Interested programmer

Okay, My name is Michael, and i am a professional programmer. I did contract work for private businesses in Australia. (I've returned to studies, I am studying game development and design.)

I'm here to help out.
I'm currently working on an engine and editor to create, manage and animate organic bodies. It's not currently deigned to do exaclty what is in the organic editor definition on this forum, but anything can be tweaked, and features can always be added. What it does do, however, is something that is feasible.
I will post the PM i sent to "The Thrive Team" on Indiedb, it pretty much explain everything.
I should be able to get a proof-of-concept working within the next few weeks, however you'll have to be patient, as i am not just hacking something together, I am actually building a proper framework and engine to build a game on.

Original PM:

Hi,

You mentioned many times that you are looking for coders.

I am a c/c++ programmer and am very interested in this game. I am actually currently working (as of about a week ago) a procedural spine, bone and muscle editor and engine which i think may be helpful to your cause.

Drop me a line if you are interested, and i will show you the proof-of-concept when it is completed.

Michael

P.S: Design draft I've been working out:
(This is a word for word copy of a voice recording)
(Note, as well, that the system is modular enough that a procedural "patch" can be applied which if used in acertain way, can mimic evolution of a base model (like a single celled organism, as in your case. This system, since it works in layered patches, also means that you can view any previous "evolutions" simply by walking back through patches)

It all begins with the B.E.A.T. (Bezier Extrusion At Timed intervals) Bone editor. You create a bezier curve, assign extrusion beats to each point, and it creates a custom bone for the next portion of the tool-chain.The B.E.A.T. (or just Beat) system is also used as part of the animation portion of the tool-chain. although the concept is used differently. More on that later.
Next you use the bones to create the layout of a creature in the Structure editor. This system is actually a form of Beat in that you give the bones a size at a specific age, and they will "grow" from age zero to that size at that age. There will be seperate views that can be set at different ages to allow you to tweak the bones to look good in all ages, a feature of which is also available in the structure editor.
Which brings me to the next portion. The muscle structure section of the structure editor. the muscles are a hardcoded form of bezier extrusion, kind of like a sausage with pointed ends. you set the mount points of the muscle and when it bends, compresses or stretches as part of the bone structure being animated, it will change shape accordingly (for instance if bent it will curl and "flex", increasing in diameter)

All portions of the bones are arranged in a sequential order (with a bone order pane on the left side of the editor) from bottom (of the spine) to top. this allows the Beat animation engine to propagate vibrations from say the feet upwards at a set rate. this allows for instance a giant T-REX whose head bobs slightly after each foot hits the ground, with fat inbetween "mexican waving" in sequence.

During all of this, an extra automated system, called the skin hull, wraps the structure in what is essentially skin.

Second to last, we have the BEAT animation system. this is a sine-wave based animation system that converts IK targets into sine waves, called "beats". the beats are saved, and can be edited, kinda like a synthesizer, by the game.

Finally, we have patches. These are templates, or packets of data that modify the structure or anything for that matter, in a modular way. Dependency enforcing (requiring a certain combination of patches (this can be exact, and patches can be enforced to be applied in a specific order)) is supported. for instance, you could have a patch that adds wings to the base human template (which itself is actually a collection of patches)

IK target limb types: There are at least two special hardcoded limb types (set with tags for the animation system). Arm limbs, and leg limbs. These do pretty much what they are named after. The BEAT animation system can auto-generate animations based on the positioning of leg and arm limbs in the sequence chain.

Welcome to the thrive team!

This is simply superb. Michael, you are exactly the person we have been looking for. This editing and evolving system sounds almost too good to be true. I don't think anyone on earth could be better for our first official programmer, but unfortunately you have not shown up at a great time. As you can tell, we are slowly regrouping here and it will take a while to get everything back to normal. Until then, Please feel free to contact me with questions or updates as i am the master of the Organism editor concept.

Once again, we are very pleased to have you here!

This is some really great news, I'm glad that Thrive has you on the team. I'm looking foward to seeing where this goes.

That's excellent news. Not only will he help with the programming (obviously) but having someone working actively on it will add a lot of credibility to the project.

Morsecode wrote:

That's excellent news. Not only will he help with the programming (obviously) but having someone working actively on it will add a lot of credibility to the project.

He win't be helping he'll be doing.

I think I get it. What this is, is:

1. Exactly what we need!
2. A miracle!
3. Cool!
4. Supercalafragelisticexpiallydocious! (sp?)

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPERCALAFRAGELISTICEXPIALLYDOCIOUSNESS!

The Uteen wrote:

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPERCALAFRAGELISTICEXPIALLYDOCIOUSNESS!

^this^

Bash (can i call you that?), you are a legend. Everything we have been waiting for is right there in your post. We are all unendingly grateful for your time and effort. I cannot wait to see this thing take shape. Thanks again.

Aha thankyou everyone,

I am working as had as i can, though I'm writing everything with expansion and development in mind. What i really need is a skin for the GUI.

http://www.cegui.org.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

This is the api i am using for the GUI. I am currently using some crappy default skin, which looks terrible.
We need to either

A: build a new skin for it,

B: decide on an existing skin at: http://www.cegui.org.uk/skins/
Now, for some crazy reason theres only 6 skins to choose from, and i'm pretty sure that you dont want this thing too looks like a standard windows application (with grey buttons and all) so i think we should go with option A. As far as i know, creatinga news skin shouldnt be that hard. However, i am not an artist, so i pretty much cant do this

Sleekspace is the best looking one of the premade skins, but one made by us would probably be better. What about somethinf similar to the background for the forum? Though that may be better used for building tech. I think we had some skins, but they haven't been recovered yet.

US_of_Alaska wrote:

Bash (can i call you that?), you are a legend. Everything we have been waiting for is right there in your post. We are all unendingly grateful for your time and effort. I cannot wait to see this thing take shape. Thanks again.

I prefer Bashi haha

Okay, well the cegui API is simply too unstable and undocumented, and i am wasting hours sifting through its headers just to find 1 funtion that I need. So, I am looking at alternatives, at the moment, Ill keep in touch in a new thread under Programming or something.

Just keep doing your best. There's no rush.

We've been stagnant for a while, longer won't kill us.

Anyway.., Welcome to the forums. This sounds like a very good program.

I have a suggestion! (Stop screaming please!)

As the editor will be avaliable in God Mode, I think we should have a gui that seems... Real. Possibly for organism editor it could be organic, and each editor would have a different one (tech could be metal).
Or we could make it suited to god mode specifically for God Mode, and have it galaxy themed, or something else to give you the feeling of power and control.

The Uteen wrote:

I have a suggestion! (Stop screaming please!)

As the editor will be avaliable in God Mode, I think we should have a gui that seems... Real. Possibly for organism editor it could be organic, and each editor would have a different one (tech could be metal).
Or we could make it suited to god mode specifically for God Mode, and have it galaxy themed, or something else to give you the feeling of power and control.

Take this discussion to the correct section, please. It's a good idea, but we need to keep organized and on topic.

~sciocont wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

I have a suggestion! (Stop screaming please!)

As the editor will be avaliable in God Mode, I think we should have a gui that seems... Real. Possibly for organism editor it could be organic, and each editor would have a different one (tech could be metal).
Or we could make it suited to god mode specifically for God Mode, and have it galaxy themed, or something else to give you the feeling of power and control.

Take this discussion to the correct section, please. It's a good idea, but we need to keep organized and on topic.

It looked relivent to me. Bashi was asking for ideas aboutthe skin for the editor.

Poisson wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

I have a suggestion! (Stop screaming please!)

As the editor will be avaliable in God Mode, I think we should have a gui that seems... Real. Possibly for organism editor it could be organic, and each editor would have a different one (tech could be metal).
Or we could make it suited to god mode specifically for God Mode, and have it galaxy themed, or something else to give you the feeling of power and control.

Take this discussion to the correct section, please. It's a good idea, but we need to keep organized and on topic.

It looked relivent to me. Bashi was asking for ideas aboutthe skin for the editor.

Yeah i was, and also, im no artist. That's actually why i started writing BEAT. So that i could create stuff without having to be an artist

When i finally settle in a gui api, ill look up how to modify the skin, post a tutorial along with an example program that shows how the gui will look, and then someone hopefully can get a skin or skins done up.

Can't beleive I've never said "Welcome!" yet.


So, welcome to the Thrive team! Will we be able to use this said proof-of-concept editor?


Also, do you have any coder buddies? It would be much easier to make this game with a team, though with enough time and patience two (you & Grape) could get the job done.


Also also, sorry we didn't read the ModDB/IndieDB/whatever PM you sent us. We... we... lost the guy who made the account, which is the only guy who know the login details of the account. He left the project. He'll likely come back once your prototype/proof-of-concept editor is done. And also probably RedStar, if he is even still interested.



Also, the skin for your GUI? I pick the existing one, "Sleekspace".

InvaderZim wrote:

Can't beleive I've never said "Welcome!" yet.


So, welcome to the Thrive team! Will we be able to use this said proof-of-concept editor?


Also, do you have any coder buddies? It would be much easier to make this game with a team, though with enough time and patience one (you) could get the job done.


Also also, sorry we didn't read the ModDB/IndieDB/whatever PM you sent us. We... we... lost the guy who made the account, which is the only guy who know the login details of the account. He left the project. He'll likely come back once your prototype/proof-of-concept editor is done. And also probably RedStar, if he is even still interested.
Also, the skin for your GUI? I pick the existing one, "Sleekspace".

Theres two programmers as of now, by the way. Papergrape on these forums. At the moment she's doing refactoring work and such, but that's because the codebas is rediculously small still. The stuff i have gotten her to do so far has been absolutely brilliant!

Oh and i've changed api's. The new api is extremely stable and actually works. Its called AGAR and is on http://www.libagar.org/
And i do have "coder buddies" but none of them are interested at this point. They've basically challenged me to come up with a prototype first, so we'll see.

And in response to using the proof of concept, it will be usable, but not useful. Thesecond or third stage prototype, however, will.

Also, we're not just coding some program to show off once and then ditch, the editor is built on top of a few engines that we are writing from scratch, and the entire codebase will continue to roll on through the game's development. This is the real deal.

All great news Bashi, just remember to keep source code in a state that you can change it. We'll be reworking and debugging a ton.

~sciocont wrote:

All great news Bashi, just remember to keep source code in a state that you can change it. We'll be reworking and debugging a ton.

The code is sitting on a cvs repository. every time a change is uploaded, an incremental backup is made, and the file can be rolled back to any point in history. Any and all changes can be undone at any time :3

Also, the code is completely compartmentalised (and papergrape is making sure of that at all times too)

Bashinerox wrote:

And i do have "coder buddies" but none of them are interested at this point. They've basically challenged me to come up with a prototype first, so we'll see.

Alright. So we may get more coders along the way?

Bashinerox wrote:

This is the real deal.

I know. I still can't beleive it.




Also, sometimes my posts can get rather awkward. This is because as I write a post, usually more and more things I want to say pop into my head, and I just make another paragraph for each one and it begins to be confusing. So if my posts don't make sense, that's why.

InvaderZim wrote:

Alright. So we may get more coders along the way?

Possibly.

InvaderZim wrote:

Also, sometimes my posts can get rather awkward. This is because as I write a post, usually more and more things I want to say pop into my head, and I just make another paragraph for each one and it begins to be confusing. So if my posts don't make sense, that's why.

I do exactly the same thing And then i try to get back to my original point, and end up reiterating myself..

I do that all the time. I'm glad you're safeguarding all of this.