A few questions from the noob

Ok, so, is there an ETA for this? This is almost exactly like a game that I've been dreaming of and looking for for years, and I'm excited, to say the least.

Also, what's the scale of things in this? Realistic, spore-like, what? And do you get to control your creatures evolution, or does it just happen randomly, like in real life? Will there be disasters like meteors, tsunamis, gamma rays, super novas, etc etc? And, one last question, will there be a "God-Mode" where you can change your planet after you've evolved, cause disasters, change climate, and all of that fun stuff?

Sorry for all of the questions, but like I said, this sounds like it will literally be the game of my dreams. Thanks!

No ETA yet, and we seem to have hit a hic-up with the Auto-evo, so we are even less sure right now.

The current plan is that your species will try to moddle your behavior, but will physically evolve on it's own.

Disasters? I think, but we haven't really thought of how to implement them.

We plan on there being a god mode.

I'm sure it may bug some as a bit of digging around would have found most of these answers, but it's fine. Welcome to the group.

Maybe for something like a meteor, you could have a randomizing feature that "Rolls the dice", so to speak, every now and then, and if it ends up with a certain value, then a meteor hits. Then have another randomizer to decide the size, speed, location, etc.?

The game is FILLED with random numbers. They're not difficult to implement.

It's as easy as 1, 2, rand()

roadkillguy wrote:

The game is FILLED with random numbers. They're not difficult to implement.

It's as easy as 1, 2, rand()

Clever. We will have plenty of random occurences.

Poisson wrote:

The current plan is that your species will try to moddle your behavior, but will physically evolve on it's own.

Wait, no! That gets rid of the creative part of the game! Or do you mean that stats will change randomly, while you can customize your creature? Because if we always use game-generated creatures, it gets boring. But if we all just randomly make creatures for stats, it gets stupid. So you need randomly generated stats and customizable creatures.

And I'm new here too, but I won't be doing any programming, just suggestions.

Dude, we have auto-evo, intelligent evo, god tools, ascension tools, stone tools, warp drives... there's a lot of creative stuff, but there's some scientific limits too. Plus, even without direct control of flagella in auto-evo, there will be plenty of things that you can influence or control.
We've got everything - fencing, fighting, torture, true love, miracles... oops. Wrong schpeal.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Dude, we have auto-evo, intelligent evo, god tools, ascension tools, stone tools, warp drives... there's a lot of creative stuff, but there's some scientific limits too. Plus, even without direct control of flagella in auto-evo, there will be plenty of things that you can influence or control.
We've got everything - fencing, fighting, torture, true love, miracles... oops. Wrong schpeal.

Yeah, but the creature editor in Spore was the most creative editor. If you can't customize your creature in Thrive, what's the point? I know you've been working on this for some time, but honestly, the creature creator's the best part. Without it, the game will lose a lot of its appeal.
Plus, you can put scientific limits on the creature editor too.
For instance, there can be a height and hunch limit every time you go in, so the player can't go from hunched over little creature to completely upright large one. And you can have parts that unlock only after you've added the first one on, and then you can only have a certain amount of legs or something, and then only a couple feet usable with those legs. Once you add one kind of foot on, the next time you go in to the editor, if enough time has passed or something, then a more adapt version of that foot will be available to the player. It will adapt to the player's environment, of course.

And I never really understood the stages of the game, or the names of the editors... Can somebody explain that to me?

Most of this is here on the wiki. That's about the official party line, and more or less the full summary.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Most of this is here on the wiki. That's about the official party line, and more or less the full summary.

Oh, hey, that's really cool! It sounds like you can customize your creature. Is it like that? Or do you make the original creature and the game modifies it?


Now I can't wait for thrive! As long as you guys stay committed, and don't do the same thing as Maxis, at least...