Caste system for cells

Yeah it's definitely been discussed. I'm not so sure if we've ever talked about actually dragging and dropping premade cells into your organism. That's pretty cool.

Yeah that's basically how it's going to work, it's going to shake out pretty complicated though.

I'd like to caveat this by saying I'm a bit uncomfortable saying this. It's come up before and we have talked a bit about it but no decisions have been made. I guess it's no problem for the wider community to be in on the discussion. It's also possible I have misunderstood and this is not a problem, or that the others will have clever ideas (they usually do they are awesome!) which will neatly get round all this. Anyway...

So there's a general question with the game which is "how much impact should the choices you make in one stage have on the next stage?"

As an example when you move into the Society stage what difference does it make what your species is like? So if you're Centaurs or Birds or Lizards does that make any difference? If so what? 

If you are birds it would be nice if you had much greater movement speed but reduced ability to transport goods, for example. Whereas if you are Centaurs then maybe you should be able to carry a lot of goods on your back as you are mostly a horse. Obviously Horseback riding doesn't really make sense if you are a Centaur already.

But the problem with this is that the range of species you can generate is vast. We can't put in a rule that says "If you are a Centaur then horseback riding is out" because we would need to think of every possible species and make such rules for all of them. (In fact come to think of it why might there be horses? We will probably need some sort of "ridable animals" algorithm, but that in itself is a lot of work).

So yeah if each stage has no effect on the next then it's going to be disappointing. However forging the links is going to be very complicated.

This applies to the multicellular. So you start out with just copies of your original cell. Then can you select "turn this cell into a muscle cell"? If so does it have any memory of what it was before? Like maybe it was a hydrogen sulphide respirating cell with a thick plant cell wall, can it turn into a muscle? If not why not? 

Basically are we just going to offer a generic pallette of cells, muscle, neuron, bone etc which basically ignore all the choices you made in the cell stage. That seems kind of a shame as it wipes out everything that has come before. However how can that info be carried over in to the next stage? If you are a hydrogen sulfide respirator surely that info is important as it means you are stuck living by the vents and can never leave without going back to the cell stage. If you are a plant surely that means you can't get to the aware without going back and making an animal cell.

But then how do we make an algorithm which can look at a cell and tell you what kinds of cells it can become (like bone for example) or not become (like muscle for example). If there are 10 optional organelles then there are 1024 different combinations you can make, if you could have between 1 and 10 of each of these then that's 10^10 different possible cells. Maybe it's possible to make rules to cover them (like if you have a cell wall then you cannot become a muscle cell etc) but what about later when you can design all kinds of crazy creatures? You don't want to be some massive dragon and get told "sorry you can't carry much in the society stage because you have wings and wings means low carrying capacity", that's going to feel pretty lame.

Anyway yeah it's just a problem with no solution right now. 

I would have had this much earlier but my dog kept bumping into my laptop and erasing it.

1) But the problem with this is that the range of species you can generate is vast. We can't put in a rule that says "If you are a Centaur then horseback riding is out" because we would need to think of every possible species and make such rules for all of them.
And why not? The game can have a rule that states if an organism has > 4 legs it is not able to ride another organism. Or it could be decided by weight. A horse sized centaur obviously would not be able to ride a horse because it'd break its back, but what about a schnauzer sized centaur? Just some thoughts.

2) This applies to the multicellular. So you start out with just copies of your original cell. Then can you select "turn this cell into a muscle cell"? If so does it have any memory of what it was before? Like maybe it was a hydrogen sulphide respirating cell with a thick plant cell wall, can it turn into a muscle? If not why not?
I definitely don't think that it should or would be as easy as pointing and clicking and "Oh hey look now it's a muscle cell." That's way too easy. Every change we make to our organism has to be slow to properly simulate evolution. We can't just make jumps like that, because then it might as well be Spore where we add 5 pairs of arms in one generation just because.

3) Basically are we just going to offer a generic palette of cells, muscle, neuron, bone etc which basically ignore all the choices you made in the cell stage. That seems kind of a shame as it wipes out everything that has come before. However how can that info be carried over in to the next stage? If you are a hydrogen sulfide respirator surely that info is important as it means you are stuck living by the vents and can never leave without going back to the cell stage. If you are a plant surely that means you can't get to the aware without going back and making an animal cell.
No generic palette! That's boring and makes the entire microbe stage pointless. I'm pretty sure Thrive is intended to have these dead-end pathways as well. We're going to be allowed to play as plants, why not hydrothermal vent life? Another member on the forum suggested that the microbe stage have notifications and warnings to let the player know if they're headed down one of these dead-ends. 

4) But then how do we make an algorithm which can look at a cell and tell you what kinds of cells it can become (like bone for example) or not become (like muscle for example). If there are 10 optional organelles then there are 1024 different combinations you can make, if you could have between 1 and 10 of each of these then that's 10^10 different possible cells. Maybe it's possible to make rules to cover them (like if you have a cell wall then you cannot become a muscle cell etc) but what about later when you can design all kinds of crazy creatures? You don't want to be some massive dragon and get told "sorry you can't carry much in the society stage because you have wings and wings means low carrying capacity", that's going to feel pretty lame. 
Anyway yeah it's just a problem with no solution right now.

...I might have a solution? Let's say you begin as a 5 cell colony made up of the original cells. You've just begun the multicellular stage, where do you go from here?

STEP ONE: SPECIALIZATION
You enter the microbe editor like normal except what's this??? There are now two layers of editors :0000 
By that I mean there should be a colony editor (where you place and remove cells) and the regular cell editor (you click a cell on your colony to enter and make changes to that specific cell). In order to specialize your clone colony (hereby dubbed clonony), you click the cells and gradually make changes until you unlock a cell type. Cell types can then be dragged and dropped into the colony editor, like organelles are dragged and dropped into the cell editor. 

An example: You're a 5 celled clonony. You enter the editor, click on Cell 1 and add an obscene amount of mitochondria. This becomes the first muscle cell and unlocks it in the colony editor. Cell 2 is fitted with calcium carbonate secretors and becomes the first bone cell. Cell 3 is filled with eyespot apparatus and becomes a photoreceptive cell (more so than an eyespot apparatus, even though the player will be able to see light anyway so it doesn't make much sense but that's for a different discussion). Cell 4 can be filled with lysosomes, so it becomes specialized as a digestive cell. Cell 5 is turned into a neuron somehow (I'm not entirely sure what could be added to a cell to make it a neuron. Maybe adjust the shape to give it dendrites and axons??). You now have a fully specialized colony. But how do you grow?

STEP TWO: REPLICATION
Well you've been swimming around as a specialized colony now, but you want to grow. You take a trip into the editor and this time you use the colony editor. In the colony editor you should see a list of cell types that you have unlocked by specializing existing base cells. You can drag and drop these cells from the list, to your colony, showing an increase in the number of cells each generation.

An example: You are playing as a 5 celled colony made up of a muscle cell, a bone cell, a photoreceptive cell, a digestive cell, and a neuron. You enter the editor and see the list of unlocked cells. In this list you see the original base cell (or a stem cell or something), and all the currently existing cells in your colony. You decide to spend your mutation points one extra digestive cell, one muscle cell, and one bone cell. And yeah you continue until you've unlocked things like muscle fibers (stringing muscle cells together), proper bones (having clumps of bone cells), and organs (clump a bunch of digestive cells and hey let's call that a stomach), etc, etc.

Also for things like electric organs and stuff, there may need to be more than just the 10 organelles. What do you think?

EDIT: All my work was for naught. Wayward explained it much better than I. I spent so long too 

Eh don't worry about it, it's pretty funny honestly.
And you know what they say, great minds think alike

Yeah.. wow okay. I've got nothing at the moment 

tjwhale , what if it had to do with a ratio of certain organelles. The more mitochondria you put in a muscle cell the more effective it is?
I dunno maybe generic cells is the way to go. When you said generic cells I thought you mean we have them all from the start.

What I am about to say will not address every problem you pointed out (because this issue is a lot more complicated than I at first imagined), but I do have a slightly less nebulous definition of "the Algorithm" *epic music plays, flock of birds fly over head*

In the scenario described in my post, the computer would have a rough idea of what was needed for a cell to perform a designated function. So it would require a muscle cell to have, say, twelve mitochondria, and any cell meeting this requirement can be considered muscle tissue (although the requirement in game would ideally be more complex). Under this system, cells could be considered multiple types of tissue if the player just stuffed every organelle possible into them, but hopefully energy constraints would encourage them to avoid such clutter. In this case the player could just sort of choose which of their cell types they want to include in pre-made organs, which would allow for tissue classification, but perhaps allow a bit of the microbe stage to flow into the multicellular stage.

In the less formulaic scenario I put forth, in which there are no predefined tissues, then the computer would know what biological functions each cell was capable of carrying out, and the player would mold and sculpt the tissue arrangement so that the creature had the right distribution of cells that did the right job. This scenario would probably not allow for pre-made organs. Exempli gratia: painstakingly placing a column of "bone cells", which as far as the computer is concerned are just super strong, apatite reinforced cells, to form a structure that can support muscles.

let me know if this was unclear/unhelpful/still not quite addressing the issue.

edit: tjwhale the complexity of the mechanics is my favorite part of this game's development!

edit 2: There are a lot of problems with my second paragraph, most notably that I'm not sure how the computer would figure out a creature's movement with player sculpted muscle clusters.

Support this. 
Side idea: What if we can save certain bone structures (when they get large enough) to be able to use later in the game (multicellular and aware). It'd be similar to tech object in the tech editor, whereas the cells themselves would be the function parts.

EDIT: This addresses edit 2

"but is measured for it's capabilities and then used accordingly" - got any clues about how this measuring might work?

Another issue is how fine detailed is the building process. Like say you are building a human are you really going to put in every bone and muscle and never ending? Like will you have to design teeth one by one and put nerves in each one and put gums on and put a tongue in etc. That seems too detailed and like too much work.

But if you get given "it's a mouth" and you can put it on your creature then don't we have the same problem again? Like you spent all this time designing custom neurons and custom muscles and custom bone segments and then it all jsut gets smushed in to a "generic mouth".

Or you can label whatever you want as "this is the mouth" but then we need a magic algorithm for determining how effective something is at being a mouth.

It looks like we might need a lot of magic algorithms!