I have some things to discuss so wait a moment before posting more questions. I’ll leave this post here and edit it with my responses when I get time later this evening.
EDIT:
Most of Nick’s questions come from either ideas from the old forum, my attempts at creating workable systems, or some reconciliation of both, so I know where most of these come from and can try to explain them where needed. The best example of this is osmoregulation, which Nick hasn’t put down but I think deserves some discussion in future, preferably involving people who know what they’re doing with regards to biochemistry and game design.
Anyway.
The idea was to have the starting cell be as basic as possible while still fully functioning. If the player starts with a mitochondrion it adds complexity they have to learn quickly (i.e. front-loadedness, something I discussed with @zyad137 in Slack recently) whereas if it’s the first processing organelle they have the opportunity to add or acquire by endosymbiosis that could be a good introduction to more complex compound processing once they’ve learnt the basics.
On the other hand, people will be much more familiar with aerobic respiration, so in a sense it’s more complex to start with anaerobic. I agree with all the other points about this discussed so far. I really don’t know what’s best.
This was the plan for a while. I think it was @TheCreator who implemented a system where cytoplasm is inbuilt with organelles as a potentially temporary placeholder. We had a discussion about it here although that was mainly about whether cytoplasm should be a place-able organelle at all (I think it definitely should be, whatever the verdict here).
As has been said, to know whether the player is a plant. Now I think about it, does the cell wall even need to be an unlockable thing?
And it relates to this. Engulfing edges were planned before (not my idea, I was just working with what old members had said) but I’ve come around to having a full-membrane shader option. The player would have a selection of periphery organelles - ordinary membrane, engulfing membrane, cilia, cell wall, lamellipodia(?) - and can only choose one at a time. This way, cells with walls can’t also have cilia or something equally unrealistic.
It was in Nimbal’s original GDD and I liked the idea from a gameplay perspective. Surface crawling sounded cool.
Not sure why it says that, I agree with @hhyyrylainen.
This too was part of Nimbal’s original GDD. It’s a very game-y mechanic, so I guess it can be scrapped for realism’s sake.