Mandatory Sharing

Tenebrarum wrote:

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

Yeah. I think it's settled enough to put it on the Wiki.

Commander Keen wrote:

Tenebrarum wrote:

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

Yeah. I think it's settled enough to put it on the Wiki.

Now that that's settled, does anyone have anything to say on the OP, and my suggestion for what exactly will be included?

Yes. Downloading whole solar systems = large, but possible for the dedicated gamer. A medium-sized neighborhood file in The Sims is approximately 60-70 kb. We'd compressorize the solar system, obviously, but since so much of that is being rendered at the moment and only smaller references are being kept, I think a solar system might end up 140 to 210 kb in total. Compressorizing that brings it back down into the downloadable range for those with decent systems.
I think people should be able to choose exactly what they download: we could release "pollination packs" with the patches, but not make them mandatory.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Yes. Downloading whole solar systems = large, but possible for the dedicated gamer. A medium-sized neighborhood file in The Sims is approximately 60-70 kb. We'd compressorize the solar system, obviously, but since so much of that is being rendered at the moment and only smaller references are being kept, I think a solar system might end up 140 to 210 kb in total. Compressorizing that brings it back down into the downloadable range for those with decent systems.
I think people should be able to choose exactly what they download: we could release "pollination packs" with the patches, but not make them mandatory.

Excellent Idea. we will have to ship with enough content to pollinate a few worlds, then have our own packs that are up for optional DL. We can simply crowdsource the best designs of techs, creatures, planets, etc form our userbase.

As for what we include, I don't think we want it to just be whatever has been ranked highest by forum users.
I feel like we should have a little more discretion - say we were making up a pack of creatures that all could have evolved on the same planet, we don't want to look just for the "top 10 creatures" which will inevitably be those that follow whatever the current trend is (Remember knurldowns on the sporum, anyone?) or those by the most popular posters.
(Plus, I think the "get rated or die" system is a load of Belgium, but that is a rant that began with The Sims.)

Yeah. We'll have "miners" to dig through content and find the best stuff.

~sciocont wrote:

Yeah. We'll have "miners" to dig through content and find the best stuff.

QFT

Now, just to clarify, we all understand why I say Solar Systems and not just races? As the culture of NPNs that have been carefully crafted by players will likely be inextricably tied not just to the Homeworld but also to it's surrounding celestial bodies? Later cultures will likely also have a close tie with their first interstellar colonies, but we need a limit.

Makes sense: every species on a planet is inextricably linked, evolution-wise, to the flora, fauna, and physical conditions of their planet. An alien has to eat, you know.

Tenebrarum wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Yeah. We'll have "miners" to dig through content and find the best stuff.

QFT

Now, just to clarify, we all understand why I say Solar Systems and not just races? As the culture of NPNs that have been carefully crafted by players will likely be inextricably tied not just to the Homeworld but also to it's surrounding celestial bodies? Later cultures will likely also have a close tie with their first interstellar colonies, but we need a limit.

Yeah I understand that. I think we should also have "archetypes" that can be shared.
Basically an archetype is an NPN setup that isn't world-specific. That way, the game can construct NPNs wherever it likes with whatever species it likes, because their behavior as a nation will not be dependant on their environment.

~sciocont wrote:

Yeah I understand that. I think we should also have "archetypes" that can be shared. Basically an archetype is an NPN setup that isn't world-specific. That way, the game can construct NPNs wherever it likes with whatever species it likes, because their behavior as a nation will not be dependant on their environment.

First I was like
But then I was like :s

Behavior, I'm sad to say, is inextricably tied to the environment. Have you ever read "Guns, Germs, and Steel?" Yeah. The only reason the West became the world power, as opposed to the equally rich East, was because it's culture favored compitition, and through that, technological progress. And the only reason the west had that sort of culture is because Europe is fractured it to hundreds of tiny peices.

I think it should be easy enough to write an appropriate pollination algorythm though.

Tenebrarum wrote:

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 agree,but there maybe something like this:

Pics,ALOT of pics of creations that you see ingame (the whole creature isnt downloaded) and if you like it it begins downloading. I hope so. Me likes sharing system. And BTW,you say that developer and creator TO's are added in patches etc,but your OWN creatures will be automaticlly in other games,right? Hopeeeeee

zotobom wrote:

Tenebrarum wrote:

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 agree,but there maybe something like this:

Pics,ALOT of pics of creations that you see ingame (the whole creature isnt downloaded) and if you like it it begins downloading. I hope so. Me likes sharing system. And BTW,you say that developer and creator TO's are added in patches etc,but your OWN creatures will be automaticlly in other games,right? Hopeeeeee

I think this has the excuse: this wouldn't work for us cause we don't have the servers. But nice idea, and I hope we can somehow link the TCL to get the pics and download files from these forums somehow, while making it look much more professional and easier to find things, that way this could work. Tricky making it work, though. I want TCL to work...