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

Earthium Prime wrote:

It was a tongue and cheek post explaining how one would craft an ascension gate, and the technology tree required in which to do so. Explaining in full detail would take several pages. There is a lot of knowledge you would have to know and apply to understand what I said.

Well, the sheer insanity made for most of the humor!

Earthium Prime wrote:

For example Einstein-Rosen Bridge is something in reality that can make wormholes, in order for it to work you need a particle with negative mass.

Hm. What I was just about to bring up before I dashed it (literally) is those theorized tiny wormholes I heard of on TV, which pop up only to collapse. Of course, with so much energy at one's disposal...

Earthium Prime wrote:

My "9d" printer is something I made up which is an advanced 3d printer, capable of printing like a regular 3d printer but on the quantum level. The d stands for dimensions, the 9 part comes from an documentary on string theory where they said there was 9 dimensions. (documentary is outdated it is widely accepted that they're are 11 dimensions)

Hmm, interesting. Y'know, I actually saw a 3D printer available for sale not too long ago in an electronics store... $759 or so, I think. Box-shaped, had two coils of material attached to the back (one orange, one white), and something it made inside it as a demonstration (looked like an orange infinity symbol). Pretty clunky looking, and there was a sticker warning about it overheating, but it'll be great seeing these things advance in the future. Can't say for sure what this means to countries dependent on manufacturing, though...

Earthium Prime wrote:

AI stands for artificial intelligent, it refers to how the enemies move and interact in the video game.

Yep, just wondering how the AI would change is all.

Earthium Prime wrote:

Tesseract while yes is a 4d object, it is also a source of tremendous power in the avengers movie, capable of opening portals, which in this case I used to power the Ascension gate.

Could bring the other Infinity Stones into this as well. Why not? Or cross things over with Interstellar instead.

Earthium Prime wrote:

Ascension Gate I am not sure what thrive's Ascension gate is, but I made mine a time portal in which the player can go back in time, in short throw a bunch of technology in and start a new game+. Rather then giving the player god mode they would have a choice to start a new game (which would create a separate file they can return to the space stage at any time) This new file would give the player items and parts most of which would be really powerful, but not godlike.

Apparently, the Ascension Gate is what the player uses to go into Sandbox Mode (i.e. "God Mode"), where he/she uses the god tools his/her species has built to manipulate the universe in any way desireable. One can also "possess" any living creature to go into organism mode at any time, as well as return to managing the player's species in strategy mode.

Earthium Prime wrote:

The lightsabers would be created by the "9d" printer, which I said works by being able to place photons (light particles) in a crystal structure, which would create solid light. A lightsaber is a weapon of solid light contained from shooting out into space.

Pretty famous, these things. Pretty sure they're made of "frozen" plasma in the actual Star Wars lore, but I'd say anything goes with these things as long as they're lightsaber-ey. Not too sure if it'd make it into the "practical" range unless battle armor at that point blocks most of everything else.

Oliveriver wrote:

Not to dampen your spirits or anything, but this is exactly the sort of conversation appropriate for our subreddit and ridiculously out-of-place for the forums.

Since the dev team is still working on the microbe stage, I think we may need to hold off on late-game stuff till we get there.

MitochondriaBox wrote:

silas4000 wrote:

Quick question... I've been dieing to ask this question WILL We have species types? as in Say a group of species can be insectoid where instead of normal feats of reproduction we have A hive with a queen that creates a eggsack and this hive possesas swarm intellegnence rather than standard. (sorry for asking if it was already asked) Just wanted to know so I could make a xenomorph like creature.

... Errm, I think you're talking taxonomy, as in insects or reptiles or mammals. Really, the only thing determining that stuff is who's descended from who, so your planet'll have some unique taxonomies.

What you're saying about hive insects and xenomorphs is eusociality. Did you know that naked mole rats do that, too? Yep. Pretty sure it'll be in Thrive. If it can happen with insects and mammals, who knows where it'll show up in your planet's taxonomies?

What I mean is that Taking insperation from creatures like Xenomorphs or the Zerg and tyranaids Building a hive directed by a hive mind or a queen this creatures could be like giant bees or normal bees and in the more advanced stages would it be possible to create Biologcial buildings or a "hive resin" which would spread around covering the surrounding enviorments in Which your queen or other reproducing species could lay eggs on. Going along with a similar parasite idea to a xenomorph it would be like a infestation. Also going along with this would it be possible to have "hive casts" evolutions in your species that would be slightly diffrent to work for the hive possibly a fighter caste or a gaurdian cast instead of tanks and such you could have giant fighter casts ect? Mabey on the resin you could put a builder cast to create a biological building I know its a bit radical but its just a thought. Also Instead of standard weapons what about Bio-weapons which would be evolutions to adapt as like acid shooters on your back ect.

Edit: What I met by swarm intellegence is species shareing a phsycic link so they could hear eachothers thoughts and act as one And mabey the queen or the hive mind could oversee these creatures and command them all at once from a stationary area while the Queen lays eggs or the overmind feeds. Possibly to enhance the connection their could be a link cast which has a stronger mind and connection to the leader of said hive so it could increase the command in long distances such as over space or on the otherside of the planet.

Will there be a stage or a part of a stage where your creature becomes a fish? Like that Aquatic stage that never got released

Fangchamp wrote:

Will there be a stage or a part of a stage where your creature becomes a fish? Like that Aquatic stage that never got released

Stages in Thrive aren't really like in Spore. In Thrive, it's pretty seamless. The 2 biggest "animal" stages, multicellular and aware, have a seamless transition in that multicellular leads into aware once your animal becomes intelligent enough. What this means is that you could stay an aquatic creature for both of those stages if you wanted, but you would have to become amphibious or evolve to survive on land to progress further. So yes, in a way.

@MitoBox: That's just a lower-end printer, there are loads of industrial and research printers capable of much much more, and looking waaay slicker too.

@silas:
We plan to have castes, which are subgroups within your species that can develop differently. Obviously, there's a larger and larger evolutionary cost the more differently these castes develop (since you must evolve one feature in one caste without losing another in another). Queen bees, soldier ants, sexual dimorphism, sequential hermaphroditism, all through castes. Environment modification, whether like beavers, termites, or your proposed hive resin (how would that even work? we aren't a biological fantasy fridge horror game, I want defensible science before I even consider the possibility of putting some sort of tyranid mycetic blight into the game), is something we will probably have to put into the game somehow (though your hive resin would likely not make it in -- even if it wasn't total voodoo fake science, we have an infinitude of things that are actually realistic to work on first). Biological buildings, if formed out of the bodies of organisms, are like castes -- you'd need to evolve that sort of structure, and have one caste able to metamorphose into the building. Technically doable within the prospective game mechanics, but seriously, this is evolutionarily a massive waste, not so much a dead end, but something that would likely never be evolved. It's so much simpler to use available materials (or even materials produced by the species) to build structures. So, assuming you meant that (like, say, building things out of this resin), good idea!

Psychic link? What you mean by swarm intelligence is unscientific bullshit that we would never put in the game. Thank you for your ideas, maybe you should make your own game where science takes a back seat to cool pseudo-biology.

@all: oh, and while I'm ragging on unrealistic stuff, I may as well say that I'm against the idea of Ascension stage, and figure the reward for finishing the game could just be debug powers or something. That's essentially what the ascension concept is, just debug powers wrapped in voodoo trans-trans-humanist Clarke's-3rd-law stuff. We'd be overreaching ourselves to claim that the particular bunch of god powers we design are the ones that a sufficiently-advanced society would have access to, when we exclude a bunch of other powers to do things that we could never possibly code into the game. For example, if our planetary model does not support planets turning into stars (sorry, Arthur C. Clarke), then the player won't be able to turn a planet into a star. If our game doesn't incorporate a full materials simulation under General Relativity (no matter how much you plead, we won't), then you could never build a black hole out of bricks, no matter how you try. Ascension powers, at most, would be debug powers, so it seems more reasonable to just say outright that you get debug powers.

How long do you think it will be till the microbe stage will be finished and work on the multicellular stage will be started.

Jupiter34 wrote:

How long do you think it will be till the microbe stage will be finished and work on the multicellular stage will be started.

At the rate that progression seems to be going, 1-2 years, maybe. If it speeds up (probably during a school break) it'll probably be finished a lot sooner. I dunno, though, I'm not a developer, I just follow the game's progression really closely.

moopli wrote:

@all: oh, and while I'm ragging on unrealistic stuff, I may as well say that I'm against the idea of Ascension stage, and figure the reward for finishing the game could just be debug powers or something. That's essentially what the ascension concept is, just debug powers wrapped in voodoo trans-trans-humanist Clarke's-3rd-law stuff. We'd be overreaching ourselves to claim that the particular bunch of god powers we design are the ones that a sufficiently-advanced society would have access to, when we exclude a bunch of other powers to do things that we could never possibly code into the game. For example, if our planetary model does not support planets turning into stars (sorry, Arthur C. Clarke), then the player won't be able to turn a planet into a star. If our game doesn't incorporate a full materials simulation under General Relativity (no matter how much you plead, we won't), then you could never build a black hole out of bricks, no matter how you try. Ascension powers, at most, would be debug powers, so it seems more reasonable to just say outright that you get debug powers.

While I'm mostly against scientifically unrealistic things in Thrive too, I like the idea of ascension and I always have. It's like going on a massive journey of epic proportions and then receiving a beachside villa to relax in for the rest of your life, without being bothered. Debug powers don't sound nearly as exciting without the other bit, to me. I dunno, just my 2 cents.

Even so, I would only be somewhat disappointed if ascension didn't make it into the "final" game.

@Moopli
You say that Ascension is essentially giving the player debug powers. Why not just label these God powers and have the stage named Ascension as planned? It just sounds a lot better and more rewarding than debug powers.

StealthStyle L wrote:

@Moopli
You say that Ascension is essentially giving the player debug powers. Why not just label these God powers and have the stage named Ascension as planned? It just sounds a lot better and more rewarding than debug powers.

Couldn't have said it better myself, +1'd.

Scottnov wrote:

StealthStyle L wrote:

@Moopli
You say that Ascension is essentially giving the player debug powers. Why not just label these God powers and have the stage named Ascension as planned? It just sounds a lot better and more rewarding than debug powers.

Couldn't have said it better myself, +1'd.

Yay!!!

Should this form of "God Powers" (Debug instead of God Tools) be integrated into observer mode, or should it be part of an enhanced Strategy Mode that allows going into organism mode for anything, among other things?

Not too sure if older members'd agree with this if they were still around. Then again, there's plenty of time to make and change decisions. Hey, when do you reckon actual programming on Ascension'll start? Our current rate (2 releases a year) makes me reckon... yeah, we'd go into the 2100's, but since things will be picking up exponentially, maybe 2030 as a median?

Well, development would be progressing faster if my motivation wasn't shot. The main problem is that I feel like most of the stuff I've been doing for Thrive recently is a waste of my time. For example, arguing with you guys about Ascension is essentially pointless -- it doesn't get Thrive any closer to the next release. Answering people's questions or responding to suggestions on reddit also doesn't contribute to getting the next release. However, when the devs don't step in, the discussions go in all sorts of strange directions.

So, there's a bit of a conflict there: we devs feel like we should be curating the conversations on our sites, maintaining interaction with fans, etc. However, when so much fan discussion is about stuff that we honestly don't want the responsibility of curating, then that's a problem for all of us: either we tell our fans to shut their yaps, or we don't step in and get involved in discussions where we should. I think the best solution is to split apart the fan discussion and the dev interaction. you don't want to waste your time bringing up things you wanna discuss only to have us come in and be wet blankets, and we don't wanna waste our time doing that either. You guys love this game and that is awesome. We've set up our subreddit as the place for fans to talk about how much they love this game, and most of you are already on there talking about things, so it would be great if we finally freed this forum (the dev forum) from these fan discussions and just had them all in one place, a place where we can easily pick up new fans, like, say, the subreddit.

This thread was originally (eons ago, in its first iterations) meant for bugs etc, but it has now outlived its usefulness, so I have locked it.

I'll figure out some solution that can allow both these kinds of conversations to coexist -- the ones with devs, and the ones between fans. It will (almost certainly) be on the subreddit. So go there, and spread your love for Thrive.

Thread locked.