Hello World!

I'll start with a little about myself. My name is The Creator and I am from the US. I have been interested in exobiology/alternate evolution for quite a while now. My passion probably started with the Epona Project and slowly grew through out the 5 years while Spore was being developed. When the game finally came out it was a bit of a disappointment from a scientific point of view. Nevertheless the game play and graphics were pretty good and I ended up playing it, multiple times actually, creating colonies of creatures. After a year it became quite obvious that the game was never going to get better and all the promises about an aquatic stage and a plant editor, were empty (the plant editor was eventually made but it was so buggy playing it soon became impossible). It was then did I finally find Thrive, a game that not only is going to be what Spore failed to achieve, but is also striving to be bigger and better. Sorry for the long introduction, just had to get that out of the way, now moving on to the point  :arrow: .


I would be lying if I said I was an awesome programmer, but I do have some experience. I have coded a few 3D games before using C# with XNA and I do know a bit of Lua, but my knowledge is mostly theoretical and I do not think I will be of much help in that area.

3D modeling on the other hand is my strength. I think I will be quite useful when the multicellular stages finally begin developing. Use softwares such as Blender I can make rain, snow, lightning as well as more basic objects like a hand or fur. I have decent experience in rigging, for those of you who don't know, rigging is the process of making a model develop joints and a skeleton. This allows giving movement to a stationary object. On of my recent works is shown below:

Spoiler:

Sorry about the quality, I had to shrink it down.

Again, sorry for the long post and thanks to everyone who read it!  :cat:

Welcome to the forum, The Creator!

I used to play spore a lot as well. Although the game lacked scientific quality, it was nevertheless one of my personal most played games ever.

You don't need to have huge amounts of experience to help us out with programming, since the microbe stage(which is currently being developed) will be 2D.

It is great to have a 3D modeler, since 3D models will become vital in the post-microbe stages. You seem to be very experienced as well. The picture you posted is simply beautiful.

I hope you have an enjoyable and constructive time here on the forum.

Welcome on the Thrive Dev Forum, The Creator!
I briefly read through the Epona Project website and it sounds really interessting. Did it get canceled or is it still under development? It would be a shame if it isn't.
However, enjoy your stay on the forum!

The microbe stage is actually 3D currently, but the camera is angled at a 2d-ish angle. The compounds and such you see right now will actually show itself in 3d as they move out of the center of your perspective :)Although it is true that we won't be using a lot of 3d models for the microbe stage.

Oh, and welcome!

Tarpy, thanks  :D  it took my computer only 8 hours to render it.

Maybe I'll give the programming a try then. Just a quick question, as far as I understand all of the in game programming is done using C++ and the Ogre rendering engine. But does it use XNA or DirectX libraries?

Mirror Monkey,
The Epona Project was never 'canceled' however through the years the developers stopped adding stuff to it. The saddest of all is that the website contains less that a tenth of the actual information that happened during the COTI conferences.

Thanks to everyone for the warm introduction! off to the forums...

Welcome to the project Creator!

It's awesome to see that you are practiced in modelling, rigging, and programming. All three of those will come in handy, especially rigging, as we don't have many animators here. I would keep an eye on the Art Assets thread where I try to centralize the efforts of the art department. We are close to modelling for the multicellular stage, but there is still quite a bit Microbe work yet in the way.

Hi and welcome to Thrive The Creator!