Mandatory Sharing

Now, this isn't something that worked in Spore because it meant that the latest creations swamped your system, usually being the worst possible thing someone could create.

This won't work for us cause we don't have the servers.

However something similar might be neccisary.

We can make a fair number of TOs to flush out the world, but as time goes on I'm sure they'll get pretty old. My thoughts are that we note how often certain files are downloaded, seeing as we lack a rating system. If something becomes popular enough than it's reveiwed by the Admins to make sure it's not say, a spaceship shaped like the president, or something similarly impressive but stupid looking ingame. Then, if they pass, they are added to a list. This list will be attached to patches and updates to flush out the world.

This applies to three different types of creations: TOs, Solar Systems, and non-editor files.

A Solar System would contain everything in it, either created ingame or editors. This allows complex races with deep histories and facinating cultures to be added whole, always with their respective sets.

Non-editor files would be things like expanded lists for creature-made music, more writing styles, etc.

Thoughts?

i thought we weren't doing a sharing system... correct me if i'm wrong

The reason sharing worked at all for Spore was because content created was so relatively simple. Even adventures, which were miniature games in their own right, were capped on complexity severely to limit the amount of processing power and memory they could take up. A whole solar system's worth of realism, which is what such a system created in Thrive would ideally be, would be incredibly complicated, and thus have massive file sizes. How do you propose to allow for the easy download of such large files? Every solar system would be a whole patch worth of new content.

Xenopologist wrote:

The reason sharing worked at all for Spore was because content created was so relatively simple. Even adventures, which were miniature games in their own right, were capped on complexity severely to limit the amount of processing power and memory they could take up. A whole solar system's worth of realism, which is what such a system created in Thrive would ideally be, would be incredibly complicated, and thus have massive file sizes. How do you propose to allow for the easy download of such large files? Every solar system would be a whole patch worth of new content.

Yes.

To all of that.

The issue with taking induvidual races is that much of the culture will be based on their surroundings, so solar systems would be neccisary.

And yes, that's alot of info.

Maybe worth it's own update.

Depending on quality, worth it.

Tenebrarum wrote:

Xenopologist wrote:

The reason sharing worked at all for Spore was because content created was so relatively simple. Even adventures, which were miniature games in their own right, were capped on complexity severely to limit the amount of processing power and memory they could take up. A whole solar system's worth of realism, which is what such a system created in Thrive would ideally be, would be incredibly complicated, and thus have massive file sizes. How do you propose to allow for the easy download of such large files? Every solar system would be a whole patch worth of new content.

Yes.

To all of that.

The issue with taking induvidual races is that much of the culture will be based on their surroundings, so solar systems would be neccisary.

And yes, that's alot of info.

Maybe worth it's own update.

Depending on quality, worth it.

I'm not really sure if I can understand what you said, here, but are you saying it's worth sacrificing a significantly large amount of space and possibly hours of our time to download an entire solar system?

Eh, I'd rather not agree..

I'm happy with people just downloading content through the forums. I don't believe we need a Mandatory Sharing System.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

I'm happy with people just downloading content through the forums. I don't believe we need a Mandatory Sharing System.

True. Maybe we could include some of the best into official patches, but that's all about it.

Commander Keen wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

I'm happy with people just downloading content through the forums. I don't believe we need a Mandatory Sharing System.

True. Maybe we could include some of the best into official patches, but that's all about it.

How do we find the best if the only files are locally on their computer, and if we can access everyone's files then how do we decide from all of them? Seems a pretty big project. Oh, and what if an update makes all creations of a certain type not work, because we updated the system? We have to find a big bunch of new ones and fast... Seems a lot could go wrong or make life difficult for us. Sorry for being so negative about this, I would like to be able to use other people's content, I'm just pointing out what has been missed.

And are we not having the Thrive Content Library now, or is it going to be a forum section or something?

If it is a forum section, I personally wont use it, I'd hate going through topic after topic finding something good, with all the loading etc...
A preview would be good but you just can't get that in a forum without going into thread after thread or post after post...

As I understand it, the Thrive Content Library is a name for two "locations": one on the player's computer, existing as a folder or group of folders with the individual "creations" stored within them, and some sort of online sharing mechanism that could be anything from a forum section to a system like Spore's Online Sporepedia.

The problem with having an Online Sporepedia-type site is that we would need a dedicated web server running an application developed specifically for the process of making previews of Thrive "creations" available to viewers, coupled with some mechanism to download the "creations" one likes for use in one's game.

While having such a web application isn't impossible, it certainly seems unlikely with our current resources. Along with the complexity of such a piece of software, the additional issue of file sizes would arise. As our files are intended to be more realistic - and therefore hopefully more detailed - than Spore's, they would consequentially be larger and take longer to download than Spore creations.

The Uteen wrote:

How do we find the best if the only files are locally on their computer, and if we can access everyone's files then how do we decide from all of them?

The "best" I mentioned would be the best from posted on TCL forum section. It would take a few dedicated people to find them, that's not much.

The Uteen wrote:

Oh, and what if an update makes all creations of a certain type not work, because we updated the system?

Backwards compatibility is the key. This should never happen after releasing the game.

The Uteen wrote:

And are we not having the Thrive Content Library now, or is it going to be a forum section or something?

Forum section.

The Uteen wrote:

If it is a forum section, I personally wont use it, I'd hate going through topic after topic finding something good, with all the loading etc...

That's why we should include the best of it into patches.

If we have Organisms downloaded automatically and added into our game, I hope they won't be added onto the planet that we live on, as they would be unlike the other Organisms on the planet. If they are added onto another Planet then only one could be added from which all of the others would have to evolve, lest inconsistency should arise. Probably a way around this would be to download planets and Solar Systems with their Coördinates in the Galaxy.

I thought the TLC was where the player copied the objects they found online into the game?

GamerXA wrote:

If we have Organisms downloaded automatically and added into our game, I hope they won't be added onto the planet that we live on, as they would be unlike the other Organisms on the planet. If they are added onto another Planet then only one could be added from which all of the others would have to evolve, lest inconsistency should arise. Probably a way around this would be to download planets and Solar Systems with their Coördinates in the Galaxy.

That's why I said Solar Systems and TOs only.

Tenebrarum wrote:

GamerXA wrote:

If we have Organisms downloaded automatically and added into our game, I hope they won't be added onto the planet that we live on, as they would be unlike the other Organisms on the planet. If they are added onto another Planet then only one could be added from which all of the others would have to evolve, lest inconsistency should arise. Probably a way around this would be to download planets and Solar Systems with their Coördinates in the Galaxy.

That's why I said Solar Systems and TOs only.

If you can only get individual solar systems, wouldn't a galactic race in that system get a just a bit down (I mean tremendously furious and outraged) when they find they just lost all forms of contact with the rest of their empire, and then the rest of there empire seems to suddenly be of no physical existence when they go and check on them?

It's possible that if a society has large connections to other solar systems it would include the other systems in the download. That way their would be only minimal losses if their was a galactic empire.

GamerXA wrote:

It's possible that if a society has large connections to other solar systems it would include the other systems in the download. That way their would be only minimal losses if their was a galactic empire.

QFT

GamerXA wrote:

It's possible that if a society has large connections to other solar systems it would include the other systems in the download. That way their would be only minimal losses if their was a galactic empire.

It could still get pretty big file-size, if the player is obsessed with that race and has avoided ascension... Unavoidable, I suppose. But would the locations of their other systems be copied, too? What if you have a save in that system? Just blocking it would annoy someone who really wants the empire in their galaxy. Maybe move it to the nearest star until it is out of the way of used systems.

And you wont be able to play as these empires, I hope?
Will there be other AI controlled interstellar species?
What happens when they reach ascension?
Am I going to stop asking things now?
Yes.

Since we're using a single Galaxy for all of our save games (but we won't be interacting with other people), if a piece of content would replace another solar system that you have already seen (or possibly only have a colony on) then it might be able to be moved to another neighboring system. Huge empires that can't be moved around (if it would cause mass devastation) would probably not be copied at all (probably if the empires occupy more than a half or quarter of the galaxy).

You should be able to.

Yes, most definitely.

Personally, I think it would be a good idea to see another race suddenly disappear and ascend. But they shouldn't be able to do anything in God-Mode.

toxiciron wrote:

i thought we weren't doing a sharing system... correct me if i'm wrong

Sharing will be completely optional. We can add more content in patches. The content we add can actually be picked from the best in the community.

~sciocont wrote:

toxiciron wrote:

i thought we weren't doing a sharing system... correct me if i'm wrong

Sharing will be completely optional. We can add more content in patches. The content we add can actually be picked from the best in the community.

My point exactly. I fear I worded this badly. My deepest apologies for the confusion.

Tenebrarum wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

toxiciron wrote:

i thought we weren't doing a sharing system... correct me if i'm wrong

Sharing will be completely optional. We can add more content in patches. The content we add can actually be picked from the best in the community.

My point exactly. I fear I worded this badly. My deepest apologies for the confusion.

Each patch we release should have new content as well as bug fixes.

Well I beleive we'll end up deciding that a pollination system like spore will be needed because of the sheer size, however it'll need to be greatly improved from the failboat that spore's sharing system is.

One thing that would help is creating a system of tags for creations, so they could be sorted out in different styles (ie, "realistic" "nonsense" "funny" "fantasy", or even up to the detail like "insectoid" and etc), then each user could filter the tags they want or not to be autodownloaded on their end. Thus one could make a spaceship that looks like lenin's head but it won't be shared to people who don't want it because it'd have the "funny" tag.

Another point would be having the player actively pick what stuff they want shared. I once did a slow game in spore where I passed through the critter editor some 20 times in the course of a game. To my disdain I discovered every single iteration of the critter was distributed. Go figure.

For data transfer, I beleive a de-centralized protocol like torrent, with a server which only managed the metadata would ease the bandwith issues a lot, of course in comes MPPAA suing us for sharing films via a game...

Djohaal wrote:

Well I beleive we'll end up deciding that a pollination system like spore will be needed because of the sheer size, however it'll need to be greatly improved from the failboat that spore's sharing system is.

One thing that would help is creating a system of tags for creations, so they could be sorted out in different styles (ie, "realistic" "nonsense" "funny" "fantasy", or even up to the detail like "insectoid" and etc), then each user could filter the tags they want or not to be autodownloaded on their end. Thus one could make a spaceship that looks like lenin's head but it won't be shared to people who don't want it because it'd have the "funny" tag.

Another point would be having the player actively pick what stuff they want shared. I once did a slow game in spore where I passed through the critter editor some 20 times in the course of a game. To my disdain I discovered every single iteration of the critter was distributed. Go figure.

For data transfer, I beleive a de-centralized protocol like torrent, with a server which only managed the metadata would ease the bandwith issues a lot, of course in comes MPPAA suing us for sharing films via a game...

*Ahem* While the tag system is good and all, griefers will doubtlessly create their dick-monsters and label them as "realistic" so as to have them pollintated in everyone who wants only realistic organisms's games.

Djohaal wrote:

Spore-like system

There are a few problems with this solution:

1. Server - Having a server implemented into the game bears problems such as not being able to properly play the game without internet, having the game break when the server is down, actively maintaining the server, etc.
2. Autosharing - Instead of carefully selecting what they upload, players will happily share everything, even crap, because "the game did it". That leads us to a bigger library, but with way worse creations.
3. Autodownloading - No matter what options we will make and what the player will select, the game will always download something he doesn't like for whatever reasons.

I'm trying to look at it from all directions, but manual download and inclusion in patches still seems to be the best idea.

Edit: Fixed triple-fail in underlining the points' key words.

I'm all for patch inclusion. The purpose of this thread was to discuss the nature of how patch inclusion would be used.