Earthium Awakens.

I have 3 years self experience with c++, SDL, Opengl.
pre-pharmacy degree.

Been lurking around on the forums for quite awhile,

I mainly have a few questions on design choices, from playing the 0.2.2 version.
Why are you using Ogre?
Why was the cell hexagons? Circles are much more cell like and have easier collision detection.
Why use ATP, Glucose, and Oxygen, etc.. when you could just have the atoms and have a crafting ability in the editor. This would allow for more variety needing just the material and be less confusing to people who are not in the science area, trust me needed a biology book to play a game is not fun.

I am still debating whether or not to apply to the programming field here there is bad mojo about.

Welcome to the forum Earthium! I'm sure that you will definitely be able to contribute to the programming side of things! If you are interested, you can check out how to get involved here:
https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t1296-new-programmers-start-here?highlight=new+programmers+start+here

Welcome to the forum Earthium, to answer a few of your questions:

1 - We're using ogre as it's one of the better free/open source engines available, and it allows us to focus on programming game mechanics without first having to program a graphics engine. We did originally consider using OpenGL, as well as a few other graphics/game engines, and I think SDL was used in a few prototypes, but we decided on ogre.

2 - Hexagons and squares (and triangles) are the only 2d shapes that tile neatly into a grid, circles would leave gaps between the tiles. The hexagons you see are only for laying out the cell in the editor, and in game they will eventually be replaced by a smooth cell membrane.

3 - We are attempting to build a reasonably realistic (but not excessively complex) simulation of how living things work, and the compound system is a major part of that. Having the player have to craft their own compounds would probably be even more confusing, and get rather tedious; having them craft organelles (I think that's what you meant) could work, but would break immersion, and the cell would/should still use up compounds continually for homeostasis. That said, we will aim to make the system as usable as possible to those without the biological knowledge, as well as provide some sort of information in game for those that do want to learn more about biology. We may also have a simplified chemistry for easy mode, where you might only need 'food', 'air' and 'water', rather than the more basic compound we have for the normal game.

You'd be more than welcome to help with the programming, or to simply provide advice from the forums. We could always do with more programmers simply helping with the design, and making sure that what we're trying to do is feasible.

Welcome Earthium!

Earthium wrote:

there is bad mojo about

Sadly that's the case, and it's been the case for a while before. However, the recent devblogs should indicate that we are currently working on getting some good mojo going. Our ears are always open to hearing process improvements, so if you let us know what disturbs you we'll take it to heart. It might even be our crackdown on things we deem unproductive -- but we can't know until you share.

Welcome to Thrive Earthium!

It's great to have you on board. Experience in C++ programming would be of great help to the project. 

What is the bad mojo you are suggesting? As moopli said, we are open to ways of improving the forum and the project.

Alrighty, I'm gona let the bad mojo out right now, these may be small to large things but still its a red flag.
First impressions I still remember this because it still applies, i'm giving some solutions also rather then just saying this website sucks or this is a problem.

This may not be something you can directly update or fix but the website has problems, my first impressions when I got here was that the place was unprofessional.
On my monitor, which is rather large, the background image does not go all the way to the right, leaving a noticeable color the same as the bottom as shown in the picture below.
Green text is also a problem in this case reading the "view posts since last visit" and other text is hard to read due to the bad contrast on the back image, which should be brought over. The text contrast is amplified in the "Post a reply" where the bottom is almost the same color also is misaligned.


Another thing is that some of the boxes are obsolete and need to be edited such as READ BEFORE POSTING. The wiki it takes you to says last edited 201 days ago clear is not being used, the FAQs there is the most important, I would recommend having the top banner have new people go there first. No one knows what OE CC is from 2010, no idea on the accuracy on that, currently in the cell editor rather then creature editor.

There is also a placeholder spot below the banner, personally I would move some of the boxes to be aligned across rather then down. Latest topics goes way to far down. It would be nice to swap that with the placeholder.

Text Problems:

Some other things is you have posts from 2010, 4 year old posts, the fact is your not far in the game programming for that information to be relevant so it stagnates.
These were the two main reasons that I waited will I did from my join day, which I was lurking around the forums before I signed up about a year before that.

One of the biggest and major things is that the program itself (V0.2.2) is bad it looks and feels like it is, i'm gona say it, done by a high school student, in a week.
Thee biggest and the most importation thing is has anyone questioned "Will this game be fun if I put this in."

This is the bad mojo I was talking about.

Remember that we are a passion project and there is no money involved with the project, so we can't always live up to industry standards in terms of polish.

Regarding your problems with the forum/website, you may notice that the forum URL has canadaboard.net suggesting that we may not have full control over the css (Oliver correct me if I'm wrong) and provided the relatively new mainstream market for 4k consumer monitors, I'm not too surprised some divs and text are a little off.
The website shouldn't be too much of an issue to fix I imagine. We are currently working on moving the website to a new server, so now might not be a bad time to fix any minor issues, Thread.
But this brings up a more important point, this is how open source works. You identify a small issue with the project, and instead of calling them unprofessional, you offer your assistance with fixing it.

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Some other things is you have posts from 2010, 4 year old posts, the fact is your not far in the game programming for that information to be relevant so it stagnates.

I agree a fair amount with this, things are a bit messy, but the forum moderators do work hard on keeping new additions relevant and clean. Things get tricky with sorting through old information that may or may not be relevant, but it would be something that we could work on.

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One of the biggest and major things is that the program itself (V0.2.2) is bad

No one here is claiming that we have a revolutionary game at this point (pun intended), but it's worth noting that the real development started just less than a year ago and the focus until last few months has been the underlying engine (which is still being extended) and gameplay features have therefore only just started arising. As it is also mentioned in many places, the current graphical style is temporary and we are currently working on procedural cell membranes for a proper look
Link. I think you should take a look at the source code, before you pass judgement about it's quality.

One last point to bring up is that you keep mentioning the fun of the game. While the game certainly aims to be fun, it is not the only goal of the project, and realism is probably the number one thing that people are looking forward to. We don't want people to open a biology text-book to play the game, but if we can teach the player a bit about photo synthesis and respiration while guiding them through the experience that would be awesome! The goal here is to keep things fun and manageable, but with a scientific and realistic underlying system.

crovea wrote:

The website shouldn't be too much of an issue to fix I imagine. We are currently working on moving the website to a new server, so now might not be a bad time to fix any minor issues, Thread.

It's the website, not the forum, that we're working on moving elsewhere. ~scio has control over the forum hosting, although he, Nick and Seregon have access to the admin account and so could change the design if need be. BUT this does get me thinking about whether a new forum with more customisation could be put in place on a new server, as the website structure software we've considered may allow it in some circumstances.

This is a small prototype I made in about 5 hours, your probably far enough in the cell stage where this is worthless.
Upon a close inspection of the website I believe that this entire game and community is a lost cause. Why I came here was the hopes of a recreation of a spore game like the 2005 demo a game people waited years for and never got. From what I get this community it is not going that route at all, its going the completely different branch with realism. The 2005 demo was simple it was basic, its exactly the same as the finished spore game, just different graphics, DRM, plenty of bugs, and they had no idea what to do with the endgame. Thrive's gameplay elements are nothing similar to spore. I think you have waited to long to get the project started and games like Universim are going to fulfill people's wants for a game. If your not making a game for people to enjoy, why make it at all?

Earthium wrote:

I think you have waited to long to get the project started and games like Universim are going to fulfill people's wants for a game. If your not making a game for people to enjoy, why make it at all?

I will enjoy it. A lot. And the same for all the people involved in the project.

For years I waited patiently for the release of spore, waiting for a game which would be an epic and transcendental life simulator. What I got after all those years was only a kids game lacking any complexity or scientific accuracy.

I felt betrayed , and I waited for expansions to fix spore. They didn't arrived. Then for mods, but no mod could fix such a mess. Maxis dissolved, and no games with a similar mechanic were released. For years I searched the web, and the most similar thing that I was able to get was "Evolution: the game of intelligent life." A game of 1997. I started to use Game maker to create it my self, but it was just impossible to me. And, one day, I found Thrive. And was perfect.

The Universim is belgium when you compare it to thrive. You start in society stage losing the fun of controlling your own creature, you can`t evolve any organism, it is barely scientific, and you can`t even directly control your exclusively human civilization.

And I think the Universim will be a great game, but Thrive is just too awesome for the rest of games to compete.

I don't understand your criticism of Thrive's gameplay compared to Spore. Are you saying the current concept for the Microbe Stage is too complex?

Also, the Universim only covers the advance of civilization, while Thrive includes evolution as well.

The vast majority of people come here from the spore community, people are advertising outside the forums as a successor or equal to spore. The people that come from there want a recreation of a good spore, such as the 2005 demo, look at the comments people are saying about Thrive. That is what people expect you are going to make, yes that's bad, very bad, because your not.

Your not going towards a good game either, from what I see the game is going towards realism and education. If the game visually looked like something under a microscope that would be amazing, but its the game play elements that seem wrong, it seems exactly the same to spore if not worse.
Education seems to be the main bad part of this, you have ATP and glucose in the cell stage as the basic units, and from what the posts I've heard they're debate on making a simplified mode using air, wind, earth, fire. If you have to do that, why bother you will not learn anything, it either is to complicated or makes no sense .
I solution I purposed was meeting somewhere in the middle, something that everyone knows, atoms. It could then go to lysosomes that could break down large molecules that are just scattered around the map. Sure lysosomes don't break everything down into individual atoms, but you can stretch the truth its a videogame, its meant to be fun.

Earthium wrote:

Education seems to be the main bad part of this, you have ATP and glucose in the cell stage as the basic units, and from what the posts I've heard they're debate on making a simplified mode using air, wind, earth, fire. If you have to do that, why bother you will not learn anything, it either is to complicated or makes no sense .

Nonononono, you've got it all wrong. The main game will, in fact, have the individual compounds; the whole "food, water, air" thing is for an alternative mode for people who don't want to contend with the science, if all they came for was the 2005 Spore and nothing else, and even that is still just a concept.

Earthium wrote:

Thrive's gameplay elements are nothing similar to spore

Earthium wrote:

... but its the game play elements that seem wrong, it seems exactly the same to spore if not worse.  

Errm, sorry, I- just what are you trying to say here? If you're referring to individual elements, please specify.

A couple things:

The reference to a simplfied four-elements or air-water-food compound system is a strawman -- it's been suggested a few times (I think, all I am sure about is the most recent sugested on the miscellabugs thread), and is so far from being a priority that you don't have to be worried about it.

At least in terms of Microbe stage, I believe the consensus for quite some time has been that the best middle ground between not teaching enough and not fun enough is one where the depth of gameplay extends to major organelles and their major functions, and the main chemicals that are central to these processes.

If we wanted to make the game simpler, we would make remove a layer of complexity in the game -- instead of cells worrying about their compounds, organelles, and swimming around and killing things; they could only worry about swimming around and killing things; much like spore.

The solution that you are presenting as simpler is instead one that adds a layer of complexity -- instead of only worrying about a few organelles, and a few compounds, and swimming and killing things, we would now also be worrying about the atoms coming together to make them.

This would be fine if we were to remove a higher level to compensate -- that is, if gameplay revolved around shunting atoms around and doing chemical reactions, to keep a cell alive perhaps, then the game would avoid the staggering complexity which you rightly state will ruin the fun for a large number of our fans. This, in the end, would look very much like the removed spore molecular stage.

However, what worries me at least about your proposal is that you don't seem to be proposing removing the higher-level game mechanics of Microbe stage, and are thus actually proposing making the game more complicated to make it simpler, and that does not compute. Is that what you mean? I hope I'm misunderstanding.

Negative nancy is back, for the moment. The importance of essentially complaining is acknowledging the fact that these problems exist even if I can't do it. The nail is in the coffin that i'm not going to physically help this project until things improve A) because its going in the wrong direction, B) when I told my brother about the project after I made the demo and he said "Why bother," and that stuck, because there is no reason to be here. C) Crovea's post.

It has been 4 years I would think that someone with the knowledge of how a game is made would have gotten here or maybe they took three steps into the website and left, Will Wright himself could have been on the forums for all we know and left, probably honestly has.
What I said about spore was meaning that almost everyone who comes here believes that you are making a spore like game and you have insulted on them to the highest level. Spore has a huge development time and the finished product was barely worth playing. Its obvious the development time is going to take forever here. Which is why when my brother said why bother stuck so much, unless I am making the entire game it will take eons for a low quality game, I could go the extra mile and make this myself with my own envision. Its insulting irony to the people who come here believing this is a spore game. You should also be comparing your ideas to the spore game and they should be equal or better.

Even if you finish the game I believe it will fail for the soul purpose that you are trying to make a educational+realism game. That is the worst two things you could put together to make a game it will be the equivalent of reading a book for fun. Oh yes fun, the entire purpose of playing a game. Toulmin's model I want to play a game because its fun, fun is the claim, but the quote I got from crovea when I asked will it be fun this was my response. There is like a bandwagon effect that people thing the game will be good with little input other then there ideas they want to see in the game, then the people leave and are never heard from again.

crovea wrote:

One last point to bring up is that you keep mentioning the fun of the game. While the game certainly aims to be fun, it is not the only goal of the project, and realism is probably the number one thing that people are looking forward to. We don't want people to open a biology text-book to play the game, but if we can teach the player a bit about photo synthesis and respiration while guiding them through the experience that would be awesome! The goal here is to keep things fun and manageable, but with a scientific and realistic underlying system.

Realism is the #1 thing you seem to be focusing on, as I said before you have ATP and other chemicals in the demo that is educational, a major gameplay mechanic, the currency, is educational about a cell. Education should be a backseat at best. This reinforces my earlier statement about having a educational+realism game.


But this brings up a more important point, this is how open source works. You identify a small issue with the project, and instead of calling them unprofessional, you offer your assistance with fixing it.

crovea wrote:

I think you should take a look at the source code, before you pass judgement about it's quality.

I didn't mean the program as in code, I meant program as in gameplay, you are developing the game before you know what you want in the game, there is still debate about the cell stage. There needs to be a master prototype, I am not talking about what you have now, I am talking about some very basic things like how the cell moves such as the prototype I posted, basic things like environmental hazards, not like fancy 3d graphics, use simple 2d images and collisions, simple circle and boxes. Ever seen debug modes of like Zelda, they have the checkerboarded textures, that is what i'm looking for, except with the cell stage you can use 2d, like the video of what I posted.

It's good to see that your criticism is for a constructive motive, but there are some areas where you are incorrect. Granted, your sentences are a bit unclear so I'm going to try my best to respond to what you said.

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It has been 4 years I would think that someone with the knowledge of how a game is made would have gotten here or maybe they took three steps into the website and left, Will Wright himself could have been on the forums for all we know and left, probably honestly has.
What I said about spore was meaning that almost everyone who comes here believes that you are making a spore like game and you have insulted on them to the highest level. Spore has a huge development time and the finished product was barely worth playing. Its obvious the development time is going to take forever here. Which is why when my brother said why bother stuck so much, unless I am making the entire game it will take eons for a low quality game, I could go the extra mile and make this myself with my own envision. Its insulting irony to the people who come here believing this is a spore game. You should also be comparing your ideas to the spore game and they should be equal or better.

Maybe it's just me but this paragraph didn't make a whole lot of sense. Real development has only began a quarter way's back into the project's history, and since then we have made quite some progress given what we have available. In fact, gameplay-wise I feel the Microbe Stage is already better than Spore, as well as various other online cell games which people kept comparing us too. Graphics and sound-wise, on the other hand, we still need more work. But the whole point is that we have no deadline and no budget so as long as people want they can come to the forums and improve the game.

Quote :

Even if you finish the game I believe it will fail for the soul purpose that you are trying to make a educational+realism game. That is the worst two things you could put together to make a game it will be the equivalent of reading a book for fun. Oh yes fun, the entire purpose of playing a game. Toulmin's model I want to play a game because its fun, fun is the claim, but the quote I got from crovea when I asked will it be fun this was my response. There is like a bandwagon effect that people thing the game will be good with little input other then there ideas they want to see in the game, then the people leave and are never heard from again.

Well it's important to note what it means for a game to fail. Normally it just means making enough money through selling the game that you run a profit and can fund future projects, but since this is free-to-play and we are all volunteers a better measurement of success is how much people would enjoy the game. So far no one has complained about any features that reflect the balance between realism and fun, and many people have enjoyed the game and like the direction it is taking. Also, I'm not sure if you are joking but a lot of people read books for fun, it's one of the things they are meant for.

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Realism is the #1 thing you seem to be focusing on, as I said before you have ATP and other chemicals in the demo that is educational, a major gameplay mechanic, the currency, is educational about a cell. Education should be a backseat at best. This reinforces my earlier statement about having a educational+realism game.

I'd have to disagree. Given that this is a game about science, we want the game to be, you know, scientific. We want to create a game about the evolution of species. That requires realism as an integral component. It will of course not be a 100% accurate model of real life, but we will try to make it as realistic as possible while also keeping it fun and making sure it doesn't melt the computer you run it on.

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I didn't mean the program as in code, I meant program as in gameplay, you are developing the game before you know what you want in the game, there is still debate about the cell stage. There needs to be a master prototype, I am not talking about what you have now, I am talking about some very basic things like how the cell moves such as the prototype I posted, basic things like environmental hazards, not like fancy 3d graphics, use simple 2d images and collisions, simple circle and boxes. Ever seen debug modes of like Zelda, they have the checkerboarded textures, that is what i'm looking for, except with the cell stage you can use 2d, like the video of what I posted.

I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that we don't know what we want in the game, because we have this thing called the Microbe Stage Game Design Document that outlines exactly everything we want in the game.