty patches.
Am I misunderstanding what you are saying here?

38

Perhaps, then the unlock condition could be to leave the initial patch? Otherwise if it is balanced with the specific ammonia values, it would make future balancing of those values for different patches more difficult…

I just think it shouldn’t end up getting lumped up with these. I think for implementation it makes sense to do these two things in parallel:

  • Unlock conditions for the prokaryotic parts
  • Endosymbiosis

After those are done, then:

  • Combined unlock feature for eukaryotic parts that uses both the endosymbiosis and the unlock systems.

I suppose that is true. I maybe have been thinking again about making the unlock conditions sensible for the AI as well, though I suppose even currently having nothing to predate on prevents the AI from evolving those parts.
I don’t want this system (other than the new player mode) feeling like the player is handicapped whereas the AI is not. I’d like it to feel like a level playing field.

39

I was thinking that in the future when compound amounts change over-time, 5-4% would be slightly higher than the minimum amount that patches could reach over-time. I understand what you are saying here though, so maybe it would be better if it’s just not locked at all, unlocked at a much higher concentration (Like 10%), or as you said just unlocked upon leaving the first patch.

That is fine by me, I suppose for now the membrane-bound organelles can be exempt from any additional unlocking conditions as it shouldn’t really cause any trouble.

Considering how AI is effected by the unlocking system is pretty important, and you bring up a good point about the player being handicapped should AI not be subject to locked parts. That aspect has eluded me until now so I’ll try to keep that in mind from here on out.

1 Like
40

After creating a community poll and receiving it’s results, we further discussed this concept and how we might satisfy the wishes of those who submitted their choices.

Poll Results

Poll1
Poll1785×486 5.27 KB

Part2
Part2788×486 6.04 KB

The results of 29 responses point to an overall preference for locked parts to be hidden, and represented by icons that would hint at the existence of undiscovered parts. However; 29 responders is a relatively small number compared to the community at large, so we continued to carefully consider our options.
The results of our discussion was a new concept!

The problem with the results from our poll is that while all locked parts being represented at once in the menu made an excellent representation of possibility in Spore, it would not nearly work as well in Thrive due to the layout of the editor. The player would need to scroll past numerous unselectable parts clogging their editor list which might not feel very streamlined.

In order to combat this, @dphKraken suggested we move all locked parts to their own category at the bottom of the parts list, which would sort these parts out of the way, while still showing the player how many parts remain locked in a visual medium.

With this concept on hand, I will now go ahead and narrow down our choices to two, to make the final decision easier to choose.
The choices are:

  1. Reveal all locked parts as mystery icons and sort them into their own category in the editor
Concept (None yet)

(Once I or someone else makes a concept image for this I’ll slap it here.)

  1. Display a single undiscovered icon in any category that contains locked parts, with optional numeric counter if so desired.
Concept

image

I personally feel that these may be our best options for displaying undiscovered parts, and hope that by narrowing the choices down that we will be a step closer to finally making our choice. If anyone disagrees, let me know!

1 Like
41

I really like the second option because:

  • It doesn’t clutter the menus with a bunch of undiscovered icons
  • It clearly shows the player which category the undiscovered things belong in
  • It can have that added number to also show how many undiscovered parts there are
  • It fulfils the purpose of reducing the initial options for new players
3 Likes
42

I like option 2

1 Like
43

There’s now an open issue for this:

as this is planned for 0.6.1

1 Like
44

Just a quick poll to see how folks think unlocks should be applied.

How should part unlocks be saved in the game?
  • Part unlocks should be save-specific.
  • Part unlocks should be unlocked across all saves.
  • Some parts should be save-specific, others across all saves.

0 voters

Note that if we ever want to have unlocks for features such as special planet generation options or LAWK, then we would need a system for saving unlock status outside of regular saves regardless.

45

I’m not fully following what’s your point here. If we have LAWK specific unlocks then it only makes more sense that the organelle unlock state is saved in the world object (the same place where the world settings are stored). (and of course the world object is part of a save).

46

I was referring to locking the toggle option for LAWK until reaching a milestone when playing the game. Either by obtaining an achievement or just beating the game or something.

I was just saying that if we want to do something like that, we would need some form of game-wide save-file even if we didn’t want organelle unlocks to be a part of that.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

47

Ah, I understood now. And I agree that basically we should have a way to store game-wide info (not save specific) for example to only unlock the freebuild editors for each stage as the player reaches them.

I don’t think organelle unlocks should tie into that at all. I can’t really think of any game where you’d unlock stuff so that starting a new save, doesn’t actually start a fully new game where you can unlock all the stuff again. We’d need a separate button somewhere to nuke the game data entirely in addition to removing saves, and I’m not much in favour of having such a dangerous button.

1 Like
48

Games expanding in features and complexity is actually a fairly common tactic, though typically seen in session-based or roguelike style games.

It’s basically a way to encourage players to continue playing, and keeps the experience fresh and exciting.

This could work for Thrive I think, as the game already has a format that encourages starting various different games to evolve differently in. but I don’t really think it’s exactly necessary.

49

The few roguelikes I’ve played all had 3 save slots to pick from. So it’s not the same as having global game state that cannot be reset by starting a new game or 2 people sharing the same computer couldn’t enjoy the same game.

I guess live service games and always online games that just let you have one player profile are closer to the idea that you just progress in the game and it is permanent.

50

I realize that I’m coming in very late to this conversation, but I’m iffy on the whole motivation behind player progression between saves. Based on let’s play videos, players don’t tend to add every organelle on any single playthrough, and seem to want to come back to the game mostly to try out a different build. Do we feel the need to require that behavior? We don’t arrange our parts in any kind of leveled or tiered setup, so it’s not like the player is unlocking better stuff, just more options. Do we want people to “grind” Thrive, and brag about their Thrive levels?

We already have a way to keep players coming back: new releases every quarter. I just don’t think we have enough content that gating it off is going to keep people wanting to come back more than it risks a player not getting to use the organelle they would really like then dipping out early.

Now I can see unlocks working within a save, representing something something evolution, although even then depending on how the implementation works I could see that restricting creativity for people that want the challenge of doing something really weird from the start.

5 Likes
51

I think you might be overestimating how difficult we currently have unlocks-to-be conceptualized since I can’t see them creating much of a grind to progress. If you look at this thread and scroll down a bit to the section titled “Unlocks” in the OP, you can see the unlock conditions we have, including proposals for unlocking organelles in a way that isn’t endosymbiosis: Upgrades, Unlocks, & Endosymbiosis Master Thread

If you were aware of these unlock conditions and I’ve actually just spent a few sentences being condescending just now then I sincerely apologize.

I see unlocks as serving a few purposes…

  1. Boosting replayability. It might take a bit longer for the player to unlock their desired part in a certain playthrough than another based on luck, strategy, the environment, etc.; this can boost replayability and depth, since the player would have to pivot their strategy until then.
  2. Prevents new players from being overwhelmed at the beginning. If we introduce unlock conditions and base these unlock conditions on phenomena related to the part itself, players will have a more intuitive understanding of exactly when each part is useful.

The second point isn’t really relevant here because theoretically a player with multiple saves has more experience than a player with one. But I think the first one is really diminished by having parts be available across all saves. The strategy-aspects of having the player consider what parts are available to them in the current environment are an interesting dynamic to have in an evolution simulator, and can loosely reflect the fact that, for many groups of organisms, certain metabolic strategies are out of reach in a minimally obstructive way. We definitely do not have to be as demanding or rigorous as evolution is in only allowing mutations to occur on previously existing features, but I think it is a tiny bit uncanny that a photosynthetic organism living on the seafloor could just place down a thermoplast, no questions asked.

There’s also the fact that endosymbiosis would basically be useless in basically every new world if unlocks are applied to every save. Unlocks are also meant to work as a fallback for a player who is unlucky with endosymbiosis; if we allow the player to maintain unlocks throughout saves, then no one would ever realistically utilize endosymbiosis.

2 Likes
52

It seems everyone is unanimously in favor of part unlocks being save specific, nice. You’ve all made great points in regards to avoiding permanently unlocking parts across saves.

Sorry if I left my intention a bit unclear, I definitely should have elaborated; I would have normally put this out as a simple question in our group chat to entertain for a bit, but figured it would just be easier to make a simple poll to see how supportive people would be of the idea.

I did not intend to make it out to be as if I were attempting to push a new plan or design or anything.
Apologies for the confusion. it will not happen again.

Many of those unlock conditions were infact originally devised as a starting point for discussion in a post earlier in this very thread. I appreciate the reminder though, thank you.