Microbe Stage Development

agreed, i've been following this project even before it had its own forum, site and wiki, heck i was in sven's forum too when all this thing started. and having a playable prototype would show that the project is viable, all that conceptualization wouldnt have been in vain....

NickTheNick wrote:

In terms of attracting new game developers, I think it will be gradual, since the early releases still will lack the most important concepts of evolution, editors, stage progression, and dynamic competition. But as we get those implemented, the game will begin to form more of a solid basis.

I'm no programmer so I may not be qualified to suggest this but I believe that as long as we have an engine that can easily support people tampering with it we may be able to obtain new developers. I say this because many games have impressive modding communities who have made scripts and animations for their own mods. Just look at The Elder Scrolls games. If someone makes an impressive enough mod for our game (by this I mean adding to the source code without any input from these forums. It would not be a mod if he collaborated on the forums before he posted his portion), we should ask to use it. We are likely far enough away that we do not need to worry about this for some time but to keep modability and modularity in mind would probably be a plus as far as development goes.

Yes that is another one of the goals for when the game becomes solidified.

You can now download the latest version here. Just take the zip with highest "build" number.

Great work, Nimbal and the rest of the team. The controls and basic compounds are working really well. Keep it up!

Downloading right now. Cant wait to try.

Great news. I should be able to get back in on development in the near future.

Coming along nicely!

Just one thing though: I wish there was a readme somewhere in there so I could know the controls.

I'm able to swim around for 20ATP but I can't make any more, I can only collect glucose, which I can only assume would give more ATP.

With the early release coming along nicely, I'd just like to know how musicians can go about adding their microbe music to the code base. Does it have to be a specific file type in order to be implemented, and how exactly do we add it? I, for one, have no idea how to use GitHub, so a simple explanation would probably be best.

Nimbal has just added coding for sound and it seems like .ogg files are atleast supported.

Once I know more I'll let you know

To add to the music used by thrive, no github necessary, you'll need to use SVN. You can download tortoise SVN for windows and you'll right-click a folder where all the existing assets will be put into, choose Checkout and enter the url http://nimbal.net/scm/svn/thrive_assets/trunk it'll then ask for authentication and you just enter anonymous anonymous. After that you just put files in the new folders that are created in there and right click somewhere and use svn Commit.

You can easily find some more help on how to use SVN. Here are a few links:
http://tortoisesvn.net/docs/release/TortoiseSVN_en/tsvn-dug-checkout.html
http://tortoisesvn.net/docs/release/TortoiseSVN_en/tsvn-dug-commit.html

EDIT: .ogg and .wav will be supported!

Note: This thread will be used for discussion concerning the current release.

Fantastic!  :D 

Now I've found my way around the controls, I find them quite intuitive. All the agents seem to be working properly and the collision dynamics are very good, but I have so far found one major problem - for me at least, none of the AI cells move around at all. Instead, they stay put collecting compounds from the same emitters until I collide with them. Also, the speed of the player microbe seems far too fast, but I'm sure that's of negligible importance right now and will be fixed with the introduction of fluid dynamics. The sound is lacking as well, although I suppose that's probably the fault of the other composers and I as we haven't added any music as you explained (I hope to get around to it within the next few days).

Other than that, while it's not entirely what I and many others were hoping for, it's definitely a substantial amount of progress.  :)

EDIT: Someone should post this to Reddit, and if it's fine with you and the others I'll upload an announcement video to YouTube (both my channel and the official Revolutionary Games channel).

How exactly is this a "microbe stage?" You'd need to have implemented a real environment and a basic goal to be reached, no matter how rudimentary. As far as I'm concerned, this isn't even an Alpha.

How do I get glucose or oxygen? There are just little things that I pick up as I swim around. I don't see any correlation with either. And I don't understand what the organelles do or how to edit my cell.

Any timeframe for an actual release?

I have to agree with Oliver on some of this, it is intuitive, although the A and D keys  don't seem to do a lot separately from when pressed with W or S.

I did notice a couple AI cells turn or something like that, just at the edge of the frame. And an edge of the outline on the pink organelle in my cell flashed white for about a moment when brushing against an emitter, but that was about it, and I was unable to recreate the effect.

EDIT: Also, a touchpad for a laptop doesn't work too well if you want to turn and move at the same time, an actual mouse works much better.

Mouthwash wrote:

How exactly is this a "microbe stage?" You'd need to have implemented a real environment and a basic goal to be reached, no matter how rudimentary. As far as I'm concerned, this isn't even an Alpha.

How do I get glucose or oxygen? There are just little things that I pick up as I swim around. I don't see any correlation with either. And I don't understand what the organelles do or how to edit my cell.

Any timeframe for an actual release?

Who are you exactly to say that? Did you program the thing? Or make the music? Or graphics?

There is a clear difference between constructive criticism and just spitting over someone elses work.

If you plan to just spit on peoples work, I suggest you get off the forum.

Oliveriver wrote:

the AI cells move around at all. Instead, they stay put collecting compounds from the same emitters until I collide with them.

If an AI microbe is low on oxygen it will choose a random emitter and stick to that until it has enough oxygen, once it feels it stocked enough it will continue moving randomly or collect glucose! That said, the current AI is quite basic and will need work naturally!
Oups that actually is a bug that slipped through! I'll fix it asap

Oliveriver wrote:

The sound is lacking as well

As written in the bottom of the post, sound is right around the corner! We havent actually implemented it in our code before now, as we didn't prioritize it very high :)Nimbal actually has it working, but there seem to be a few kinks to work out on windows builds!

Immortal_dragon wrote:

my cell flashed white for about a moment

We'll have to keep an eye out for that! Thanks

EDIT: Bug fixed!

Mouthwash wrote:

How exactly is this a "microbe stage?" You'd need to have implemented a real environment and a basic goal to be reached, no matter how rudimentary. As far as I'm concerned, this isn't even an Alpha.

How do I get glucose or oxygen? There are just little things that I pick up as I swim around. I don't see any correlation with either. And I don't understand what the organelles do or how to edit my cell.

Any timeframe for an actual release?

What's your point?

It's progress. That's what matters. If you want development to go faster, spread the word. If you know any programmers who might be interested in something like this, tell them.

I want it to be made clear that I am very happy with this release. Movement feels excellent, the compound jettisoning and collecting system appears flawless and the AI, despite being just copies of myself that are making their rounds in a seemingly random path, somehow feel real to me, in that they're very alien feeling. I want that alien feeling to carry over to the next release, and I'll be working on concept art to try to retain it.
This is an excellent step forward.
A few observations:
-I do occasionally see the purple organelle blink white. I don't know what the organelle corresponds to, so this may be intentional, signaling a low/high compound level as has been discussed previously
-some compound emitters seem to be on layers above or below me. Is this intentional or a glitch? I've only seen this occur so far after a lot of jostling between myself and some AIs around the emitters.
-collisions all around feel excellent, although the compound emitters are quite heavy feeling. This doesn't have to be changed, however, since the emitters aren't a part of the end product.

I took a second look and noticed the pink organelle in my cell fading as ATP depleted, I don't know if this is intentional but just something I noticed, and I noticed the expelling of excess resources worked as mentioned. Is there anything to be done with the lack of actual side-to-side movement or is that not part of the plan?

Immortal_Dragon wrote:

I took a second look and noticed the pink organelle in my cell fading as ATP depleted, I don't know if this is intentional but just something I noticed, and I noticed the expelling of excess resources worked as mentioned. Is there anything to be done with the lack of actual side-to-side movement or is that not part of the plan?

Fading is part of the design. There is no side to side movement because you don't have any organelles for it; your two movement organelles are the red sections on the front and back of your cell.

The increasing color of the organelle shows how close the processing organelle is to finishing! Once it finished it turns near grey and restarts. It's a temporary feature most likely.

I've been swimming around for a while, just collecting compounds, and nothing else seems to be happening- there are no other cells, no option to edit my cell, nothing. Is there something I'm missing? Is there anything I'm able to do other than just swim around that will cause something to happen?

Linkzilla wrote:

I've been swimming around for a while, just collecting compounds, and nothing else seems to be happening- there are no other cells, no option to edit my cell, nothing. Is there something I'm missing? Is there anything I'm able to do other than just swim around that will cause something to happen?

You should find other cells like you. Other than that, this release is meant to show that our compound system and the cell metabolism are working, and that our engine is sound.

~sciocont wrote:

Linkzilla wrote:

I've been swimming around for a while, just collecting compounds, and nothing else seems to be happening- there are no other cells, no option to edit my cell, nothing. Is there something I'm missing? Is there anything I'm able to do other than just swim around that will cause something to happen?

You should find other cells like you. Other than that, this release is meant to show that our compound system and the cell metabolism are working, and that our engine is sound.

But I'm not finding other cells like me. I just swim around forever, and nothing appears except for the compounds :(Is this a glitch, or am I doing something wrong?

Linkzilla wrote:

But I'm not finding other cells like me. I just swim around forever, and nothing appears except for the compounds :(Is this a glitch, or am I doing something wrong?

Could it be that you downloaded an earlier version? I would recomend to download it again.

MirrorMonkey2 wrote:

Linkzilla wrote:

But I'm not finding other cells like me. I just swim around forever, and nothing appears except for the compounds :(Is this a glitch, or am I doing something wrong?

Could it be that you downloaded an earlier version? I would recomend to download it again.

Nope, still didn't fix the problem  :scratch: