The new guy number 9999

Hi everyone, I'm Chaos.
I'n interested in learning about programming to eventually become an indy developer or programmer for a gaming company.
I'm also quite good at writing, for things like Spore's collectibles or more lengthy things.

Though right now I think Im pretty hopeless at coding, but I learn fast.

Speaking of being hopeless: I cant figure out how to get the latest version of Thrive working when I dowload it?
I downloaded it, extracted the thing with WinZip and went Dist -> Bin -> Thive (file type application 28.5kb size). It opens but has no music, a zooming out blue background with bubbles and a lighter blue metally soldier you can move around with WASD but nothing else
Am I missing something completely obvious?

Im using a Windows 7 OS

LordChaos wrote:

Hi everyone, I'm Chaos.
I'n interested in learning about programming to eventually become an indy developer or programmer for a gaming company.
I'm also quite good at writing, for things like Spore's collectibles or more lengthy things.

Though right now I think Im pretty hopeless at coding, but I learn fast.

Speaking of being hopeless: I cant figure out how to get the latest version of Thrive working when I dowload it?
I downloaded it, extracted the thing with WinZip and went Dist -> Bin -> Thive (file type application 28.5kb size). It opens but has no music, a zooming out blue background with bubbles and a lighter blue metally soldier you can move around with WASD but nothing else
Am I missing something completely obvious?

Im using a Windows 7 OS

Welcome i hope you will our team

Nope, you are not missing nothing, that the current release. We are still early in development.

Really? How did you get 10 different versions of that?
Not to sound rude, just curious. This sounds like a great and complex game but a blue soldier, bubble background and WASD isnt really a release

Coding is a tough process, especially when you have to lay the foundations for a game basically about the galaxy. There are a lot of code there behind the scenes that is not immediately manifested by the blue soldier and bubbly background. Try looking through all the files you have with the "dist" folder, and you will see.

Noone here claims we have a finished game. In the disclaimer on the releases thread it even says in huge red words that this is extremelly early and alpha. Oh, and yes, we've got ten versions of it (eleven now) each one with slightly improved things. This is especially because we are doing a lot of base work so we dont have to come back later and modify huge amounts of code later. For example:

• Multithreading, which brings a lot of problems to the coding side, as sharing data between threads can be tricky.
  
• Lua scripts to controll the game (currently everything that is displayed on the release is added through the lua scripts located at the scripts folder).
  
• An entity-system based engine.
  
• Fully simulated physics (its not on the release yet, but its really really close to be finished alredy)
  
• Scripts for development so you only have to download the code, execute the script and you are ready to compile the game.
  
• Documentation about our code, so in case any coder dissapears any other could take its place.

I'll even copy the disclaimer on the releases thread in case you missed it:

Disclaimer: This is extremelly early alpha and barelly a proof of concept. Dont expect any kind of complete game.

Edit: Better than to look through the files in the dist folder, better take a llok though the github repo where all the code is. Especially the src folder (where all the actual code is) You can go there through this link: https://github.com/Revolutionary-Games/Thrive/tree/master/src

Oh, my apologies, I didn't realize this was your introductory thread.

Welcome to Thrive!

For coding, I recommend you get your hands on making prototypes whenever you can, as it greatly helps in practicing your coding knowledge, give us an example of an ingame feature, and gives us something to play around with.

But before you get there, learning code is the first and biggest step.

Learning lua would actually be better in my opinion. Coding enough scripts, at the actual stage of the underlying engine a somewhat decent game could be done.

I think I understand now
Your releasing the coding without linking it up with the application. I assumed that, while it sint a game, there would be bits and pieces of finished code lying around in the application not a placeholder.

And thanks for the encouragement guys
Now to go learn lua and coding lol.
I've been going through the microbe stage forum and it's really interesting. I have a few ideas already though most probably aren't feasible with the current concepts or need a higher level of development to implement.

Question: When starting a new Microbe will you choose the environment? Even to a general point like "choose one of there 20 premade planets"
If so will non-planets be there too, like an asteroid field or a moon, or even an empty derelict space station from a dead race?

Not for now. The only conditions we know life can form are on a primordial soup. There could be other situations, but that is entering speculation. As the scenario for microbe stage will be always the same (primordial soup), there is no point on leting the player choose from anything.

However, once we have more done, and you start seeing the planet you live on, we will add the planet editor. The plan is to let the player edit the conditions of the planet to its hearth content, and maybe even the entire solar system.

For the first run, however, we will put the player on a random planet to limit the amount of things it has to choose before starting the game.

Welcome Lord Chaos!
Wish yeah good luck in learning lua

Daniferrito wrote:

The only conditions we know life can form are on a primordial soup. There could be other situations, but that is entering speculation. As the scenario for microbe stage will be always the same (primordial soup), there is no point on leting the player choose from anything.

But don't we have plans of having different microbial biomes to start in, an idea for later development?

Maybe later. I would love them as well, but for now we can skip them.