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

I don't know if this is the right place, (I cant post on the concept art page) but this is a background for the microbe stage I made (yes, I know, I can do better) I'm still working on it.

Spoiler:

This is the wrong thread. I understand you wish to post what work you've done, but that's not what this thread is for.

In regards to posting privileges, read the latest Devblog, and it will explain why and how the posting procedure works.

I RETURN FROM THE GRAVE!

And what the heck did I miss while I was being extinct? Did I hear right? Has Thrive ACTUALLY made some basic prototypes?

I was not smart in leaving. I missed epic stuff while I was away.

I saw the post for the record high. 29,000 PEOPLE WERE ON THE SITE?!

Can someone get me up to speed?

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the record high visitor level actually happened several months before you even joined - it's just that people have been posting on the Devblog about it recently. But yes, we do have a couple of new releases which demonstrate a more complex compounds system and AI cells.

Really? Months before I joined? Why would I see a post about it then. That was false hope on my part.  :| 

But to hear that we're starting to get dug in a bit with a few prototypes is good. It's progress I hoped to see. I'm anxious to see where we go from here.  :alien: 

I have an idea for a minigame.

One of the things that I wanted to see in Spore was the ability to create stories and myths for your creatures. The basic idea is that the story editor functions as a movie maker and becomes active once your organism develops sentience. Actors and props are drawn from the flora and fauna of your planet. Certain technologies and ideas can open up new things to incorporate, such as lasers and mutants. You can also create mythical creatures, which is like the organism editor, but without the limitations on what you can make. Basically something the player can use to screw around with for fun.

Alex J G wrote:

I have an idea for a minigame.

One of the things that I wanted to see in Spore was the ability to create stories and myths for your creatures. The basic idea is that the story editor functions as a movie maker and becomes active once your organism develops sentience. Actors and props are drawn from the flora and fauna of your planet. Certain technologies and ideas can open up new things to incorporate, such as lasers and mutants. You can also create mythical creatures, which is like the organism editor, but without the limitations on what you can make. Basically something the player can use to screw around with for fun.

I doubt there's going to be a story editor quite like that, but there's no reason you couldn't worldbuild for your creatures anyway.

Maybe a way to export the models of your creatures so you can use them in another program? Not quite the same, but might be fun.

As for the mythical creature thing, there is an editor that's unlimited (that I think you access from the main menu?) so you could still do that.

If something like this were to be part of the game, I think it would be long after we get out a '1.0' version.

Alex J G wrote:

I have an idea for a minigame.

One of the things that I wanted to see in Spore was the ability to create stories and myths for your creatures. The basic idea is that the story editor functions as a movie maker and becomes active once your organism develops sentience. Actors and props are drawn from the flora and fauna of your planet. Certain technologies and ideas can open up new things to incorporate, such as lasers and mutants. You can also create mythical creatures, which is like the organism editor, but without the limitations on what you can make. Basically something the player can use to screw around with for fun.

That's basically the sandbox mode. You could use the sandbox mode to make videos of some story you imagine, create it with the game while recording it, and then edit it in something like moviemaker to then post on youtube.

Also, you will have a text box you can write whatever you want in in the Strategy mode to basically record the history of your people (as you see fit).

When you start a new world, will you be able to modify/create your starting planet? Here me out.

There would be three options when starting a new world:
1. Create you own planet
   This option lets you create your own planet to play on. Starting off with a blank, featureless planet, you could customize your world's sky color, water level, humidity,  
   temperature, etc. Your could also create oceans, rivers, valleys, mountains, lakes, and other land-forms spread as you wish across the world.This would give players a  
  more unique playing experience, and would make the game more personalized.    

2. Random
   In this option, the world would be randomly generated. This option is best for people who want to get right into the game without spending time creating there own
world.

3. Choosing from preset worlds
   In this option you will be able to choose from a number of pre-created worlds. This would allow you to have choices, but still not waste time creating a world from
   scratch (you could also modify a preset before you start).

That sounds to me like a good idea, but I think the first option should be locked until your second playthrough (or some other milestone that the player needs to unlock, like reaching at least the Society Stage in any of their games).

However, I don't think presets should be edit-able. Rather, if you are customizing a planet you can load a preset and then customize it further, but when you are unable to customize planets, you can only randomize your homeworld or pick from a preset list.

why cant i downvote? someone was rude to me so i want to downvote their post

It doesn't work like that, it is only part of the reputation system here, which really doesn't affect anything. You can vote positive or negative on each and every post in a thread provided you are logged in.

The + and - are gone, I think that is why he asked that.
This is most likely something from the restrictions.

Not that it changes anything. ;P

I'm assuming you need to be a developer to be able to upvote or downvote on most threads, because its associated with the posting restriction. I'm no sure how to separate the two, or if its possible.

ok. how do i change the color of my name

I don't think you can change the color of your name, only if you become a moderator or team lead I think.

NickTheNick wrote:

I'm assuming you need to be a developer to be able to upvote or downvote on most threads, because its associated with the posting restriction. I'm no sure how to separate the two, or if its possible.

I'm not a developer, and the rating options appear to me.

Maybe the voting option disappears when you get too many downvotes?

Hey look we have had 1337 registered users.

Anyway, will space be more like FTL, more like a simulator, or more like Mass Effect?

Also, there don't appear to be any recent posts in the development blog, has any progress been made?

Well recently there were some changes to the forum structure and member status with posting, but on more game-related topics Crovea posted an update post here.

Hey guys. I'm off Uni for Easter and I got a bit of free time. So how are we doing? Still making good progress?

Basically we are currently working on the Microbe Stage release we've got out, fleshing it out with more features like some GUI, microbe interactions, editor and gameplay cohesion, etc. From there it would be a good idea to finally take what we have and start some outreach to get some more people on to the development team.

Hi
I see all is going well with development
I would just like to know something
Once the game is finished will people have to download it from the site or will you put it on steam?
Thank you

Jupiter34 wrote:

Once the game is finished will people have to download it from the site or will you put it on steam?

I suppose it would be cool to have it on steam, but It probably depends on, if there is any restrictions for steam that don't fit well for our model and if we can get greenlit.

On a entirely different note, I thought I'd suggest an idea for once, couldn't find anything similar around so here it is:

I was reading through the microbe design document and noticed the thing about players, upon death, respawning as a copy of their old microbe.
What if the player had a simulated number displayed for the population of his microbe type.
The number would be calculated based on how long he has had that specific microbe type active and how well he is doing (in terms of losing health/dying and staying high/low on important compounds).

If the population is 0 or very low, the player will not respawn as a copy of that type, but a different one. Could be a previous iteration of his microbe, a random other microbe type or having to start over completely.

This way it puts some varying excitement into the game (When you just evolved your microbe for example) while putting pressure on you to do well. Obviously the difficulty of maintaining a good population number could be adjusted and probably shouldn't be very hard, but I think it would be a cool feature to have the players microbe type go extinct if he dies over and over. Other effects could be coupled into population, such as how easy it is to find others of his kin to merge with. The basic idea of this could perhaps also be taken into the next few single-creature stages. You would need to figure out how this interacts with saved games.

NickTheNick wrote:

Basically we are currently working on the Microbe Stage release we've got out, fleshing it out with more features like some GUI, microbe interactions, editor and gameplay cohesion, etc. From there it would be a good idea to finally take what we have and start some outreach to get some more people on to the development team.

Will the new release have some better looking graphics, or will it be roughly the same?

NickTheNick wrote:

Basically we are currently working on the Microbe Stage release we've got out, fleshing it out with more features like some GUI, microbe interactions, editor and gameplay cohesion, etc. From there it would be a good idea to finally take what we have and start some outreach to get some more people on to the development team.

Hey, is there a download link for prototype microbe stage yet? I've looked around and haven't been able to find a working link anywhere.