Stage Naming - where do plants fit in?

I was originally under this impression, too, but looking at the forum subsections, multicellular does seem to have largely been cell-colony discussion.

Otherwise, it still seems to make sense to separate cell-colony and macroscopic multicellular into separate stages, considering the gameplay differences. Macro-multicellular and aware are almost indistinguishable by comparison.

Also, thanks. This is (apart from the ‘incoming […] message-o-mat’ being an image now) my original signature, first signature I used on the old forums. Since then I used to periodically change the message. 

It's true that the naming probably wont matter much to the player; the issue lies more in organisation and documentation (such as where to post stuff in this forum).
Ideally, the game would tend towards a sort of middle-ground between the two styles, depending on what locomotion & senses are available, to tailor gameplay to the type of organism.

I share the feeling that this is a fairly low-priority issue for now, but am concerned it may become relevant when the game progresses a bit and we have to distinguish between these areas of the game. Better to discuss things before they become a problem.

Calling it complex multicellular would be fine - I'm not sure we can get much better than prefix-multicellular naming, and complex is a simple enough prefix.

Part of the problem is defining what ‘aware’ means:

• Self-aware? But how does this affect gameplay? (I think this was the original definition, yet we don't seem to have much to justify it on the old forums)
• Being aware of one's environment? But then what is the lower bound? Does this extend to plants with automatic responses to touch?

I was always under the impression that the transition from Multicellular to Aware was a combination of a high enough intelligence and proper sensory apparatus. It would indicate an awareness of both your surroundings and yourself. It would represent the point in which the player's species becomes sentient.

The next stage is Awakening which denotes the point when the player's species becomes sapient. They are "awakened" to the rest of the world and are able to think in a more complicated way than other species.

I agree that plants don't actually fit in the Aware stage, but plants are technically multicellular so they'd stay in Multicellular would they not?

EDIT: Did not read the rest of the thread. Noticed that my views are the same as StealthStyleL's

I was under the impression that the progression was Cellular > Multicellular > Macroscopic ~> Aware ~> Tribal/Civilization, with the latter three kind of blurring together. The names may differ, but correct me if that is not the general goal.

Sentience. It sounds like "sense".

For sapience think of humans. Our scientific name is Homo sapiens.

Here's the current concept as it stands.

Multicellular:
It starts when you first attach to another cell of your species. It has a 2D part where you control a colony, and a 3D part where you control an organism.

Aware:
It starts when you first develop a nervous system, i.e. when you become sentient.

Therefore a plant will just be in the 3D portion of the Multicellular Stage (also called Late Multicellular). So I don't think plants fitting into this is an issue, or any macroscopic, non-sentient species for that matter.

However, a more valid point I think is the point that the gameplay changes so much between 2D Multicellular to 3D Multicellular, especially when compared to the transition from 3D Multicellular to Aware, that it warrants a separate stage. That is true, but really, adding or changing the names and milestones of the stages has zero effect on gameplay. In-game, there is not even going to be anything that tells you when you enter a new stage, it should all flow together as one full game. The stages are really just categorical. Plus, I think that the current stage transition points are all significant milestones in evolution (multicellularity, sentience, and then sapience). It's a bit strange to have 2D-3D be one of the milestones.

Anyways, those are my thoughts on it, but to summarize, I don't think we should necessarily worry about it, because plants do fit into the stages, and although Late Multicellular is pretty different than Early Multicellular, there's nothing that really necessitates making it a separate stage, unless we actually divided them into two stages called Early and Late Multicellular. However, I think we have enough stages as it is, and we can always keep that unofficial distinction of Early vs. Late.

Well the points at which you can start a new game are not necessarily at the beginning of each stage.

For example, the current concept lists three starting points.
- Microbe : You start as a single cell. The classic start.
- 3D/Late Multicellular : You start as a simple and miniscule organism. In case you want to skip cell gameplay.
- Awakening : You start as a species that has just gained sapience. In case you want to skip evolution.

These three starting points are the same regardless of where the stages are defined to begin and end. Also, as an aside, the reason these were picked is because of assumed restrictions with world generation. It would be hard to allow the player to start a new game in the Industrial Stage, because the game relies so heavily on your history of decisions since you start Awakening, and there is not really any feasible way we could generate that randomly, it has to be played and created.

What about the sandbox mode thing we are awarded for completing the game? That one should be a starting point too no?