Microbe Stage Progress Report

NickTheNick wrote:

Rodgame's prototype (I never see him here anymore where is he?).

I have been wondering as well. He was coming almost daily up until 29th of April (or something like that) and simply vanished after that. Is it possible to contact him somehow?(mail?)

Jimexmore has simply become another Nikola. He's simply a hater at this point, since we didn't immediately say that he's the best person at the project he's now saying it will never get done. Jimexmore, I truly hope you'll change your opinion and help us complete Thrive!

Tarpy wrote:

NickTheNick wrote:

Rodgame's prototype (I never see him here anymore where is he?).

I have been wondering as well. He was coming almost daily up until 29th of April (or something like that) and simply vanished after that. Is it possible to contact him somehow?(mail?)

If I remember correctly, Rodgame is currently in his country's armed forces, which is why he hasn't had much free time to work on the prototype.

~sciocont wrote:

Tarpy wrote:

NickTheNick wrote:

Rodgame's prototype (I never see him here anymore where is he?).

I have been wondering as well. He was coming almost daily up until 29th of April (or something like that) and simply vanished after that. Is it possible to contact him somehow?(mail?)

If I remember correctly, Rodgame is currently in his country's armed forces, which is why he hasn't had much free time to work on the prototype.

That's funnygames

Tarpy wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Tarpy wrote:

NickTheNick wrote:

Rodgame's prototype (I never see him here anymore where is he?).

I have been wondering as well. He was coming almost daily up until 29th of April (or something like that) and simply vanished after that. Is it possible to contact him somehow?(mail?)

If I remember correctly, Rodgame is currently in his country's armed forces, which is why he hasn't had much free time to work on the prototype.

That's funnygames

Excactly what I was about to say.

Excuse my stupidity, I though I may have been woefully incorrect.

So, is it possible we contact him then?

He did leave an E-Mail.

WJacobC wrote:

Jimexmore has simply become another Nikola. He's simply a hater at this point, since we didn't immediately say that he's the best person at the project he's now saying it will never get done. Jimexmore, I truly hope you'll change your opinion and help us complete Thrive!

I really would help you but. I don't know anything about programming I could be at best a beta tester , push the program to it's limits but thats about it .Unless you really want to take the time to teach me programming,but i could beta test to things how well it runs on laptops and the capabilities of the editors .
So if i came off as a hater I just wanted to avoid the madness on the front page again.

So anyways, back on topic, let's try and use this as a central thread for organizing the efforts towards working on the Microbe Stage. Are there any tasks to add to the OP? Any that people are willing to take up?

Also, for anyone with experience in project management for just organization in general, any ideas as to how to improve our tracking of our progress? Any programs you guys recommend? Anyone want to volunteer to help organize and track progress? I know Pivotal Tracker is a good website, and we even have a page on there, but I don't have much time to commit to updating it, especially since I am much more interested in working on other area's of the game's development.

Jimexmore has simply become another Nikola. He's simply a hater at this point, since we didn't immediately say that he's the best person at the project he's now saying it will never get done. Jimexmore, I truly hope you'll change your opinion and help us complete Thrive!

I am not a hater

I only did one comment

I am for the completion of Thrive and I want to help :l
But I can just give you ideas I can't program or do AMAZING art but I can ask somr things and maybe give you ideas

I hope I will be useful

Me :3 (Not a hater :( )

NikolaAnicic007 wrote:

Jimexmore has simply become another Nikola. He's simply a hater at this point, since we didn't immediately say that he's the best person at the project he's now saying it will never get done. Jimexmore, I truly hope you'll change your opinion and help us complete Thrive!

I am not a hater

I only did one comment

I am for the completion of Thrive and I want to help :l
But I can just give you ideas I can't program or do AMAZING art but I can ask somr things and maybe give you ideas

I hope I will be useful

Me :3 (Not a hater :( )

I could be at best a beta tester

NikolaAnicic007 wrote:

NikolaAnicic007 wrote:

Jimexmore has simply become another Nikola. He's simply a hater at this point, since we didn't immediately say that he's the best person at the project he's now saying it will never get done. Jimexmore, I truly hope you'll change your opinion and help us complete Thrive!

I am not a hater

I only did one comment

I am for the completion of Thrive and I want to help :l
But I can just give you ideas I can't program or do AMAZING art but I can ask somr things and maybe give you ideas

I hope I will be useful

Me :3 (Not a hater :( )

I could be at best a beta tester

Thats exactly what i said tehe

Guys, please stay on topic and allow people to address what's on hand.

@Nikola

Do not reply to your post to add in more content. You can edit that in.

I just finished the new progress tracking thread for the Microbe Stage here, at Inca's request.

Please help me make the task list as up to date as possible for all categories. Note that a * denotes a task, while a bullet describes a specification for that task.

Here are all the themes composed for the microbe stage to update the bulletin:

Microbe gameplay themes:
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gwI7tNKnXM
(2 was changed into a space theme)
3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJeekPuN16E
4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnE1PORPEv4
5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YByKw3LXtf0
6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO4050JsHvM
7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zypt6rtHZI
8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i59ZNe_9Wbw

Microbe editor themes:
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dphwOGd-y0w
2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o0eU1MOd84 (Changed from gameplay to editor by request of Doggit)
3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYaLDPm7TlM

Okay, thanks, I'll make sure to update the bulletin.

Ok so scio said the art style should be more realistic and i see -Realistic art style everywhere in the Development Bulletin thread but what exactly does this mean? Should the models be more complex or the textures better or what?

Tritium wrote:

Ok so scio said the art style should be more realistic and i see -Realistic art style everywhere in the Development Bulletin thread but what exactly does this mean? Should the models be more complex or the textures better or what?

I think he means both.

EDIT: When i look at microbe dev. bulletin, i really see how close to microbe stage we are.

I'm not sure if that's what scio means, but I'd like to see a style that imitates looking through a microscope, but with a bit more color where appropriate. There are some YouTube videos that could serve as a reference, for example this one, this one or this one.

I think the defining qualities of this style are:

• Translucency of the microbes
  
• Clearly visible edges that hint at the three-dimensional, round form of the cells
  
• Stuff floating around in the background, out of focus
  
• Jerky camera movement as if moving around a slide on the microscope's tray
  

Those aren't a question of highly detailed models or textures alone, after all, how much surface structure do you really see in those videos I linked above? Achieving this style will probably require some hand-crafted shaders.

It would be cool if it was like that. Howewer, i think Scio posted somewhere about better textures or models... Im not sure though.

Nimbal wrote:

I'm not sure if that's what scio means, but I'd like to see a style that imitates looking through a microscope, but with a bit more color where appropriate. There are some YouTube videos that could serve as a reference, for example this one, this one or this one.

I think the defining qualities of this style are:

• Translucency of the microbes
  
• Clearly visible edges that hint at the three-dimensional, round form of the cells
  
• Stuff floating around in the background, out of focus
  
• Jerky camera movement as if moving around a slide on the microscope's tray
  

Those aren't a question of highly detailed models or textures alone, after all, how much surface structure do you really see in those videos I linked above? Achieving this style will probably require some hand-crafted shaders.

This is all good. I'd like to see microscope-like images, though with a bit less transparency and more color than in the youtube videos, since we won't always have a light background to see them against.
In terms of textures, I'd like to see

• Pseudo-randomness: Textures should look like they have a definite order or set of rules, but also should look organic. For this, I recommend checking out Perlin Noise, Voronoi textures (which were the inspiration for the "shatter" graphic art style), and real animal and plant textures for inspiration.
  
  
• Uniform sharpness: Texture should either contain bold, sharp edges, medium-sharpness edges, or soft edges. Don't mix edge types, and always try the sharp edges first, then blur them to the desired degree. If you look in a microscope, you'll see many different levels of focus, but our textures each apply to a single object, which will be either entirely in or entirely out of focus.
  
• Light, desaturated colors: Microbes usually have colors like this because they are small and mostly transparent, so there isn't much pigment in them to build up and create dark colors. When choosing colors for textures, keep this in mind.
  

Look at this color wheel:

The colors I think of are colors like  ████CCFF99C, ████FF9933, ████CC3333, ████6699CC, ████99CC99, ████99FF66, ████FF6633. I want to avoid purples, pinks, and yellows, since these are colors one generally doesn't see in the microbe world. Focus on blues, greens, and  pale oranges.

As for models, make cells look natural- give them tome taper, some flash, some intrigue. Make any other models look very close to what they look like in real life.

Have any of you ever tried Darwin pond? I don't think it would be a bad inspiration for the microbe stage.

I've just pushed a whole bunch of stuff related to the microbe stage to the git repository (branch "prototype"). You can download a precompiled version here as a zip. Don't expect too much, it's still far from something you could call "game".

Notable stuff:

• Systems for emitting and absorbing agent particles
  
• Classes for microbes and their organelles, completely in Lua
  
• Organelles for moving / turning and storing agents
  
• Mouse and keyboard controls
  
• A nonsense example that will give the player control over a microbe consisting of a storage organelle (green) for an "energy" agent and two movement organelles (red) for forward / backward movement
  
• A display for the amount of "energy" the player microbe has stored. Energy is used when moving and restored by gathering the little particles that shoot out of the big molecule looking thingy. If this doesn't make sense to you, don't worry. It just doesn't.
  

Notable missing stuff:

• A mouse cursor. I recommed you start in windowed mode for now
  
• Saving / loading game state. This will probably be the next thing I tackle since it could get rather complicated.
  
• Microbe editor. If you want other shapes, you'll have to play around with the Lua script constructing the player microbe. See "scripts/sandbox/player.lua", especially the last 15 lines or so. Beware the hex coordinates, I'll have to upload a picture explaining those. But until then, you're on your own.
  
• Everything else I haven't explicitly listed.
  

I would really like to try it, but the link is broken for me.

EDIT- Nevermind, it works.

EDIT2-Very nice, its a lot when compared to what we had before.