On the approach to generation 300, the run was suddenly stricken with an epidemic of sliders (creatures who lack pose genes and thus can't move; if you try leading them with the hand they "slide" along the ground, hence the name) and other such maladies. And among the individuals in the run was GrM0262 (a clinical name given to him by Kezune's Wolfing Autonamer, which I used to track generations in the time before I made my Wolfling Nametagger).
All of the genomes I used to start the run and continued to add new generation 1 creatures from were CFE based and included all of their immortality preventing edits. Yet somehow, GrM0262 was immortal; he was going on 17 hours of age for genomes that died under the five hour mark. I naturally exported him as soon as I realized and set about trying to figure out what went wrong.
At the time, I never did, and the best anyone else could figure out was that he was extremely vulnerable to injury and basically all of his organs were dead. Ten years later, I came to a realization about what the cause could've been...and not only was it figured out, but it lead to the discovery of yet another oversight with the vanilla genomes.
The thought I had: "...Hey, wait a minute. Organs can duplicate, and be cut, can't they?"
First, a brief explanation about Organ genes. Organs are basically folders, organizing all the genes in a creature's genome based on their purposes (for example, the lung organ holds all the genes necessary for breathing). But they're also a bit more than that; like the organs of real animals, they can be injured, repaired, operate at different speeds based on needs, and even die, after which all the genes in them stop functioning.
When making a genome, any gene between two organs is considered to be part of the first organ. This also applies when, over the course of natural mutation, and organ is cut; any gene that originally belonged to the original organ will then be part of the organ immediately before.
The genes responsible for controlling aging and things a creature will immediately die from (low energy or ATP, high Wounded) are in the organ known as the Time Line. This organ, by default, does not mutate, and in CFE and beyond most of the genes in it can't mutate either. There are also no genes in it that would injure it in any way beyond just the usual stresses of aging.
The organ immediately below it is the Uterus, which controls pregnancy and laying eggs in female creatures. It is also the only sex-linked organ, appearing only in female creatures.
You might be able to figure out what the problem was just from the information given so far. And indeed, I was thinking in the right direction. However, my thought was that the Uterus had been deleted (or possibly had a variant mutation that would render it unexpressed in 7/8s of creatures), and thus the genes that would damage the Uterus would now damage the Time Line, resulting in an immortal (or more accurately zombified) creature.
Verm verified my suspicions when I asked over Discord, but as it turned out that wasn't the case for GrM0262. The Uterus did mutate to kick in at childhood in his genome, but that shouldn't have mattered as the game will simply consider all organs active at childhood regardless of what that value said. Otherwise? Once again, nothing else stood out to me.
So Verm took a look, confirming that (a clone of) GrM0262 still possessed the ability to die of old age after nothing about his genome immediately jumped out at them in the genome. But then they checked the number of receptors in each organ (to do this yourself, you can use the Biochemistry Kit, or if you don't have that you can use the CAOs command "targ norn outv orgi <organ number> <0 for receptors, 1 for emitters, 2 for reactions>" with the CAOs Command Line for the currently selected creature).
Sure enough, GrM0262's timeline had two receptors it shouldn't have had, and both of them came from the uterus organ. One of them was a receptor for Prostaglandin, which by default controls repair rate but had mutated to affect the organ's clock rate instead, while the other was a gene that allowed Heavy Metals to damage the organ. The former of the gene was responsible for GrM0262's unnaturally long life; through means unknown the rest of his organs died, but since he had no prostaglandin in his system the rate at which the time line functioned had slowed to such a crawl as to stop working entirely. After I injected him with Prostaglandin, he dropped dead on the spot.
Now consider what I said earlier about how the uterus is the only sex-linked organ by default. That's true...but some of the genes in it are not. Specifically, in GrM0262's case, the aforementioned prostaglandin receptor was expressed by both sexes. Had he been female, the prostaglandin receptor would've shut down the uterus without prostaglandin and thus prevented the laying of eggs. But since he was a male, the Prostaglandin receptor was instead considered a part of the Time Line organ.
And as it turns out, this wasn't something that was unique to him, even if his case was a very drastic one. It was present in all the genomes used in the run leading up to him. Heck, it's something that had been present in most genomes made before and since, because it was an oversight present in the vanilla genomes. Yet one more oversight for the pile, in case you weren't already convinced C3/DS suffered severe "We weren't allowed enough time to work on the game" syndrome.
But better late than never. I've since implemented a fix for it in RAS by making all of the genes in the uterus linked to females only, and it'll almost certainly be fixed in any future versions of the TWBs/TCBs as well.
And while it might've not had been the issue for GrM0262, I've also decided that there's nothing to be gained from allowing organs to be duplicated and cut (it's nigh impossible for duplicated organs to develop into their own organs over the course of generations just due to how duplicated genes work; all they do is just sit around and consume extra ATP), and now none of the organs in RAS can do so.
It all really makes me wonder about whether or not any gene should be able to be duplicated or cut. It feels like a lot of the problems regarding the stability of higher generation populations come from genes getting endlessly duplicated or vital genes getting cut. On the other hand...the danger of going too far in the other direction and getting creatures who barely change over time at all is also real.
In any event, many thanks go to Verm for helping me put this mystery to rest. I've definitely got ideas from the things I've learned from this.
Until the next one, folks.
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