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

Well, that's definitely a bug, we haven't done very extensive tuning of the formulas (and I know I, for one, have ignored the amino acid synthesis one entirely). Good catch.

Since we're in a quiet forum period, might as well ask if there will be any more podcasts or content on the Revolutionary Games Youtube channel.

moopli wrote:

Well, that's definitely a bug, we haven't done very extensive tuning of the formulas (and I know I, for one, have ignored the amino acid synthesis one entirely). Good catch.

Huh, thanks! For anyone who knows, was it supposed to actually remove ATP as opposed to producing some for you like one of those old Producer-type protocells, or was it just an untintentional consequence of a fully-intended recipe?

Loony Toony wrote:

Since we're in a quiet forum period, might as well ask if there will be any more podcasts or content on the Revolutionary Games Youtube channel.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that the next podcast'll be when 0.2.4 comes out, since it'll have a lot of new, polished content to show off and gain others' confidence in this thing actually succeeding.

No idea when this update'll be out to trigger the podcast coming out, but, since the GUI only needs to be fine-tuned to work smoothly with the current game, it shouldn't take too long, unless they'd rather spend some more time adding in more pretty, blinking features.

Hello guys!

I'm trying to launch the game with the "Thrive.exe" (is it the right file?), but I'm suddenly prompted with an Windows message: "Thrive.exe has stopped working..." plus a command prompt:



How can I fix it?

Zymoox wrote:

And also, I have read the "get involved" post, and it says that "idea-people" are not allowed because every idea I can think possibly has already been though; but in the wiki there is almost nothing written. Why?

Thank you.

Hi, I know it seems a bit stupid. The main problem is that we can't really afford all the time and effort it takes to discuss people's ideas in a useful, productive way. Over the long existence of this project, even during the many phases without much development, there's been lots of discussion, and lots of things got proposed then discarded.

The wiki holds a bunch of what seemed like good ideas in 2010 or so -- most of the content wasn't heavily updated since. I may have the year off, but the point still stands, we don't have time to go through the wiki and keep it up-to-date with our current fancies, so it sits in limbo most of the time. We could probably use someone who'd be interested in cleaning up the wiki, but again, having someone go through and clean it will probably end up with a lot of discussion happening, which will be time spent discussing and not working on the game. On the other hand, I'm sure we have a bunch of people who'd be interested in doing more discussion, but that could easily take us back to the glory days of pointless discussion back when things didn't get done and everyone just talked and talked.

I don't really know what the optimal solution here is. The project would certainly seem more alive if there were loads more discussion/ideas-people who had access to all the threads, the wiki, and so on, and could thus theorize to their hearts' content, but would we get more done? Would we attract more developers? Would we repel more developers? I know, from a developer's point of view, the current state of affairs, though dead-looking sometimes, is definitely better than the previous free-for-all. But there could be a happier middle, which I don't ahve much time to think about.

If anyone wants to make themselves useful, I suggest doing a lot of research on project management, especially open-source project/community management. When the forum was open, we had a lot of community, but not much project. Now, we have arguably less community, but a bit more project. We want both, clearly. Who can get me a well-researched plan?

Edit: Oh and @Patrick: I'm not sure if we've seen that before, I've put it on github.

It's quite difficult to find what is currently in the plan (, I don't want to say confirmed,) and what has actually been discarded. There is the wiki and some older threads that have discussions and ideas in them but it is not made clear whether we are planning to use them or they're irrelevant. Basically, what it boils down to is that it needs to be clearer what the current plan is, compared to the plan from years ago because there is no clear place, unless I'm missing something, to find that out.

StealthStyle L wrote:

It's quite difficult to find what is currently in the plan (, I don't want to say confirmed,) and what has actually been discarded. There is the wiki and some older threads that have discussions and ideas in them but it is not made clear whether we are planning to use them or they're irrelevant. Basically, what it boils down to is that it needs to be clearer what the current plan is, compared to the plan from years ago because there is no clear place, unless I'm missing something, to find that out.

One of the reasons it probably feels like that is we've been doing quite an iterative form of development. So people just make what they feel like making when they feel like making it. If it works we keep it, if it fails we ditch it.

From my perspective I'v been trying to help with:

1) Geting gameplay for the microbe stage (awesome and super fun gameplay at that)
2) Geting the CPA system working and modelling populations.

Once those are done (and they are both big tasks) then I think the microbe stage will be in good shape.

Other people are working on other aspects (music, graphics etc) and they are doing great. Mostly it's the programmers who are building the game and they are awesome and doing really good work.

Currently there really are no plans for what any future stage will look like as we won't know until we get there what works and what doesn't. We want to build on the things that are fun and cool and not bother with things that aren't. The only way we can figure that out is to build a bit and test it.

The best way to think about it is we're super grateful for all the work and planning that has been done in the past and it really guides the development process and we are working through it as best we can.

It's like someone went ahead and cut a load of logs and made a lot of nails and now we're following the trail putting up the buildings. We have some ideas about what the buildings will look like but until they're built we can't be sure.

We have a Game Design Document written out on the Wiki, which, while officially out-of-date, is still mostly compliant with our current concept: http://thrivegame.wikidot.com/

Generally, we have a well-defined concept for the microbe stage's functionality (swimming around, collecting compounds, etc.), a somewhat okay idea about its gameplay, and little to no concrete plan for any other stages. As tjwhale said, we don't yet know what'll work, and it may be that development of the microbe stage leads onto something we haven't yet considered.

Regarding cell membrane and lunging, although I think that is really cool and I would love to have an amoeba-like microbe, there are other unicellular organisms which move without all the body deformation movement:

Perhaps we can select what kind of membrane we want ("soft" one with lunging, "hard" one without) or make the body deformation movement when the cell hasn`t cilia or flagellum (as it would make the cell much less hydrodynamic).

Yeah that's exactly what I'm thinking too. If you have flagella / cilla then you won't want body deformation you'll just want to be streamlined.

I think it's going to enhance the game a lot to have lots of different types of microbe. So photosynthesizers that don't move, amoeba like engulfers, fast flagella driven killing machines, tiny bacteria, giant glob like bosses.

So I think we're on the same page.

Oh, perfect then.

Yes, that would be awesome!

At the end of that video, those two conjoined amoeba look exactly how I would imagine the multicellular state would begin. Very good video!

Hello again guys! Now I'm facing another problem, but in Debian 7.8, trying to run the Thrive from terminal I get prompted with the following error:

./Thrive: error while loading shared libraries: libBulletDynamics.so.2.81: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

What can I do?

Presumably, 1st person mode won't be available to start with. When will it begin?

Edit: Why is there a page on the wiki for both fossilised and fossilisation?

Hrm I thought I fixed the script (the original didn't install bullet), looks like it still doesn't install bullet. Try sudo apt-get install libbullet-dev? And then redo make install, it shouldn't have to recompile, just copy over the libs.

@StealthStyleL: First-Person mode likely starts once you're a big enough multicellular thing. As for the fossilization thing, there is likely not a good reason, feel free to merge 'em.

Thanks.

I think it's best if the fossilized page is deleted. There's nothing in it. But I can't do that.

can you open the options menu at bottom-right? That's where delete is. Dw about this one, I deleted it and fixed broken links.

Yes, I did try that but it said that I can't do it. I'm not sure exactly what it said. I can't find out without trying to delete something.

I guess it's not in your permissions then, no biggie. I took a look at what you've done so far, looks good. Could you add links to all those bits you've added to the starts of pages? What are you plannign on fixing up next?

Oh yeah, and we could take this to the wiki thread, keep discussion organized.

Gone to that thread.

I just played a bit with the new prerelease of 0.2.4 and the new GuI looks great! Good work!

I will make another trailer with the new features.

However, I found some bugs and have a few suggestions to make:

BUGS

1) If I don't exit the game, new game doesn't start a new game.
2) When I put a toxic vacuole, and created oxytoxy, the oxytoxy was created inside of my microbe, damaging, and each time I released oxytoxy, my microbe was hurt. I think that happened because the oxytoxy is produced at the front side of the microbe, and I placed the toxic vacuole on the back side of the microbe. The oxytoxy should be produced always outside of the microbe.
3) The game crashed after clicking reproduce. I played a bit, reproduced, continued playing, saved the game,went to the main menu, played with the microbe editor, then back to the game, loaded the previous game, click reproduce and crashed. I suspect that it crashed because the computer has stored in the microbe editor the microbe I created in the main menu editor, and that was different from the microbe of the loaded game I was playing with. This explains why it didn't crashed the first time I reproduced.

SUGGESTIONS

a) Compounds window too invasive when opened. I suggest moving the compound list directly above the place where currently there is the word "compounds", and to reduce the shard window to a minimum.
b) Draw an arrow in the microbe editor. I always confuse where is supposed to be the front side of the microbe and the back side of it.
c) I think that this is in the github issues list, but, when accessed from the menu, you shouldn't have MP limit. And you should always start with the default microbe, or only the nucleus, not the microbe from the previous game.
d) when starting a new game, start with the default microbe, not the microbe from the last game or the microbe from the last time you entered the editor.
e) Chloroplasts should be found the same way as toxic vacuoles, following the endosymbiotic theory.

I hope this will help improving the game.

Lepticidio wrote:

3) The game crashed after clicking reproduce. I played a bit, reproduced, continued playing, saved the game,went to the main menu, played with the microbe editor, then back to the game, loaded the previous game, click reproduce and crashed. I suspect that it crashed because the computer has stored in the microbe editor the microbe I created in the main menu editor, and that was different from the microbe of the loaded game I was playing with. This explains why it didn't crashed the first time I reproduced.

Hmm, I didn't have problems with this.

Lepticidio wrote:

c) I think that this is in the github issues list, but, when accessed from the menu, you shouldn't have MP limit. And you should always start with the default microbe, or only the nucleus, not the microbe from the previous game.

That doesn't seem to be a problem for me, either. Something ain't right here.

If you click on the help icon ("?," I think), it tells you that the limited points is to simulate evolution as a gradual process. Still, a debug command for this would be pretty helpful.

Lepticidio wrote:

I just played a bit with the new prerelease of 0.2.4 and the new GuI looks great! Good work!

I will make another trailer with the new features.

However, I found some bugs and have a few suggestions to make:

BUGS

1) If I don't exit the game, new game doesn't start a new game.
2) When I put a toxic vacuole, and created oxytoxy, the oxytoxy was created inside of my microbe, damaging, and each time I released oxytoxy, my microbe was hurt. I think that happened because the oxytoxy is produced at the front side of the microbe, and I placed the toxic vacuole on the back side of the microbe. The oxytoxy should be produced always outside of the microbe.
3) The game crashed after clicking reproduce. I played a bit, reproduced, continued playing, saved the game,went to the main menu, played with the microbe editor, then back to the game, loaded the previous game, click reproduce and crashed. I suspect that it crashed because the computer has stored in the microbe editor the microbe I created in the main menu editor, and that was different from the microbe of the loaded game I was playing with. This explains why it didn't crashed the first time I reproduced.

SUGGESTIONS

a) Compounds window too invasive when opened. I suggest moving the compound list directly above the place where currently there is the word "compounds", and to reduce the shard window to a minimum.
b) Draw an arrow in the microbe editor. I always confuse where is supposed to be the front side of the microbe and the back side of it.
c) I think that this is in the github issues list, but, when accessed from the menu, you shouldn't have MP limit. And you should always start with the default microbe, or only the nucleus, not the microbe from the previous game.
d) when starting a new game, start with the default microbe, not the microbe from the last game or the microbe from the last time you entered the editor.
e) Chloroplasts should be found the same way as toxic vacuoles, following the endosymbiotic theory.

I hope this will help improving the game.

Thanks for the feedback Lepticidio,  about the GUI being really obtrusive, the default resolution may be smaller then your computer's (I ran into this issue), to set that you can delete the ogre.cfg file in the bin directory in the thrive folder, and when you start thrive you will be able to change the resolution to your monitors resolution.. (I have a feeling It would be a nice feature to add to an options menu as-well. so I will bring that up to the team)

Lepticidio wrote:

I just played a bit with the new prerelease of 0.2.4 and the new GuI looks great! Good work!

Sorry to bother you, but where did you get it from? I haven't heard anything about a pre-release.

Scottnov wrote:

Lepticidio wrote:

I just played a bit with the new prerelease of 0.2.4 and the new GuI looks great! Good work!

Sorry to bother you, but where did you get it from? I haven't heard anything about a pre-release.

Revolutionary Games website. It's technically a full-on release, but, eh.

If you're expecting the NPC microbe's AI to be the same, you're in for a, shall we say, predatory surprise... heheheh...