Realism Mode in Thrive

Realism is a way that we have dealt with only a few lines so I decided to open a discussion to talk about this.

From what has been discussed realism mode is a mode where the game will always be automatically saved in an instant, but from the moment you lose the game save is automatically deleted. A little 'as happens in survival mode in Minecraft.

There is, however, to clarify one point: if defeat means the death of the single creature that follows (for example, in awakening) or means for the defeat of the whole race.

As for the failures that do not depend (directly or indirectly) by the player there may be some that do not depend in any way by the player as the death of the star, the crash of asteroids, natural disasters or alien invasions.

For each type of reason we should find the percentages that I think could be:

Death Star: very low (1% in the phase-microbial multicellular, 0.5% awake-awaking, 0.05% society/industrial- more progress is made with the phases of the probability decreases as time slows down and death of a star is also the case in the period of millions or billions of years (depends on the type of star)

The crash of asteroids: I do not know exactly give a percentage, but each asteroid can vary the damage

Environmental disasters: low - also means the change of climate: If you had a changing climate suited to withstand the new species can die .. even here I cant give the percentages

Alien invasions: low - here, as I said some time ago, you need to divide the invasions of aliens into three categories (positive, neutral and negative).

positive ones are those invasions that help their own race from the point of view of technological, environmental and speed up the attainment in the new phases.

invasions neutral are those that cover the "UFO sightings" but without that they interact with us.

negative invasions: invasions cause the war with the ultimate goal to destroy our species-civilization.

the first two phases is not possible invasion because it is not perceptible.

in the phase-aware-awakening the probability must be than 0.05%.

In the early stages society / the probability industrial base should be 1%, but here varies according to the technology and choices.

With the discovery of radio waves, and then sending involuntary waves in space, the probability varies from 2 to 5% depending on the technological power of their nation.

If it is intended to send message and try life in space by means of instruments (such as our SETI) the probability increases up to 10 - 15% (depending on the signal, power, and the investment of such research).

What do you think about this mode still little discussed?

Hmm.. What do you mean by realism mode? (I thought Thrive was automatically going to attempt to be as realistic as possible) Could you clarify a bit more?

I'm a big fan of the automatic save idea. It prevents players from abusing saves, which makes their choices more important, which in turn makes gameplay more immersive. On a side note, death in ordinary Minecraft survival only results in the player respawning and losing the stuff they were carrying. What you probably meant was hardcore mode.

To me, the idea of permadeath because your creature died is not only absurd, but fairly unrealistic as well. In the game you will control your own species, and just because one of your creatures die doesn't mean your species go extinct. So, permadeath would result only if your entire species died or nation destroyed (I think)

For the stuff that doesn't depend on you:

Death star- It kind of sound like... nevermind, most of you get the reference. But as I said back some time ago, stars don't change phases or die at random. They need to waste their fuel first. When you start of as a microbe, and advance through the creature stage, there is a value for every star in your system. Each value represents the age of each star, and is increased over time. When the value goes above a certain treshold, that star enters it next phase or dies. If you spawn near a red hypergiant (which is extremely unlikely), you are pretty much screwed, but near a red dwarf and you have plenty of time on your hands.

Asteroid impact- Again, in the microbe + mostly all stages before the space stage, other stars wouldn't have an affect on life on the planet unless a supernova occured nearby or gamma ray burst was directed directly at you. IMO In all stages before space the only system the game would keep track of would be yours. So, in these stages we don't need random chances for asteroid impacts, the game would keep track of all fairly sized object in your system, so any impact that happens would have a reason. In the space stage, these impacts, unless huge wouldn't even be that important anymore.

Environmental disaster-Very broad term. You could include both the death of a star and asteroid impact here, since they are both environment related. Again, these especially shouldn't have random chances. Everything in nature has a reason, in this case whether it be a volcano or planetary collision.

Alien invasion- You are extremely unlikely to encounter any types of aliens before interstellar travel anyways. First of all, life itself is quite rare in the universe, then it will very rarely form a civilized society. And even then, that society is very unlikely to reach interstellar travel before it dies. And even if it does reach interstellar travel, the galaxy is a huge place, they are very unlikely to be somewhere nearby.

Don't be offended when I say I think we don't need this. I just think it's better instead to have options in the beginning of the game that let the player choose all of this. Just my opinion

I'd have nothing against a hardcore/ultra realism mode, but I myself wouldn't play it. There will be people who do want the possibility of an asteroid impact when they can do nothing about it to further the game's realism, such as Doggit. As Tarpy said, there would of course have to be warnings - a star won't just go supernova randomly; it will become a red giant and then red supergiant first. If enough people want a mode where as a creature you can look up at your star as it dies and wait for its inevitable end, I see no reason not to include it. Besides, the rest of us don't have to play that mode. We'll need a difficulty setting anyway to change the rate of AI evolution, so we could always incorporate realistic disasters into the harder modes as well. We could even give the player the choice of completely customising the difficulty level if they want to race against other organisms' evolution but don't want to be hit by an asteroid.

@TheFellowWithTheHat
Although we are going for as much realism as possible, remember that we are trying to make a game here, not a completely realistic simulator. A player may pour all their heart and effort into evolving a species, so they won't be very happy if it's destroyed in an event they can do nothing about. Only the hardcore mode would have this, and if a player chooses that difficulty they'll know that there is a possibility of this happening.

EDIT: 200th post! :D 

Tarpy wrote:

Alien invasion- You are extremely unlikely to encounter any types of aliens before interstellar travel anyways. First of all, life itself is quite rare in the universe, then it will very rarely form a civilized society. And even then, that society is very unlikely to reach interstellar travel before it dies. And even if it does reach interstellar travel, the galaxy is a huge place, they are very unlikely to be somewhere nearby.

If we follow your speech, then we can never incontrarare an extraterrestrial civilization (or the simple life) even in the phase space, because of the enormous distances.

TheFellowWithTheHat wrote:

I'd prefer "Realism" mode, I like the sense of not turning back, the feeling that "This choice affects your future, nothing more."

So, there is my opinion.

(I was very tired whilst writing this, so expect sentiences that may not make sense.)[/i]

That's right. The realism mode is the best decision for a game that prides itself as Thrive simulate life.

Too easy to make a save, perhaps before a war, and if it goes wrong reload the last save game. Each action corresponds to a timeline of events and irreversible ... this should be Thrive.

As I said, we do need a mode like this, but in my opinion we should implement it as a series of options at the beginning of the game, like:

Allow star aging before space stage
Allow major asteroid impacts before space stage
Allow gamma ray bursts and supernova explosions
Allow other space races visiting your home planet before the space stage
Allow auto-save policy
Allow pandemics
etc

The obvious upside to this is that the player can personalize their experience, and the objects are much more self-explanatory than simply "realism mode". Also, some players may want to have asteroid impacts and alien invasions, but not star aging and gamma ray bursts.

How about a rampage mode?
A LOT of disasters will happen, and most of them aren't that light. :/
But you could end up with an awesome creature/planet.
It could give some bonusses later on, but it will be hard before that.
(Worst idea ever? XD)
Well atleast I know some people that would like a RAMPAGE MOOOOODE!

As was mentioned before, a 'hardcore' mode, akin to Minecraft's, but in Thrive, of course, can be implemented. But I would not play it.

It's not a game like Galaga or Pac-Man where if you lose you can just start over again, it's just another twenty minutes to get back there. No, this game will be merciless even if you can save manually, since you'll have to work to get to the top of the food chain.

Excuse me for bringing a not so realistic game into this but the saving in this difficulty introduced by Doggit sounds awfully like Tokyo Jungle. You can save and quit but when you die, the data is lost.

Tokyo Jungle is hard as Belgium when you get far enough. (But the stats you gain over the course of a game stay with the species so the next time it gets slightly easier)

Thrive would be no easy game to beat either, and there will be animals that like your creature for lunch the best, then quickly move away from that when the only thing left of your species is bones. I think it would annoy someone that they get near the Awakening stage, and an asteroid hits and suddenly it's 'Oops, game over, start a new game.' It's PUNISHING the player, deleting the save file. You might as well not save at all if at one point it will be automatically deleted from a slip up.

My thoughts are this. Add a mode with saving like that if it is wished, but it shouldn't be the automatic, only way to save, where it's lost forever if your species go extinct.

As for Rampage Mode. Yes, worst idea ever, unless it's EA or Nintendo with Pikmin. Only one of those companies make good games, the other only has good games 1/20th of the time. (Guess which one is which.)

As for disasters, if they get thrown repeatedly at the planet, it'll just break into tons of pieces before the sun even begins to die. The Earth has survived some nasty days with asteroids, yes, but not a barrage of them all coming at once. It would only end badly. Whatever life one didn't wipe out, another one would.

It takes millions of years for a planet to recover from a large enough asteroid impact, akin to the one from sixty-five million BC. It took about ten million years for life to grab it's foothold and begin to diversify again. In Thrive, sure a million years or two will pass with every mating, but it will still take many generations for you to see the plants and animals begin to return en masse. If another asteroid hits, with life already hanging by a thread, that's it, it's over.

As Tarpy said: There has to be a REASON for an asteroid to strike a planet, it can't just randomly barrel into it because it wants to.

What I say is that if someone wants to go through the hair tearing of losing a game permanently and not being able to go back to another point, thus not being able to play the species again, at least not from the beginning, then go ahead let them. But don't have everything go wrong at once. An asteroid can hit the planet, sure, but it's estimated to happen only once every 100 million years, if not more, on Earth. It should be the same with a planet on Thrive.

For the destruction of the moon: Depending on the size of the moon, and the size of the asteroid, it IS possible for the moon to be destroyed. However, not as large chunks that could threaten life on the planet if they collided with it. More than likely, both the moon and asteroid would be destroyed completely, just becoming a fireball, and would just form into a new moon over time. There might be some instability if that moon controlled the tides like ours does, but it would be back to normal at one point. More than likely, the destruction of a/the moon of the planet the player is on will have little consequence.

Environmental Disaster: ...If you mean an Ice Age, then there's this thing called evolution. The whole game is sort of built around it.

The only difference I would see is the saving of the game...And most people would probably just ignore it anyway. Minecraft is different in that the gameplay, while it varies, stays on a similar field, while it can vary greatly in Thrive, and no one wants to lose that.

And Rampage mode...Just...just no...Go sit in a corner... :x 

Signed, the resident lizardman

I didn't know the save would be deleted...
And NO CORNERS HERE. :DDDDDD
It was just ment as a cinematic like mode.

TheFellowWithTheHat wrote:

I didn't have knowlage of the being deleted either, I figured it would just be a bit harder and disasters would be disasters, not like Spore where a Meteorite strikes your planet and something gets conked on the head and spins around dizzy for a moment.

My apologies.

Ahhahahahah :lol: :lol: 

I must agree with Tarpy with the options to personalize your game. It allows the player to set their own custom difficulty without having to play with a static, predetermined setting, because they might actually want to load their game over having it lost forever, and yet some might want a 'flawless' run...Not to say they won't die, but losing Thrive based only on the player's death, to me, would ruin the whole point of the game. This game is NOT Minecraft, even though that game is fun and this one will be, but Thrive should be treated as that: It's own game.

dinoman9877 wrote:

I must agree with Tarpy with the options to personalize your game. It allows the player to set their own custom difficulty without having to play with a static, predetermined setting, because they might actually want to load their game over having it lost forever, and yet some might want a 'flawless' run...Not to say they won't die, but losing Thrive based only on the player's death, to me, would ruin the whole point of the game. This game is NOT Minecraft, even though that game is fun and this one will be, but Thrive should be treated as that: It's own game.

Of course there should be two types of modes: normal mode and realism.

Both the normal mode and realism mode will have three types of difficulty (easy, normal and hard) so you can better customize the difficulty with which one wants to play.

Let's not forget, that until the player splits in Microbe Stage, they are alone. At least, that's the impression I got.

But wouldn't the player's death, a singular event when it is dealing with an entire species, would make deleting the save file an unnecessary punishment in my opinion. To summarize, this is pretty much what dinoman and doggit are saying.

But of course what is going to make the realism mode different from the normal mode? :scratch: 

Immortal_Dragon wrote:

Let's not forget, that until the player splits in Microbe Stage, they are alone. At least, that's the impression I got.

But wouldn't the player's death, a singular event when it is dealing with an entire species, would make deleting the save file an unnecessary punishment in my opinion. To summarize, this is pretty much what dinoman and doggit are saying.

But of course what is going to make the realism mode different from the normal mode? :scratch: 

The normal mode allows you to load the game when you want and if you die you can start from a rescue.

In this mode realism is not possible. If you die (or dies your race .. this point is still to be decided) saving is canceled thus making the game very competitive.

If a person does not want to play the realism mode, can play to the normal mode. I do not understand where is the problem.

In realism mode you'd only lose and have to restart if your species became extinct. You wouldn't be able to load earlier saves so you'd have to continue on if you make a decision and live with it.

In normal mode you can save and reload wherever you like.

Okay, I was just confused, thanks guys. Realism mode sounds like my thing.

I think the concept of extinction has been laid out, and it is like you said, with every member being wiped out or members of the remainder being unable to reproduce with each other, they will go extinct. The difference as I read it will allow players to save a single creature from dying by reloading a save in normal mode, in realism mode if your creature dies you cannot get it back, you must become a new member of your species, unless it is so unsuccessful it would go extinct as explained above.

Yes if your organism dies then you switch to another one. Remember in most stages you will have Strategy Mode unlocked, so when your organism dies you just revert back to Strat Mode.

You are apparently supposed to switch anyway upon death, if your creature had no offspring, it would be another random organism of the species.

Realism mode is starting to sound worse and worse, being UNABLE to save? That means that you'd have to leave the game running when you have to go to sleep, work, school, etc. No, I think that if you can go to a point where you can't save at all, this idea should be scrapped all together. You forget to take into account that people actually have lives outside of video games.

So I have a new say. Thrive IS realism mode. You die, you switch organisms. When you reproduce, you play as parent or child. When your species is extinct, you lose, but you LOAD THE LAST SAVE. Being unable to save would force people into playing the game until they lost or won. Thus, the restrictions on saving ruins the whole experience. If someone wants to abuse the saves, let them. The whole point of saving IS for going back to prevent a problem from happening. Look at Pikmin 3!

That is all. :alien: 

You misunderstand me. I wasn't suggesting that you had to leave the game running or anything like that, just that in realism mode it autosaves and you just pick up where you left off, without going back. Games like State Of Decay do this and I think it would be good in Thrive to take players down interesting routes that they otherwise wouldn't find themselves in.

Well you don't know WHEN it autosaves, and you wouldn't want to have to run out and not have any autosave happening at that point in time. Therefore, leaving the game paused and running, and many people LIKE to go back. If I'm not mistaken, it's even supposed to be part of the game to go back whenever you want to a previous point.

The only interesting routes I see would be from vines shooting out from a forest and dragging you in while you kick and scream.