Miscellaneous Bugs And Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread Thread

So many questions...

Will it be possible to create and play as private corporations? In many works of sci-fi, there are companies that are so rich and powerful that they can afford their own militaries, and operate like governments.

Will multiple species be able to become members of the same faction? Would it be possible to create a republic/federation?

What can be sold in the game? Metal, vehicles, planets, clone/droid armies?

Will there be any pre-made creations the same way Spore had the pre-made Maxis creatures? Or will all organisms evolve over time like your species will?

And one you've probably been asked a million times; release date?

ethroptur wrote:

So many questions...

Will it be possible to create and play as private corporations? In many works of sci-fi, there are companies that are so rich and powerful that they can afford their own militaries, and operate like governments.

Will multiple species be able to become members of the same faction? Would it be possible to create a republic/federation?

What can be sold in the game? Metal, vehicles, planets, clone/droid armies?

Will there be any pre-made creations the same way Spore had the pre-made Maxis creatures? Or will all organisms evolve over time like your species will?

And one you've probably been asked a million times; release date?

No, it won't be possible to play as a private corporation as far as I know. However there will be corporations in the Society Stage that pop up and sell various things, including military items.

If you mean like a joint government between multiple sovereign nations, I believe that is part of the plan. If you mean just one government overall, then that's a no, as it would be too complicated to have multiple species in the same nation.

At the beginning there are going to be premade creations, but when procedural evolution is up and running then that will hopefully be phased out.

And release date is not applicable, as Thrive will be coming out as a series of releases of the evolving versions of the game. It will also never be finished in this manner, as there will always be something to add or fix.

OK, I Have a few questions...

1. Will there be binary and other kinds of stars( also instead of 1 or 2 stars in a system, how about 3 or more?)?

2. Will there be diffrent save files?

3. Will each save file be a galaxy? Or will we play within just one galaxy?

4. If every save file is a galaxy, will there be smaller save files in each of them?

5. When reproductase is put in the next release( which it will, it says so on the GitHub) will it be given to the player immediately?

6. In the society stages, will we be able to profit off of a lot of items, or will it be a singular object(ex. Spice, food)

7. How about a meter when you create your galaxy for how many stars you would like ( for FPS reasons)

Alexthe666 wrote:

1. Will there be binary and other kinds of stars( also instead of 1 or 2 stars in a system, how about 3 or more?)?

Some thread on the space stage forum (I believe) discussed this, they decided that binary and ternary star systems were stable, but quaternary were a bit controversial.

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2. Will there be diffrent save files?
3. Will each save file be a galaxy? Or will we play within just one galaxy?
4. If every save file is a galaxy, will there be smaller save files in each of them?

No. 1 galaxy, all your saves -- though you could probably just shift different save files in and out of the saves folder if you want more than one galaxy, and I'm sure a mod would pop up someday that adds multi-galaxy support. The problem of inter-save interaction (within one galaxy) is a tough one though.

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5. When reproductase is put in the next release( which it will, it says so on the GitHub) will it be given to the player immediately?

No -- you have to work for it.

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6. In the society stages, will we be able to profit off of a lot of items, or will it be a singular object(ex. Spice, food)

Looking at all the economy and trade threads, it seems like they've taken it for granted that there will be more than one trading commodity. So yes, you will, as makes sense.

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7. How about a meter when you create your galaxy for how many stars you would like ( for FPS reasons)

That or something similar would be useful, though we won't be anywhere near there for a while.

Will the wiki be kept up-to-date? It hasn't been updated in terms of the current release. Granted, it's been less than a month.

Does anyone here have the clearance and time to update some pages, or is it necessary?

Whenever anyone wants, they can offer to write a wiki page on this page, or even go ahead and write one and offer it on this thread:

https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t1130-revamping-the-wiki

Then, the developers/mods will have to look it over to make sure it is correct, and make formatting changes if necessary, and they put the new or updated page in.

I apologize if this has been asked before but what about sound based things like the deadly sonar of the biting sperm whale or echolocation of bats? Also what about things like sea lampreys and the punch of the manta shrimp/blast of the pistol shrimp?

Just so you know, I'll probably be pretty dormant for a while. I'll still check up to see if new versions are released or to see if I can help anywhere.

Will it be possible to have Magrathea?

PropTheRedstoner wrote:

Will it be possible to have Magrathea?

I looked it up (had no idea what it was), and it could be included as an easter egg, depending on how the developers feel. Otherwise, no.

But something similar, maybe, but only through action of the player/game. Maybe a planet where all the god tools are kept, since Thrive, to my knowledge, won't include white holes. And I don't think "commercial planet building" will be a thing.

If you're thinking of more of a planet that fades to legend, I'm not sure how that would work.

MitochondriaBox wrote:

PropTheRedstoner wrote:

Will it be possible to have Magrathea?

I looked it up (had no idea what it was), and it could be included as an easter egg, depending on how the developers feel. Otherwise, no.

But something similar, maybe, but only through action of the player/game. Maybe a planet where all the god tools are kept, since Thrive, to my knowledge, won't include white holes. And I don't think "commercial planet building" will be a thing.

If you're thinking of more of a planet that fades to legend, I'm not sure how that would work.

It was more of a joke than anything, but "legend" planets with lots of loot might be interesting.

PropTheRedstoner wrote:

"legend" planets with lots of loot might be interesting.

This would be handled by having other races beat you to space, ascend, die out, or almost die out, and leave the remnants of their civilization behind. Hopefully this sort of rising-and-falling-empires dynamism is something we'll get right.

This leads to a question of my own: how can we make the player do the same thing? One empire never rules forever, and given the scope of Thrive, players will have to sometimes lose their empires entirely and start anew with another; for maximum realism anyway. I worry it'll be hard to give a sense of progression with that though. Perhaps, as one chapter closes, the player is given a choice of the next chapter to open; with a choice of some successor states, some fresh starts, and some seems-to-fit-their-playstyle states. I dunno, it's a thorny problem, but one we won't have to think about for a while at least.

Edit:

Notsae66 wrote:

sound based things like the deadly sonar of the biting sperm whale or echolocation of bats?

We will definitely include echolocation. I'm sure we've discussed sperm whale deadly sonar before, possibly on this very thread. I don't know what conclusion was reached though, but I have a feeling it'll eventually find its way in.

Notsae66 wrote:

Also what about things like sea lampreys and the punch of the manta shrimp/blast of the pistol shrimp?

We've definitely discussed mantis shrimp before, again, the cavitation punching will find its way in eventually. What about sea lampreys? The mouth type will be possible, the creature should be creatable in-game, and one of the Aware-stage releases would probably include parasitism/commensalism etc, so the latching-on will also get in there. But we won't make a sea lamprey for you, you'll have to evolve it yourself

Oh, and a friendly reminder: We're working on gearing the forums towards their intended role as development discussion center, and part of that is taking questions like these and moving them to fan areas. Our subreddit is looking pretty lonely right now, and most of the questions that come up here would be perfect there.

What if your race could thrive on a gas giant?
Before you start screaming at me saying it is impossible, I don't think it IS possible. However, another science fiction game, called Star Control (2), had a race of "gas-bag" people that evolved on a gas giant. Here's the wiki page on them: http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Slylandro
Being able to reach the stars on a world like this would be similar to thriving on an all water planet, if another, more advanced race doesn't help you, no space stage for you.

It appears to me that the game could reach a wider public if it had an option to change technical terms like ATP to more commonly used words like energy, and other terms like amino acids to food (glucose could provide both), and, if we are changing health to osmoregulation and membrane stability, an option yo turn it back. I hope this would not mess with the current compound system, as most of it would be more a change on labels more than a change on the game mechanics. This changes could also be applied when changing the difficulty level. So, if you play the game on "easy" you have very simple, basic terms, and if you play the game in "standard" you are presented with more accurate and realistic concepts.

Lepticidio wrote:

change technical terms like ATP to more commonly used words ... option to turn it back ... So, if you play the game on "easy" you have very simple, basic terms, and if you play the game in "standard" you are presented with more accurate and realistic concepts.

Sounds like a great idea -- except for linking it to difficulty. I'd prefer a separate axis for realism -- from "simple mode", with HP, food, energy, poison, etc; through standard, where we have all the stuff as planned; to realistic mode, where we cut out speculative or straight-up fake content *cough cough Ascension cough*. However, we don't need to bind these all together into a single realism scale either -- we can just have lots of parameters exposed to modders and in the options menu. Then, when someone picks a difficulty mode, realism level, and so on, we can simply set the parameters differently. This whole thing is very easy to expose to modding, so even if we only released a default setting for all the options, it won't be any trouble for some random user to make a preset easy mode that includes realism simplifications.

I still don't know why we can't meet in the middle. Have basic elements like Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen. Everyone knows the basics people not into science know that H2O is water. Why collect ATP and glucose, collect the atoms instead. Then from the atoms build the ATP in the edit mode, and then once you collect a lot of atoms be able to build proteins that automatically build them for you. The proteins are not entire blocks, but passive buffs. Even if the person has no idea what the protein does they can read the description and oh it makes ATP the basic unit I need to run my cell. You can also start off with the proteins buffs and have them create more proteins which allow more energy, which allow more parts on the cell.

Simulating biochemistry from the atoms up is technically possible with the compound system. What with all the processes and compounds being exposed for easy modding, you could very well take on the momentuous task of writing up a compound system that works as you like. The engine should already support most of what you need -- processes scaling with input concentrations (where enzymes are both input and output), defining new compounds, and defining new processes. What you might need are (currently abstracted away), membrane compartmentalization to localize concentrations, and transport processes across membranes so you need not rely on simple diffusion. With your C++ experience though, you could always fork the repo and implement those additions to prove your point.

Something else you seem to be suggesting is a compound editor of sorts, which I imagine would be something like a 3D molecular modeller, or perhaps a hierarchical one for polymers, built into thrive. That would be really cool, and a great win for science and realism. It's pretty insane though, and I only see it happening as a result of some guy forking thrive in a few years for a master's thesis. Really awesome, probably not happening (soon). But maybe I'm misunderstanding completely, you're being quite vague.

A compound editor is not what i'm going for, back when I was taking organic chemistry I made one in about a week. It would be a terrible design choice because people would just look up the functional group and spam that to make the super end everything molecule, or you would have to implement a crazy realistic that takes into account positions, mass, size. Then the player would still look up the best design online and ruin everything in a few minutes, or spend hours creating molecules wasting time and not having fun. I'm more suggesting a shop where you can place the parts on your cell and also have a shop to buy proteins and molecules. The benefit of buying say ATP over a protein that would create the ATP over time, is that you get it instantly instead of waiting, and could "Overclock" the cell making it have a rush function where it moves faster, does more damage if you say hold down a key important for outrunning enemies. The basis is having atoms, having little knowledge, can relate these to currency or materials needed to build super big protein name, rather then completely foreign names.

Lepticidio wrote:

It appears to me that the game could reach a wider public if it had an option to change technical terms like ATP to more commonly used words like energy, and other terms like amino acids to food (glucose could provide both), and, if we are changing health to osmoregulation and membrane stability, an option yo turn it back. I hope this would not mess with the current compound system, as most of it would be more a change on labels more than a change on the game mechanics. This changes could also be applied when changing the difficulty level. So, if you play the game on "easy" you have very simple, basic terms, and if you play the game in "standard" you are presented with more accurate and realistic concepts.

I agree that it would probably bring us a net increase in players if the game simplified its scientific depth to such a basic level, but the whole point of the game is to not do that (Due to Spore). A player should very quickly be able to pick up the fact that ATP is energy for a cell, and if they never knew it before they just learned something new and that accomplishes one of the secondary objectives of the game, to be educational (to a degree). We won't be going to a depth where you would have to have a biology degree just to play the first couple stages, but at the same time we won't be reducing the game's complexity to too low of a level (like amino acids to food, which is incorrrect). The goal is to create a game that is both accurate in its science, but also a good game. 

Now, putting configurable settings to reduce the game's scientific complexity is fine, since it's optional and doesn't affect the base game, but as moopli said I think it's better to isolate each variable and give it its own setting, instead of making the entire complexity configuration represented by a single slider or pull-down menu. What's more, it's important to keep a distinction between difficulty and scientific depth/realism.

NickTheNick wrote:

I agree that it would probably bring us a net increase in players if the game simplified its scientific depth to such a basic level, but the whole point of the game is to not do that (Due to Spore). A player should very quickly be able to pick up the fact that ATP is energy for a cell, and if they never knew it before they just learned something new and that accomplishes one of the secondary objectives of the game, to be educational (to a degree). We won't be going to a depth where you would have to have a biology degree just to play the first couple stages, but at the same time we won't be reducing the game's complexity to too low of a level (like amino acids to food, which is incorrrect). The goal is to create a game that is both accurate in its science, but also a good game. 

Now, putting configurable settings to reduce the game's scientific complexity is fine, since it's optional and doesn't affect the base game, but as moopli said I think it's better to isolate each variable and give it its own setting, instead of making the entire complexity configuration represented by a single slider or pull-down menu. What's more, it's important to keep a distinction between difficulty and scientific depth/realism.

I never said that I wanted to reduce the scientific complexity of the whole game. One of the main reasons that makes me love Thrive is the realism of it. I talked about adding an option in the menu to reduce this complexity to make the game more appealing to more people, as the more spread the game is the more people will join to to help the development of it.

I totally agree on having a separate setting for each variable.

The idea of simplifying the compounds we're using has come up quite a few times in the past. The solution, as has been suggested here, is that the actual compound/process network (what makes what, and how) is completely independant of the implementation of the compound system. This means that we could very easily include several levels of detail, a simple mode with 'food', 'water', 'air', and 'energy' (as possibly the only compounds used); the normal mode we're aiming for now, with some more detail but not so much as to utterly confuse people; and possiby a fully realistic version that actually simulates every chemical process in a cell (although this would almost certainly require too much processing power to be playable, and would require an aweful lot of research to implement). Modders could very simply change the whole chemistry of the game (I think this is already possible) simply by editing the data files which define the compounds/processes used (these are human readable xml).

What we're not going to do, and what would probably be very difficult to mod in later, is a completely different way of handling compounds. So where the cell currently uses and produces compounds automatically, having some sort of shop or crafting system would be completely different. I feel anything like this would break immersion, and if anything require more knowledge than the current system.

A compound editor has been mentioned before as well. For some of the reasons Earthium gave (it would be too easy to break the game and make it far too easy - i.e.: its no fun), and becuase its completely unrealistic (from an in-game perspective) to change the chemistry of the universe your playing in. Editing the data files allows this, but not in the middle of playing the game. It may be nice to have an editor for this rather than text files, but thats far from being a priority.

greetings  :alien: , not sure if anyone remembers me but i was doing some modeling and concept art for the game. but i had to leave coz, well, school, so if someone could PM me and very briefly explain  what was going on while i was absent, and tell me if there is anything that i can do at this moment in development, that would be awesome

I have a question:
What assures us that the creatures will not be aesthetically ugly?
I mean, how autoevo will evolve creatures without damaging them aesthetically?

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What assures us that the creatures will not be aesthetically ugly?

In the ideal case the auto-evo would be as close to nature as possible and in nature there are hardly ever ugly looking creatures because every organ or other part of the organism has its own function. If you refeer to ugly as repelling from a human point of view like for example the fact that many people think spiders are "ugly" (I think they're fascinating) there probably won't be something to prevent your organism from being "ugly" If you mean unnatural and overcomplex when saying ugly I think there will be a (basic) algorythm to prevent that as far as possible. But since we haven't started programming the multicelluar and aware stages and probably won't do so any time soon I can't tell you anything definite. I'm also not a programmer.
I hope I helped you!
PS: Please excuse my english.)

No, I mean, how will the autoevo know where to put body parts?
With ugly I mean something like a creature with a feet in the face or something like that.