Microbe Stage Progress Report

~sciocont wrote:

untrustedlife wrote:

NikolaAnicic007 wrote:

A-lot of misinformed badly written text.

Actually we are getting things done in great time, in fact, my prototype is just about ready to be released (sorry for my inactivity over the last couple of days (busy-ness)) We are adding alot of background stuff to the game right now (for example, lua support)

I'm excited to see the latest prototype. If you could, please have it posted before Saturday- we need to make another release this weekend.

Forgive me for asking again, but could you also add a link to the website on ModDB? I know it's far from finished (we still have to implement ExpressionEngine, after all), but so far everyone I've shown it to has become much more interested in the game than they were before. One of my friends has even expressed his intention to compose music after seeing the website, and another said he'd been willing to do some basic programming (they'll probably both appear on the forums within the next few days as I've given them the links). Many of the naysayers will also stop complaining so much if they see we have a new site, which along with the amazing prototypes proves we are making substantial progress.

Oliveriver wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

untrustedlife wrote:

NikolaAnicic007 wrote:

A-lot of misinformed badly written text.

Actually we are getting things done in great time, in fact, my prototype is just about ready to be released (sorry for my inactivity over the last couple of days (busy-ness)) We are adding alot of background stuff to the game right now (for example, lua support)

I'm excited to see the latest prototype. If you could, please have it posted before Saturday- we need to make another release this weekend.

Forgive me for asking again, but could you also add a link to the website on ModDB? I know it's far from finished (we still have to implement ExpressionEngine, after all), but so far everyone I've shown it to has become much more interested in the game than they were before. One of my friends has even expressed his intention to compose music after seeing the website, and another said he'd been willing to do some basic programming (they'll probably both appear on the forums within the next few days as I've given them the links). Many of the naysayers will also stop complaining so much if they see we have a new site, which along with the amazing prototypes proves we are making substantial progress.

I plan on adding it in the next update.

In my defence I wus depressed ......................................................And I am not gone for good!

Sry all

Oliveriver wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

untrustedlife wrote:

NikolaAnicic007 wrote:

A-lot of misinformed badly written text.

Actually we are getting things done in great time, in fact, my prototype is just about ready to be released (sorry for my inactivity over the last couple of days (busy-ness)) We are adding alot of background stuff to the game right now (for example, lua support)

I'm excited to see the latest prototype. If you could, please have it posted before Saturday- we need to make another release this weekend.

Forgive me for asking again, but could you also add a link to the website on ModDB? I know it's far from finished (we still have to implement ExpressionEngine, after all), but so far everyone I've shown it to has become much more interested in the game than they were before. One of my friends has even expressed his intention to compose music after seeing the website, and another said he'd been willing to do some basic programming (they'll probably both appear on the forums within the next few days as I've given them the links). Many of the naysayers will also stop complaining so much if they see we have a new site, which along with the amazing prototypes proves we are making substantial progress.

Speaking as someone who didn't know there was a modDB page before reading this and is now even more excited after reading everything there, I certainly agree.

*Showers cookies on you all*

I did not seriously expect this much progress to be made in the few months that I was gone, so good job, team!

Thriving Cheese wrote:

CoolGuyChris wrote:

I was wondering if I could make textures for creatures in the game. Can I help with that?

EDIT: @CoolGuyChris: I think you should make them greyscale, so that they then can easily be turned into a lot of other different colours, for example if the players gonna be able to chose the colour on them in-game, and please make them tileable/seamless.

Okay, I'll start planning on what kinds of textures to make. By the way, I was expecting to make them grey scale. Learned a similar trick from editing textures for my Minecraft Texture Pack. Oh yeah, thanks for the link to the thread!

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

*Showers cookies on you all*

I did not seriously expect this much progress to be made in the few months that I was gone, so good job, team!

Thanks for the cookies Miss Calli

CoolGuyChris wrote:

Thriving Cheese wrote:

CoolGuyChris wrote:

I was wondering if I could make textures for creatures in the game. Can I help with that?

EDIT: @CoolGuyChris: I think you should make them greyscale, so that they then can easily be turned into a lot of other different colours, for example if the players gonna be able to chose the colour on them in-game, and please make them tileable/seamless.

Okay, I'll start planning on what kinds of textures to make. By the way, I was expecting to make them grey scale. Learned a similar trick from editing textures for my Minecraft Texture Pack. Oh yeah, thanks for the link to the thread!

Great!

So, this thread has sort of devolved from its original purpose, and its OP is becoming more out of date with each passing day, so I would like to take the time to restore it to its previous position. Certain threads manage the creation of new art assets, while others track the development in programming, but I think it is important for there to be one thread to bind these all together to just keep overall track of what is done, what needs doing, and how far we are.  

I will be updating the OP soon with the newest links and assets, but I would like to start by asking for people to post any short and long terms goals there are for the Microbe Stage that I am missing from the OP so I can put them up and we can start to organize efforts towards completing them.

Two questions:

1. When doing the summary of the progress, do you also include the progress on the prototypes as well?

2. Since untrustedlife's project actually uses evolution rather than preset microbes, which one of these two will we utilize in the end product?

Also, a short term suggestion.

I think we should actually try and merge RodGame's compound prototype, FunnyGame's microbe editor and untrustedlife's prototype.

Since I'm currently learning Unity (got sick of java) and actually have some time for the project this time around, I may try and tweak Rod's prototype a little.

Prototypes can be added to the progress list.

The final goal is evolution. Preset microbes is just a placeholder for the early development.

I'll add in a new task called "Merge Prototypes".

Also, in which programming language will we write the merged prototypes?

Because in my opinion, it would be best if it is written and compiled in C++ since the actual game will be in that language.

Prototypes should generally be written quickly, with no concern about reusability or clean implementation. Their main purpose is to explore game mechanics without having to implement every detail. In light of this, using C++ would be a little counterproductive. I doubt that we would be able to copy & paste any code from a prototype to the actual game anyway, so use whatever language / framework you feel most comfortable with.

@Nimbal-Although I agree prototypes should be written in a simple language, what I really meant was to merge them into the actual game. Not to sound like I'm commanding someone, but we really need to start working on the official code, since right now it's very simple compared to the prototypes.

The point of a prototype is to quickly gather feedback. If you think you (or anyone else for that matter) can do that with the current state of the engine, by all means, go ahead. I'd actually love for people to use it, find, report and maybe even fix bugs or suggest features they need. But the problem is the iteration speed. Depending on familiarity with C++ and our engine, it might take far more time to write a prototype than using a simpler, more expressive language and framework. So instead of concentrating on the "what" of the prototype, it's more a question of "how".

If you really want to do this, check out the branch "single_threaded" in the git repository.

Although I'm not really fond of cpp, I would give the code a look, but I can't seem to find the 'single_threaded' in the code repository. Could you please give me a link?

Here you go. As a starting point, I would look at the scripts in the res/dist/scripts/sandbox directory and play around with them.

Thank you

Nimbal wrote:

Prototypes should generally be written quickly, with no concern about reusability or clean implementation. Their main purpose is to explore game mechanics without having to implement every detail. In light of this, using C++ would be a little counterproductive. I doubt that we would be able to copy & paste any code from a prototype to the actual game anyway, so use whatever language / framework you feel most comfortable with.

QFT - I thought I posted something to this effect yesterday, but apparently the forum swallowed it (or I'm slowly going mad...)

Prototypes are for testing concepts, they shouldn't ever be seen as a way to get code into the final game.  At best, they can be used for testing algorithms and specific implementations, which can then be translated into the final game engine, mostly they're just used for testing concepts without having to worry too much about the code.  Prototyping in c++ would make the translation part easier, but as Nimbal said, the actual prototypes would be produced much slower.

Equally, merging prototypes isn't very useful, they should each be fairly independant, testing whatever system or concept they were built to test.  Unless we think we'll have trouble merging particular systems, there's no need to prototype most combinations.

@Nimbal - as soon as I have some free time again (probably early August), I'll be getting up to date on all the coding you've done on the engine, and will be doing some prototypes of population dynamics etc. using it - they need to be done in c++ anyway as a key part of prototyping them is checking performance.

So, I made some changes to the OP which included deleting some older content. Are there any tasks that need doing that aren't on the task list? Are there any updates on tasks currently on the task list?

Things that caught my eye:

• Having the engine categorized as "complete" is a little too optimistic.
  
• I think microbial biomes are pretty much scrapped for now
  
• Linking to the Microbe Stage instead of the "final draft" thread would probably be better.
  

And to head off the disappointment, a complete microbe stage before the end of the year is unrealistic. I know everyone (including me) is eager to have something to show, but this timeframe is just too tight. The microbe stage is already a fairly complex game for which a full time developer team of comparable size (counting only those here that directly contribute to design, implementation and art assets) would probably already take at least half a year. We are doing this in our free time, with personal life constantly interfering. Not to mention the lack of expertise in game development. So, please, don't hold your breath. Completing the microbe stage will be a long hike, not a sprint.

Made all the changes. The blurb at the beginning I have kept since half a year ago, when I tried to explain the importance of finishing the microbe stage to people who were losing hope in the game. Since then I didn't want to delete it so I just changed the year when it 2013 and Microbe Stage was still under development, so I can just change the year again.

EDIT: It would be nice though to have a merged prototype, as Tarpy suggested earlier, by the end of the year, for all the reasons listed in the OP. Something which incorporates the evolution from untrustedlife's prototype, the editor from funnygame's prototype, and the compound system from Rodgame's prototype (I never see him here anymore where is he?). Tack in a menu, some music, and controls, and you've got a pretty decent representation of the Microbe Stage.

However, I only suggest this as an aside. If it detracts from work to the actual game I would rather not support it.

NickTheNick wrote:

Made all the changes. The blurb at the beginning I have kept since half a year ago, when I tried to explain the importance of finishing the microbe stage to people who were losing hope in the game. Since then I didn't want to delete it so I just changed the year when it 2013 and Microbe Stage was still under development, so I can just change the year again.

EDIT: It would be nice though to have a merged prototype, as Tarpy suggested earlier, by the end of the year, for all the reasons listed in the OP. Something which incorporates the evolution from untrustedlife's prototype, the editor from funnygame's prototype, and the compound system from Rodgame's prototype (I never see him here anymore where is he?). Tack in a menu, some music, and controls, and you've got a pretty decent representation of the Microbe Stage.

However, I only suggest this as an aside. If it detracts from work to the actual game I would rather not support it.

Don't get it started again

for all purposes "we'll never be done and the project is going nowhere"

Jimexmore wrote:

Don't get it started again

for all purposes "we'll never be done and the project is going nowhere"

What do you mean?

Thriving Cheese wrote:

Jimexmore wrote:

Don't get it started again

for all purposes "we'll never be done and the project is going nowhere"

What do you mean?

I was about to ask that as well.

Tarpy wrote:

Thriving Cheese wrote:

Jimexmore wrote:

Don't get it started again

for all purposes "we'll never be done and the project is going nowhere"

What do you mean?

I was about to ask that as well.

Yep, what do you mean Jimexmore?