Microbe Stage Progress Report

Awesome work Nimbal! I'll be sure to download this soon. Would you like to post on reddit or shall I?

Download file, extract, then go into folder: Thrive -> Thrive -> bin -> and run the file Thrive.exe.
Once open select the only Ogre option available then run.

p.s. once you select the Ogre option, it never asks you to select it again and instead just runs the demo.

The demo is simple you control a Red & Green cell, which moves towards the mouse pointer by using the [W] key, and moves away from the mouse pointer by using the [S] key. Doing this uses ENERGY, if you have 0 (zero) energy you may not move. Your cell moves around on a blue background.

The double spherical blue object emits tiny blue agents. If you collide with these agents you "pick" them up and replenish ENERGY.

If you collide with the Energy Maker it stops you.

It all worked fine for me, it automatically made it full screen and my mouse pointer was visible.

I am running Windows 7 Home Premium service pack 1
on a HP with an AMD Athlon II p340 Dual-core processor (2.2ghz)
4gb ram
64 bit operating system

edit: wrong keys, and type fixes

WJacobC wrote:

Would you like to post on reddit or shall I?

Go ahead and post it. Just be sure to label it appropriately with "work in progress" or similar. We don't want people to expect too much.

@meldebious: Thanks for the instructions! In retrospect, I'm actually a little surprised that someone figured out so fast that no energy means "dead in the water". I fully expected a bug report about that.

Really? no that makes sense to me, maybe have a slower rate with no energy, such as you can't use any of your speed boost parts.

Also [Esc] key exits and closes the game.

Nimbal wrote:

Microbe Stage update

Wow nimbal, I have to say I'm pretty impressed. You're really making this happen, and it's going well. Guiding my microbe around feels perfect. I really get the feeling of viscosity and it's easy to prioritize movements based on my momentum. With a about 5 other programs running, I was averaging ~600 fps (I think?), and I'm running off of a pretty basic desktop. This feels fantastic. Awesome, Awesome work. I'll test this out on my laptop and see If I can do some cell editing.

Quote :

Wow nimbal, I have to say I'm pretty impressed. You're really making this happen, and it's going well. Guiding my microbe around feels perfect. I really get the feeling of viscosity and it's easy to prioritize movements based on my momentum. With a about 5 other programs running, I was averaging ~600 fps, and I'm running off of a pretty basic desktop. This feels fantastic. Awesome, Awesome work. I'll test this out on my laptop and see If I can do some cell editing.

Really? I had a pretty hard time with the controls myself. What's wrong with the good ole arrow keys?

I find the cursor based movement perfectly fine. It would merge well with the later stages of the game.

The good old arrow keys are nearly never used today for 2 good reasons:

1.Its very close to the mouse, so it can be uncomfortable to use.

2.Its far away from the rest of the main letter keyboard, so if you want to press say E, you would have to make an entire journey from the right to the left part of the keyboard, while with WASD you can easily do that without even taking your hands off the controls.

why not giving a free configurable keyboard layout?

Peoples who want the arrow keys can use it, other peoples (including me), who prefer the wasd movement could use this then.

But key config wouldn't be able to change the fact that, in the one case, the cell would move to the mouse when the up arrow is clicked, and in the other case, would move straight up when the up arrow is clicked. From what I know, the system being direction based or cursor based is not-configurable in game.

Silver Sterling wrote:

why not giving a free configurable keyboard layout?

Peoples who want the arrow keys can use it, other peoples (including me), who prefer the wasd movement could use this then.

I've seen in some games you have 2 options:
1: Use the mouse to control direction, and WASD (or WS in this case) to control movement.
2: use arrows keys to control direction and movement, have the left and right change direction, and up and down to change movement.

Many simple games I've played implement both these uses. But of course that is games that don't use the mouse click because then if you are using the arrow keys its harder to use the mouse. So it would depend on mouse useage in the game, which in cell stage might not be as used, in later stages would be used a lot more. So it would be stupid to get you used to using arrow keys to only have you switch to another system or throw you off with your hands trying to make out on the keyboard.

edit: did not see Nick's post above me. Take that into account with what I have stated.

Should we consider this 0.2.0? Seeing as it is a massive upgrade.

Fine by me.

I just wanted to add, since I forgot to say, spectacular work Nimbal! :D I can't wait to get back home to try this out. It's great to see hard development going again.

Tarpy wrote:

The good old arrow keys are nearly never used today for 2 good reasons:

1.Its very close to the mouse, so it can be uncomfortable to use.

2.Its far away from the rest of the main letter keyboard, so if you want to press say E, you would have to make an entire journey from the right to the left part of the keyboard, while with WASD you can easily do that without even taking your hands off the controls.

Fine. Point-n'-click or merely dragging the cell with the cursor are perfectly viable options. This seems needlessly offputting to potential players. I shouldn't have to hold down a key constantly to get it to do what I want.

Mouthwash wrote:

I shouldn't have to hold down a key constantly to get it to do what I want.

Well then what do you expect? Telekinesis?

NickTheNick wrote:

Mouthwash wrote:

I shouldn't have to hold down a key constantly to get it to do what I want.

Well then what do you expect? Telekinesis?

I gave alternatives. Forcing us to either hold down the S or W keys as well as manipulating the mouse is hard to coordinate (at least for me) without practice.

Mouthwash wrote:

Forcing us to either hold down the S or W keys as well as manipulating the mouse is hard to coordinate (at least for me) without practice.

Yeah, it's a tricky thing, pressing two buttons at a time. It takes a couple of grueling weeks to get the hang of it. One of my friends actually broke his wrist during his first try. :o 

Joking aside, if there turns out to be numerous complaints with the controls, we can change it. Also, I think a point and click would be good to add on top of the current system for movement. Does the mouse button need to be clicked down for the cell to move to it, or does the cursor simply need to be there?

NickTheNick wrote:

Mouthwash wrote:

Forcing us to either hold down the S or W keys as well as manipulating the mouse is hard to coordinate (at least for me) without practice.

Yeah, it's a tricky thing, pressing two buttons at a time. It takes a couple of grueling weeks to get the hang of it. One of my friends actually broke his wrist during his first try. :o 

Joking aside, if there turns out to be numerous complaints with the controls, we can change it. Also, I think a point and click would be good to add on top of the current system for movement. Does the mouse button need to be clicked down for the cell to move to it, or does the cursor simply need to be there?

It depends on whether we want you to interact with things while you pass by them (will you be able to click on a cell near you to see more information on it? etc.)

How about right click is "Examine"?

I think that would work.

This my be out of line or just not constructive, but I'd have to say that this demo is remarkable, and is a great showcase for many great things to come. Yes it is an Indev. Demo that needs greatly to be expanded and built upon to become what one day we would like to call a "Game". With that being said, I think its a little sad that the first thing that we can say about it after viewing it is that the controls are wrong.

Where is the constructive optimism that should ensue? That there is evidence that this idea is making leaps and bounds? Yes we should always step back and improve on it where ever possible. But shouldn't we at least mention what the demo has instead of what it doesn't have?

There was more I wanted to say, but my wife is calling me to bed, night.

I don't know, I keep checking all day yesterday and nothing happens, and then overnight everything explodes . . .

That demo is pretty awesome for something so simple, although I'm not really sure whether I'm doing everything right when I play it. Wow, we're making progress again. Great work, Nimbal.

On the subject of movement, for the concept animation I used Spore's movement system, whereby you have to hold the mouse button down in order to keep moving towards somewhere, except I added an animated marker to indicate where you're moving to. I did have a different idea while I was making it - we use an RTS point and click style. You click somewhere in the environment and a marker is put down, whether your mouse is still held down on that spot or not. Your cell will then constantly try and get to the marker until you click somewhere else and place another marker, removing the previous one. This would help if you're trying to move to a specific place but want to do other things at the same time, such as check compound stores or examine another microbe.

I'm sorry, donät want to come about as a douche here,, but.. This demo is nice work yes, but posting it on reddit and going all bananas over this is a little bit of an overreaction. Don't overhype this, people will not see this as a "great demo" yet.

I see what Dalroc is saying, and it's something I agree with. I think that it would be best to not publicize any current or upcoming releases, and then after some significant change, once we have all the basics of a game, go public on reddit, youtube, etc. with that new release. What do you guys think?

Hmm, that might be wise, but at the same time I think we should have monthly updates, even it its just a quick news article. And later when things are developing and when there is much more to work with I think it should be pushed up to weekly updates.

I've heard the saying, not that I completely agree with it, "all news is good news".