So organelle upgrades have been discussed a lot in the past, but no finished designs (to my knowledge) have been made. So let’s make a complete design before deciding to include the upgrades in some release.
Here’s an older quote about the upgrades:
We already have a bunch of organelles added, so it is time to make some designs for upgrades as it seems quite a popular feature.
Having a sort of multi-pathed upgrade, or adaptation system could be an interesting and viable mechanic. For instance, giving the player a choice to evolve a pili on their cell from a simple spike to an extendable harpoon, or a toxin-injecting stinger. These “variants” of the organelle could be more effective but have unique drawbacks to their use as well. An example of drawbacks could be consuming a large amount of atp to fire the harpoon, and the stinger not being able to generate toxins on it’s own.
As for the method and UI? I can’t say I’m sure. Personally I would prefer being able to upgrade individual organelles by selecting them, which would show the player the organelle’s current stats and a couple or more buttons to upgrade them to the alternative forms.
I’m just gonna leave this here since it’s relevant to this thread
Here is a rough concept image of what I was trying to convey in the top post. After looking at the thread that Don shared, I decided to include a barebones method of organelle customization in the image. It is likely that we would have more options regarding organelle customization than just length for pili.
That kind of menu also needs to have the organelle removing, as right clicking conflicts with the organelle remove function.
I think could be good solution have left click on organelle instead of right, so remove has no more conflicts.
What about cytoplasm, then? Which you can place an organelle on top of. Would cytoplasm no longer allow placing something on top or would cytoplasm not have upgrades, which would make it work differently from other organelles?
Yes of course we should introduce the fact that click “outside” make left click free, I find kind of weird that when we jump into editor cyto is already clicked. It’s possible to be done?
Maybe I‘m mistaken but I have the idea floating around in my head that at some point we discussed how the different types of pili could be implemented. One option was to go for plain organelle upgrading like in the concept @Buckly made. The other idea was to make the pilus variations by combining the pilus with other organelles. So a pilus with a food vacuole behind it = straw pilus. Pilus with toxin vacuole behind it = toxin pilus. Idk if we actually ever considered this approach or if it was just in my head. But I found this approach to be rather organic and interesting. Although it brings up many difficult questions. How would this option be communicated to the player? How would the AI know how to do this?
I just wanted to have mentioned this. Feel free to ignore this post^^
Players already complain about not being able to move organelles around. With organelles being upgraded by having other organelles placed next to them, feels like it is going to make this problem worse.
So I think that with the current systems it would make things too complicated to have adjacent organelles affect each other.
I like that idea, but as hhyyrylainen said, such a system would bring alot of frustration to the players. However, if we wanted to, we could probably make specialized organelles more efficient or effective when placed beside such parts. That way specific organelle placement would not be locked to the placement of previous parts or be frustrating to those who dont understand it or havent planned ahead up to this point, while still having a positive effect for players who want to plan out carefully.
That being said; This could still bring the same frustration to players if they realized they could get bonuses by planning out placement after already building up their cell.
I made some concepts regarding this a while ago so I’ll repost them
Right clicking on an organelle would open a menu, which puts all the important features related to messing with organelles in one place. (but also means some features may require one more click than they would otherwise. imo that’s alright because organism editing isn’t intended to be super speedy, but rather deliberate)
I also made a sketch of the organelle customization menu, and I don’t particularly have much to add there, except why should we restrict organelles’ lengths (and other parameters) to the values we set as the minimums and maximums for the sliders?
In my concept I added a little plus and minus button to let the player change its size outside of those limits, potentially letting them make their pilus/flagella/whatever way more massive than is remotely reasonable. Then it’d be up to auto-evo to decide whether or not it’s viable, or if the costs of growing and maintaining it and maneuvering with it are too great, etc. And if auto-evo decides it’s viable then it’d be pretty cool to see giant cells with giant spikes swimming around
i had a dream once where I was playing thrive and I saw a pack of cells with glassy pili longer than their bodies all swimming in the same direction together, and I got the sense that the pili weren’t a preset part but rather something that was evolved emergently somehow and im not actually going anywhere with this i’m just rambling
I really do like that menu concept, looks very crisp. As for the unlimited customization idea… It’s not something I would have ever imagined being considered, but I actually like the sound of it. Afterall, the only true limits to players should be the viability of their creations. My only concern with it would be the obvious technical and graphical difficulties it would likely present.
I have begun eyeing this topic again as of late in an attempt to think of a good solid concept that we can work with and discuss. However, I have been unable to consolidate the smatterings of ideas I’ve had into anything meaningful at the time so I’ve decided to at least bump this discussion back to the forefront of everyone’s attention. I’ll go ahead and provide everyone with the general questions and thoughts I have in order to help promote some constructive discussion.
To what extent should a player be able to upgrade their parts?
Will we simply have a sort of upgrade tree akin to a skill tree (My drawing above as a rough example)? Will we have an array of toggles and sliders to adjust values within the parts so a player can fine-tune their organelles to be as they desire (Narotiza’s concept art above)? Or perhaps another method entirely?
In my personal opinion I would prefer using both present methods, however I would like to keep the variable sliders and toggles confined to specific types such as external parts. My reasoning for this is that being able to manually adjust parts such as nitrogenase would be difficult to reflect visually which would make it difficult for players to track which parts have been adjusted compared to others. Modifying the function of such parts could potentially be covered by the use of passive proteins which would effect all the parts rather than specific ones as well. External parts like flagella and pili however are easily visually distinguished and modified, as we can give players the ability to adjust their size or shape and they would be able to tell them apart easily enough. All parts could easily benefit from the upgrade paths method, as that presents an easy and understandable path to new specially adapted variations of the base parts that otherwise couldn’t easily be achieved by presenting the player with sliders.
How should the controls be handled?
There are many ways we could handle controls, so many infact that I feel this might be one of the more hotly debated parts of this concept. Should players need to select parts to access an options menu? Should players simply need to make different actions with their mouse such as left/right/middle/double clicking?
Personally I feel that using an options menu for each part could be somewhat tiring on it’s own. However I feel that the problem could easily be remedied by the use of hotkey functions. For example, holding alt and then right clicking could immediately delete parts instead of opening the menu to allow players to quickly perform actions without much effort. I would personally prefer such a menu for parts as it would provide players with an easy to understand set of options, sort of like an interactive hub or map, that would help them figure out what options they have. We could also put the associated hotkey instructions on each button on the list to help them figure out how to quickly perform the actions without having to consult a help guide or controls settings.
And finally the last question, how should the UI be positioned or otherwise designed?
UI is very important, as we want it to be as informative as possible, while being the least intrusive as we can. Should the selected part’s options and stats be displayed in a tooltip hovering somewhere on the screen? Should the settings temporarily replace the options on the editor’s part list? We have alot of options here.
Personally I would prefer if the selected part’s parameters be displayed in the left window, replacing what’s normally there while the part is selected. I feel this might be the best option as it would not introduce any additional clutter on the screen and preserve the player’s view of their cell and selected part. I am not experienced in graphics design however, so I would certainly like to see what the graphics team has to say about that part of the concept.
That’s all I have for now, as I feel we can focus on the finer details once we have a strong concept of how the layout and overall mechanism will be managed. I hope to see what everyone thinks!
I’m in favour of changing right click in the editor to popup a context menu, that would have options like:
I’ll pitch in on what the Upgrading System itself could look like. Later, I’ll pitch in my thoughts on where it should appear in the editor.
After having thought about this topic for a while (it’s been circulating for years at this point), and read past discussions the team has had on this, the design that @TheCreator offered I think is the most complete.
Let’s say we begin with the interface Narotiza created a concept for (obviously interface for this is a future discussion too):
So you click on the “Modify” button and are taken to the tab to ugprade your organelle. Well use the Flagellum as an example (concept courtesy of TheCreator).
You start at the center of the grid. This represents the earliest, simplest, precursor version of that organelle. Each vertex on the grid represents evolving a step towards the final form of one of the upgrade paths. Each step costs MP to move towards, and increases your stats towards that path. For example, you can evolve towards increased length, which increases speed but increases ATP usage. “Cross-grading” your organelle into other, related organelles can occur after you pass certain milestones. Here it shows how if you evolve your Flagellum to be thin and short enough you can crossgrade it into Cilia.
Some organelles would not have as many dimensions of upgrades to evolve along as the Flagellum, so they would have simpler shapes like a triangle or even a simple line/slider. The maximum number of dimensions we could allow for is 2 (meaning 4 paths), which I think should be enough.
Having prerequisite values for upgrades is an interesting idea. I like that it aligns well with the concepts that have been brought up that featured intermediary steps between unlocks/upgrades. However, I’m rather indecisive about the idea, as while it would be a great way to make upgrades be more progressive and gradual, it could potentially hinder players from doing all that they want.
Take the flagellum upgrade concept you posted for example. If a player had a longer flagella but wanted a longer cilia; Would they have to push the slider down to the required levels, change to cilia, and then move back to the peak longer area to get what they want? I think in this case, I would prefer to have the upgrades be independent from the sliders.
That being said, I recognize that that leaves a bit of a void where you might want that gradual sense of progress, so I have an idea to pitch for that. Rather than being able to immediately upgrade a part to the next form at a flat cost, we could instead allow the player to invest any amount of MP they want into the upgrade they want. The invested MP would be saved between generations, and would allow the player to gradually buy an upgrade at whatever pace they choose; whether that be dedicating all their MP in one session, or simply using the leftovers from other changes.
Infact now that I’ve said it I think that could actually be a decent way to handle organelle unlocks if we like this concept.
Sorry about being so late to reply by the way, I’ve been busy with college lately and I’ve found my motivation to be lacking as of late.
I guess to account for such situations, you would need to put crossgrades at the ends of the slider spectrum. So for example upgrading into Cilia would have to be on the short extreme end of the Flagellum upgrade map.
The reason I’m tentative towards your replacement idea is because it sounds to me very similar to the above system, except simply detached into its own system.
By the way, I’ve been drafting a list of the possible upgrades based on ones we’ve discussed in the past. Here’s a draft list so far:
No worries, been swamped with classes myself otherwise I would’ve answered days ago. My best advice is to make sure to take some days completely off. If you have no “weekends” or “breaks” from Thrive you’ll burn out. Plus, I find that by the end of those weekends or breaks I’m 10x more eager to return.
I’m not entirely sure I am understanding this right as it sounds just like the concept mentioned previously. Could you elaborate?
What do you mean by feeling detached? Do you mean a separation of the sliders from being a requirement for organelle upgrades? A good example of what I have in mind is how the membranes work alongside the membrane rigidity slider. It’s different methods of customization that while independent, are located in the same place and modify similar stats.
The idea I brought up earlier in the discussion is similar in that the sliders would be independent from your ability to change your organelle into different forms, with the dynamic MP cost being an alternative to replace the gradual sense of progress you would get from slowly moving your cell torwards the desired form in your idea.
I admit I didn’t put much thought into the idea of the gradual spending of MP into the upgrade however, so I wont complain if your still not convinced on it or anything. Though if you like, I can try drawing up a visual concept to help clear up any potential confusion?
That’s a decent start for the organelle upgrade stats, though I feel that having the upgrades negatively impact replication costs might not be preferable. I’m also not entirely sure if you mean replication as in buying copies of the organelle or the cost of your cell’s reproduction.
Personally I would prefer if the upgrade’s trade offs were centered more on specialization rather than on a flat stat bonus at the cost of replication. For example, we could allow the player to increase the speed at which a rustycanin processes iron at the cost of it being less efficient. Or having a thyakoid require less light to function, but produce less overall glucose as a result.
