The Sandbox Thread

This post may go on a while, I put literally some though into this. Please bear with me, there's a lot of details and points I raise. Well, there should be, we'll see. Oh, and one other thing - everything I propose you can do in this mode should be achievable through purely using god tools. This really should stretch the limits of what god tools can do. Also, I hope this is a vaguely suitable section for my idea.

Sandbox is an area of space, separate from the rest of the galaxy, in which you can experiment with your god tools, see what they do, and then go on to create your own star-cluster*, with planets* and moons*, and asteroids*, anything. But every one of these planets is fully functioning, as it would be in-game, and they all have been made by you*. You can use your creation god tools to create your ideal world*, every species that evolves is on one of your custom-made planets, and can only appear if you choose to create a suitable planet, and every aspect of their environment and civilisation is under your control under your control*. And all of this without the hassle of dealing with outside elements, such as unwanted races evolving, or space-farers blowing up your planets. Everything in the Sandbox has been created by you, from scratch. It is up to you what you use this area for, and this is your private Sandbox, each save has a separate Sandbox, so other saves cannot... Well, mess up your stuff.

*If you have the correct god tool(s).

Requirements

• Ascension in the corresponding save.
  
• God tools (in corresponding save) are highly recommended, the more you have, the more you can do.

Features

• Empty space, nothing until you create it. You can create a protoplanetary disk, or, if you're very creative, you can enter the stellar editor, to create a star of specific qualities, followed by unique, custom-made planets, designed by you, to do as you please with. If you created a planet suitable for life, then you have several choices on how this life appears,:you can wait for life to evolve naturally, create some organisms in the editor to inhabit your planet, or get some species from the Thrive Content Library. If you just wanted to do galactic pool with them, or you just feel like blowing up some planets, then you can do that, too.
  
• All gameplay elements are active in Sandbox, and everything works as it would in the main galaxy. Planets still orbit stars, life still adapts, and black holes still have singularities. But there isn't any irritation from trespassers blowing up planets or creating dyson spheres around your 'amazing views' system, as there would be if you tried this stuff in the main galaxy.
  
• Post-ascension, when you enter your save, you have the option to enter the main galaxy, or the Sandbox. Sandbox is only accesible after reaching ascension, and good range of, if not all, god tools are highly recommended. Each save has a separate Sandbox, so you must reach ascension in the save you want to do this in. In other words, ascension in one save unlocks it for that save only, not all saves.
  
• As you unlock god tools in your save, they can be used in that saves Sandbox. If you go into this mode without any creation tools, then you cannot create anything in the Sandbox, so a variety of God Tools, particularly creation tools, does enhance Sandbox's gameplay considerably.
  
• Godly possession* allows you to take control of an organism, so this tool allows you to play as an organism as it advances through evolution, just as you would in the main game, but with advantages/disadvantages/hazards/heat conditions/terrain/other organisms/solar systems/extra-terrestrial life of your choice. In short, in Sandbox, remember you can still do what this game is for: being a member of an evolving alien species. Except in Sandbox, it is exactly how you made it to be - as challenging as you like, your perfect world. Or your custom hell, it's whatever you want it to be.

Benefits Of Using Sandbox

• Sandbox lets you create a scenario in isolation from an outside galaxy, so if you create a war between two races, another species isn't going to wander in and end it, or steal the resources they are fighting against.
  
• Evolutionary experiments (such as trying to create the very limit of extremophiles), can be set up without intervention of other space-faring races.
  
• You can evolve as an organism with a customised home planet, home system, right up to a customised local cluster. And even an customised galaxy if you have months/years with nothing better to do.
  
• No unwanted meteors, alien contants (peaceful or not), or cosmic disasters (such as stellar collisions (assuming the player makes a stable stellar setup (this could be indicated somehow)) or black holes in close proximity to the home system (again assuming the player is knowledgeable to create the neighbouring stars with the correct qualities to avoid black hole formation)).
  
• The Sandbox is not in the main galaxy, so other saves (and trespassing species) cannot affect it in any way, so you can set something up without fear of another save changing/destroying it (assuming you do not have a mean sibling going into your save and messing stuff up).
  
• The Sandbox can be used for anything: A perfect world for your species to thrive on; a hostile world to give you more of a challenge; an experimental world to tamper with conditions to just see what happens, or what evolves; a site for experimenting with stellar collisions; an extreme place to test the limits of evolution; a scenario in which you could make an alliance between two species into a desperate war; a zoo to keep your favourite creations; or just for creating worlds with amazing views which you want to keep away from the bustle of the main galaxy, with all its planet busting criminals.

So, yeah. That's my idea. Please leave some feedback on what you think!

Love this idea!

Add at the bottom of the list the possibility to create movie scenes!

OMGOMGOMG LOOOOOVE IT!
This should definitely be in Thrive! I cant think of someone that WOULDNT like it! But maybe its just me,because if freaking love creative stuff

Sounds great! I support this completely.

Wow, thanks for the positive feedback everyone.

And I like the idea of creating movie scenes, too, Andry, hadn't thought of that one.

The idea itself is great, but instead of creating a specifical "sandbox", you could just create solar system(s) in empty space and use an Isolation God Tool on it(them).

Commander Keen wrote:

The idea itself is great, but instead of creating a specifical "sandbox", you could just create solar system(s) in empty space and use an Isolation God Tool on it(them).

If this did cancel out gravity for things selected with the tool... Could be used for creating an outpost inside the event horizon of a black hole, which is being a bit too unrealistic. But if it didn't, they would just drift towards the galaxy.

And if that space is then removed from another player's game, it could get very complicated if the center of the galaxy is selected or something... And this could mean you just create outposts for wars against other saves that could not be attacked back.

So I'm a bit worried about making a tool that replicates Sandbox... The Sandbox mode would feel, and be, a lot more out of the way. And, if the Sandbox itself was a god tool, you could use it until you god that god tool, and one use for Sandbox is to let you test out god tools from the first one you get...

I like this idea a ton. Actually I can improve on it. "Sandbox" should be where the main menu access to the editors is. I think you should be able to use all possible God Tools in sandbox, though.

Good idea, Scio. Sanboxes should be either entirely in gameplay, or absolutely disconnected from it.

~sciocont wrote:

I like this idea a ton. Actually I can improve on it. "Sandbox" should be where the main menu access to the editors is. I think you should be able to use all possible God Tools in sandbox, though.

I think the god tools should be the ones youve unlocked.
I dont want to do sandbox before ive ascended and see what god tools i can unlock
it like a huge spoiler

Having it accessible from menu doesn't mean it will be available before ascension. I think the sandbox button in menu will not be visible until you gain ascension for at least one race.

So it is in the main menu, and all saves have a shared sandbox? Hm... That makes sense, actually, I was thinking of saves as different people's games, but usually they aren't, so... An option in the main menu sounds great.

Oh, and one more idea I've had, seems obvious now, but the option to save your current Sandbox would be helpful, so you can have many different setups. Also, maybe you can tag saved sandboxes 'template', for things like binary systems, which would probably need precision to make.

One last thing, too: Remember, if this was part of the main galaxy, time would run in the main galaxy as you play around in Sandbox. You could return to your civilisation to see your homeworld has been hurled into a star or something. I personally don't like the sound of that.

[quote="The Uteen"]

The Uteen wrote:

One last thing, too: Remember, if this was part of the main galaxy, time would run in the main galaxy as you play around in Sandbox. You could return to your civilisation to see your homeworld has been hurled into a star or something. I personally don't like the sound of that.

This is a problem not only with sandbox, but different saves too. Ideally time would run only for your save and things/empires that your save is in contact with, but that could cause some problems.

Shall I make a wiki article on this? I promise I'll try to keep it updated, too.

Oh, and happy new year everyone!
EDIT: It is now the year 2011 (1.1.11! )! Woohoo! Another year that isn't the end of the world!

Go for it.

I've 6 hours to go until 2011. (year 11111011011)

I'll update this post when I make the wiki page. Don't expect it tonight, though, it's past midnight here, time for bed.



Update! Wiki page is done!

Sandbox is on the wiki as an experimenting page.

I don't really want to call it Sandbox Mode because then it would be mistaken as part of the organism, strategy, and observer mode triangle.

I need a name that isn't just Sandbox though... This is annoying, can anyone think of something I could name the page?

EDIT: Selected moderators, could any of you please change that pages name to something other than Sandbox? Please? The page says you have that power. Oh, and also, my smiley page seems to be dead, any ideas?

The Uteen wrote:

Sandbox is on the wiki as an experimenting page.

I don't really want to call it Sandbox Mode because then it would be mistaken as part of the organism, strategy, and observer mode triangle.

I need a name that isn't just Sandbox though... This is annoying, can anyone think of something I could name the page?

EDIT: Selected moderators, could any of you please change that pages name to something other than Sandbox? Please? The page says you have that power. Oh, and also, my smiley page seems to be dead, any ideas?

No clue on the smilies...
can it be named experimental sandbox or something?

~sciocont wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

Sandbox is on the wiki as an experimenting page.

I don't really want to call it Sandbox Mode because then it would be mistaken as part of the organism, strategy, and observer mode triangle.

I need a name that isn't just Sandbox though... This is annoying, can anyone think of something I could name the page?

EDIT: Selected moderators, could any of you please change that pages name to something other than Sandbox? Please? The page says you have that power. Oh, and also, my smiley page seems to be dead, any ideas?

No clue on the smilies...
can it be named experimental sandbox or something?

Thanks for the suggestion, but 'experimental'... You can make zoos, and customised home-planets and stuff, and they wouldn't really be called experimental.

I'll think of something...

The Uteen wrote:

Sandbox is on the wiki as an experimenting page.

I don't really want to call it Sandbox Mode because then it would be mistaken as part of the organism, strategy, and observer mode triangle.

I need a name that isn't just Sandbox though... This is annoying, can anyone think of something I could name the page?

EDIT: Selected moderators, could any of you please change that pages name to something other than Sandbox? Please? The page says you have that power. Oh, and also, my smiley page seems to be dead, any ideas?

Galaxy Playground?

It's just hit me - I could just call it The Sandbox instead! How did I not realise?

Anyway, making the page now.

EDIT: The editing god tools are classed as godly manipulation tools, right? Or is that the mind controlling ones? If either, what is the name of the other type of tool?

Sorry, just want to get this right.

Oh, and the smiley box error is only in this thread. Now that is odd.

EDIT: Boundaries - will there be any? I hope not. In fact, I have a suggestion on that subject.

The space could start of as just nothing. When you add an object into the space, the amount of actual 'space' increases to the dimensions of the object. As you add objects, space continues to increase its dimensions to fit the objects in.

In extension, you cannot create an object and wander away from it - the space the camera can be in is a bit bigger, maybe a percentage of what is there bigger, but you cannot get far enough to lose eyesight of it.
My intention is, in a Sandbox with just one object in:
At max camera distance, a star would be approximately the size of my avatar.
At max camera distance, an ascension gate would be approximately the size of my avatar.
At max camera distance, a planet would be approximately the size of my avatar.
At max camera distance, an asteroid would be approximately the size of my avatar.

You get the idea with that - reasonably far, but not very.

EDIT EDIT: Oh, and incase this isn't already covered by god tools: Sandbox should have play, pause, rewind (undo, but cooler, more machinema), and fastforward (you're smart people, take a guess).

Other stuff on GUI:

Menu, (EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT: or would that just be escape?)
Save,
Load,
Save object?,
Load object?,
God tool pane,
Something(s) I haven't mentioned, presumably.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: Could we have different overlays available? Including all senses, and many parts of the spectrum (visible, radio, infrared etc.)

Doing this wiki is making me think of all this stuff.

EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT: Wiki is done, link is here, tell me what you think, make suggestions for anything else I could add.

it's much easier just to give you infinite space.

~sciocont wrote:

it's much easier just to give you infinite space.

That wouldn't take up more disk space? Okay... What about the camera?

Hang on, one flaw in my idea - You couldn't get far enough away to make multiple solar systems. D'oh.

But there should be some sort of way to stop you losing your star. Wait, there doesn't, we can see stars in the sky, you'd easily spot in on the blackness of space.

I don't think the camera limits are important now.

Idea so you can spot your ''sandboxhomeworld'' easily: tag stars. Like a very little marker on them or something. Or nothing visible in sandbox itself,but go into the menu and go to Teleport. You will have your tagged stars,without there being a real visible marker. And if the names of the stars are difficult,write your own name to the tag.

BTW,PLEASE,i beg you,PLEASE no boundaries! Sandbox is that kind of name where you just mess around doing crazy Belgium things,like putting a star 2 inches away from a planet. Or something.

zotobom wrote:

Idea so you can spot your ''sandboxhomeworld'' easily: tag stars. Like a very little marker on them or something. Or nothing visible in sandbox itself,but go into the menu and go to Teleport. You will have your tagged stars,without there being a real visible marker. And if the names of the stars are difficult,write your own name to the tag.

BTW,PLEASE,i beg you,PLEASE no boundaries! Sandbox is that kind of name where you just mess around doing crazy Belgium things,like putting a star 2 inches away from a planet. Or something.

Nice idea, very good, I'll add it to the wiki. And yeah, no boundaries.

Planets, tech objects, and organisms could be taggable, too. Naming organisms would be fun.

The menu could allow you to rename them from it, without going to them. Maybe remote editing, too.