Breakdown- moving through stages.

I think moving through stages should be governed by a "milestone" process. As soon as a player does something that is a "milestone" they are considered to have proceeded into a stage. Certain milestones trigger certain stages, and stages could theoretically be skipped or put out of order.

~sciocont wrote:

I think moving through stages should be governed by a "milestone" process. As soon as a player does something that is a "milestone" they are considered to have proceeded into a stage. Certain milestones trigger certain stages, and stages could theoretically be skipped or put out of order.

Yes, but we should still DEFINATELY avoid cutscenes and the like. If this gets enough positive feedback I'll edit all of my threads about the gameplay stages with milestones that would trigger them (and cause you to return to a past stage).

i my self would like to see the possibility of staying in one stage for as long as u want does that seem possible

mike roberts wrote:

i my self would like to see the possibility of staying in one stage for as long as u want does that seem possible

Yeah of course.

A fadeout to black and a confirm box go a long way...

thast awsome

roadkillguy wrote:

A fadeout to black and a confirm box go a long way...

that seems too "spore-ish" to me. It should be an organic progression for the player, not aspiring to reach the next "level" like in spore.

Slathazer wrote:

roadkillguy wrote:

A fadeout to black and a confirm box go a long way...

that seems too "spore-ish" to me. It should be an organic progression for the player, not aspiring to reach the next "level" like in spore.

QFT, smooth transitions, as if all stages are as one, after all, they are!

roadkillguy wrote:

A fadeout to black and a confirm box go a long way...

Long.

But not as long as a smooth transition.

I think we should just slowly 'ease' the player into another stage by slowly giving them access to the features. For example:

When the Cell Stage Player's Organism grows in size, it slowly gains access to evolving different organs and features (such as thicker skin) in Auto-Evo. When the player would gain control of Strategy Mode tools would be as the Pack or Hive they're in gains more complex organizational behaviour. From there technology would keep advancing.

A drop in the area that gained the player's access to a certain stage's tools would cause them to slowly revert to a lower stage.

The Uteen wrote:

Slathazer wrote:

roadkillguy wrote:

A fadeout to black and a confirm box go a long way...

that seems too "spore-ish" to me. It should be an organic progression for the player, not aspiring to reach the next "level" like in spore.

QFT, smooth transitions, as if all stages are as one, after all, they are!

wait... what does QFT mean?

I believe it should be one stage, no "levels" or messages explaining the stages. the stages should be general guidelines for the player at best. I agree.

Slathazer wrote:

wait... what does QFT mean?

I believe it should be one stage, no "levels" or messages explaining the stages. the stages should be general guidelines for the player at best. I agree.

QFT - "Quoted For Truth" ("qft"), a label originally used on Internet forums when someone quotes a debated statement, thereby ensuring that the original statement cannot be edited or deleted by the person being quoted. Later, used merely as a indication of agreement or support with another message.

And I like the guidelines idea, that was how I imagined it working.

Slowly easing the player into the controls of the next stage makes sense. Of course, the unlocking of Strategy Mode might be a bit hard to slowly implement...

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Slowly easing the player into the controls of the next stage makes sense. Of course, the unlocking of Strategy Mode might be a bit hard to slowly implement...

My thought was that Strat. Mode would always be unlocked, but that until sapience you'd only ever have control of one guy at a time, making it useless.

Tenebrarum wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Slowly easing the player into the controls of the next stage makes sense. Of course, the unlocking of Strategy Mode might be a bit hard to slowly implement...

My thought was that Strat. Mode would always be unlocked, but that until sapience you'd only ever have control of one guy at a time, making it useless.

Okay... I guess that makes sense. And that would allow you to use it to control hive-minded creatures as well, right?

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Tenebrarum wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Slowly easing the player into the controls of the next stage makes sense. Of course, the unlocking of Strategy Mode might be a bit hard to slowly implement...

My thought was that Strat. Mode would always be unlocked, but that until sapience you'd only ever have control of one guy at a time, making it useless.

Okay... I guess that makes sense. And that would allow you to use it to control hive-minded creatures as well, right?

Yup. Hive minds have good communication, so Strat. Mode would work for them.

Tenebrarum wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Tenebrarum wrote:

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Slowly easing the player into the controls of the next stage makes sense. Of course, the unlocking of Strategy Mode might be a bit hard to slowly implement...

My thought was that Strat. Mode would always be unlocked, but that until sapience you'd only ever have control of one guy at a time, making it useless.

Okay... I guess that makes sense. And that would allow you to use it to control hive-minded creatures as well, right?

Yup. Hive minds have good communication, so Strat. Mode would work for them.

I think that complex communication in other creatures (humans got spoken language) would allow control of the rest of their tribe/family pack/whatever. Deal?

US_of_Alaska wrote:

I think that complex communication in other creatures (humans got spoken language) would allow control of the rest of their tribe/family pack/whatever. Deal?

My thoughts exactly.

Back on to the real topic of moving through stages (we seem to have drifted onto strategy mode) I want to talk about strategy mode. (Yay for no change )

Moving through the stages unicellular to multicellular, I think the idea was to get enough gluey things that are in the concept and the cell sticks to other cells forming one being. My question is if you did this in strategy mode would it and all the controlled cells became stuck together, would it mean you switch to organism mode when they stick together? With the loading as it switches modes this doesn't seem a very smooth transition.

Wait, I have an answer... If my thoughts are reasonable accurate at this moment... (In both modes) Is it only possible for two cells to stick together, because then it is multicellular and can evolve from there? So in strategy your cell cluster moves towards a gluey thing populated area, they form pairs, and you're in multicellular and still strategy mode, controlling lots of two-celled blobby things.
Is this right, or if not is it a good idea?

P.S. What a way to bring the discussions together...

Given that we seem to releasing this stage by stage, (getting this Microbe section done atm), and some of the later stages may be to hardware intensive to run the entire game considering how much detail is in each section. We might have to split the game into two or three parts, and allow the player to migrate their save forward.

Or do you think that the game would not be so huge file-wise to need this sort of thing?

And Uteen, that would make sense to me.

Inca wrote:

Given that we seem to releasing this stage by stage, (getting this Microbe section done atm), and some of the later stages may be to hardware intensive to run the entire game considering how much detail is in each section. We might have to split the game into one or two parts, and allow the player to migrate their save forward.

Or do you think that the game would not be so huge file-wise to need this sort of thing?

And Uteen, that would make sense to me.

QFT, Since we have 5/6 stages We need to break it up into sections but might be cheating thou and unfair maybe the old "2 disks" format should work if we use the same files , if only

Try not to necro-post these threads are three years old.

Ah sorry. I thought it would be better post in this thread which seemed relevant rather than making a new one.

If that's the case, then that's fine, and it would be good to discuss it instead of brushing it off. Could a programmer tell us about the practicality of making it all one game as opposed to separate ones with save uploading?

One of the intentions was to make the transitions seamlesly, no? If we make the player have to run diferent programs to play diferent stages would totally break that.

The old multiple disks format existed because some games were just too big for the current storage devices. We are not even distributing the program in any physical format, so that is unneeded.

Doing diferent programs for diferent stages would mean either rewriting the base engine again (for which i'm not in favor) or having to copy it into the new programs, actualy taking more space than needed and agraviating the problem instead of solving it.