Miscellaneous Bugs And Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread Thread

PTFace wrote:

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

zippybomb wrote:

This is a fantastic idea! Quickly! Everybody think as fast as they can! We need ideas for rewards!

- Logo buttons/tees
- Posters (concept art, probably... Kinko's it or something.)
- list of people who have donated (bragging rights)
- Advance download of game music or something... maybe.

Good stuff to have on the table when this idea becomes applicable and we've got something to show for ourselves. I'll bring it back up in marketing at an appropriate time.

Typically the way I've seen is: (also higher levels receive the lower ones)

Smallest amount- Some little in game thing, such as being able to make your creature completely golden or silver with no negative repercussions.
Next- Something like a Thrive mousepad or button
Next- Your choice of Concept art as a poster
Next- A downloadable version of the soundtrack
And then a huge jump in price, lets say it is now 50 dollars- A signed T-Shirt with all the developers names
75 dollars- A signed physical copy of the soundtrack with all the composers
100- A signed concept artbook with all artists
anything over 100 will also receive their name in the credits

Something like that

Um, I don`t think we could sign things, we would have to mail them around and that would take a long time.

Right, I just looked at a few random kickstarters and those were the most common things

Also, what program is being used to code the game and where can you download it?

zippybomb wrote:

PTFace wrote:

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

zippybomb wrote:

This is a fantastic idea! Quickly! Everybody think as fast as they can! We need ideas for rewards!

- Logo buttons/tees
- Posters (concept art, probably... Kinko's it or something.)
- list of people who have donated (bragging rights)
- Advance download of game music or something... maybe.

Good stuff to have on the table when this idea becomes applicable and we've got something to show for ourselves. I'll bring it back up in marketing at an appropriate time.

Typically the way I've seen is: (also higher levels receive the lower ones)

Smallest amount- Some little in game thing, such as being able to make your creature completely golden or silver with no negative repercussions.
Next- Something like a Thrive mousepad or button
Next- Your choice of Concept art as a poster
Next- A downloadable version of the soundtrack
And then a huge jump in price, lets say it is now 50 dollars- A signed T-Shirt with all the developers names
75 dollars- A signed physical copy of the soundtrack with all the composers
100- A signed concept artbook with all artists
anything over 100 will also receive their name in the credits

Something like that

Um, I don`t think we could sign things, we would have to mail them around and that would take a long time.

Yeah... we have several different countries here, guys. I mean, some of us might have access to a scanner good enough for some sort of digital signature to go through well... but it's not like we're all developing in the same office building here.

Psst. PT, pester Roadkill. He was just here talking to the new programmer the other day. To the best of my belief, we're using C++, though I highly suspect it's something that's on your computer which you can use if you have the power, not something you download.
*Sincerely hopes she's not the only one old enough to be yelling "I have the power" or remember Greyskull Castle.*

Ill try to think of something...

I liked PTs idea for in-game stuff with lower donations. How about there is something in-game along with concept art posters and/or soundtracks for every donation? Like a golden biome?

We also need exact donation amounts, except for above-a-certain-point donations. (you know, $100+)

Orygandian2 wrote:

Ill try to think of something...

I liked PTs idea for in-game stuff with lower donations. How about there is something in-game along with concept art posters and/or soundtracks for every donation? Like a golden biome?

We also need exact donation amounts, except for above-a-certain-point donations. (you know, $100+)

We'll have to think of something that's achievable by our programmers. I'm thinking something highly decorative that wouldn't break game physics. Of course, that would delay the kickstarter even more because we'd have to program easter eggs as well as the stage... Also, even if we couldn't sign physical stuff, it is entirely possible to design t-shirts, have them printed, and ship them to people without ever seeing the t-shirt. Plus, you know, real-world advertising, not something we'd get out of having just an easter egg.

I thought of a tonne of In-game donation rewards.

Here they are:

- Exclusive special textures and parts (parts are optional)
- Golden and Silver textures
- (expansion on PTs Idea) Ability to make creatures Solid gold, Silver, Platinum etc, as well as making allowing you to color parts that way, or actually MAKE the parts gold/silver/platinum/etc, along with exclusive new parts corresponding with precious metals like those.
- Same as before, only with birthstones.
- Thrive-labelled parts, TOs, and a special t-shirt in-game.
- Secret/unlockable editor of some sort. (ghost/spirit editor? I dunno.)
- Special god tool. (I didn't see a weather tool discussed, but that seems like it should be included in game... We need something that isn't as should-be-in-the-core-game. Maybe a fear-inducing tool?)
- Special material biomes. (Gold, Silver, Lapis Lazuli, Platinum, Ruby...)
- Infinite amount of one type of resource.
- Access to something from the beta (something REALLY early on in development)

I'm prone to think of something else.

Just to let people know, if they haven't noticed, I've moved discussion about donations to a new thread, since it seems to have outgrown this one.

Now I can ask some questions that have been wanting to get out the moment I joined the forums.

1. When playing in strategy mode, exactly what are you playing as? For the Space and Industrial stages it's acceptable to play as a commander of sorts, but what about the more "Tribal" stages? Or, if you have a pack in Aware and possibly multicellular, what would be?

2. How will the Tech Tree and creators come into the game? The stage-to-stage progression is supposed to be really smooth, so you wouldn't realize you're in awakening stage after finishing aware, but the FP creator can't just "appear", players would know when they are in awakening stage, and it just wouldn't look good.

3. Will the OE still be available in awakening and beyond? If it isn't, we would have to figure out how to make it fade out of the game.

4. How will the transfer to ascension work? Will your entire species instantly become gods, or is it just you? Ascension is the one weirdest issue we have, because we know exactly how most of it is going to go, but we still have a tonne of problems involving gameplay.

Orygandian2 wrote:

Now I can ask some questions that have been wanting to get out the moment I joined the forums.

1. When playing in strategy mode, exactly what are you playing as? For the Space and Industrial stages it's acceptable to play as a commander of sorts, but what about the more "Tribal" stages? Or, if you have a pack in Aware and possibly multicellular, what would be?

2. How will the Tech Tree and creators come into the game? The stage-to-stage progression is supposed to be really smooth, so you wouldn't realize you're in awakening stage after finishing aware, but the FP creator can't just "appear", players would know when they are in awakening stage, and it just wouldn't look good.

3. Will the OE still be available in awakening and beyond? If it isn't, we would have to figure out how to make it fade out of the game.

4. How will the transfer to ascension work? Will your entire species instantly become gods, or is it just you? Ascension is the one weirdest issue we have, because we know exactly how most of it is going to go, but we still have a tonne of problems involving gameplay.

Brittish spelling?
1) You can play as real time strategy as soon as there's any form of societal organization, or you can play as a creature.

2) Discussed: We'd start with people learning to smash nuts open with rocks (as one of many examples,) and that would be when you start getting TE ability.

3) Pretty certain yes.

4) Holy belgium, I thought that had died... Um, I think that's on the list of things to worry about when we actually start worrying about at a later date.

I also had a few questions if anyone has the time to answer.
1) Will the kardashev scale be present? I thought it would be neat if we could work Carl Sagan's version in and you could browse your rating from any stage in the game, perhaps in the top left corner of the menu.
2) could we have any majorly evil race like a type 2.5 race similar to daleks, or borg, or the empire? I have a very interesting empire in mind based off the borg, but I don't know if we want any type of storyline at all.
3) Will the galaxy be static, or will stars be born and die. If we're going for realism, we wouldn't want a static galaxy, but at the rate the milky way produces stars, we would end up with way too many eventually. Will it be sort of static, like every star that dies, another is born?
4) Will we work the Drake equation into code with blanks filled in to generate solar systems and planets?

I have a few questions:
1) Will there be a sporepedia-like encyclopedia of all pre-made and dowloaded creations?
2) Will we be able to "share" our creations?
3)Will we have non-ingame editors like in Spore?

Just curious. Any answer would be greatly appreciated.

ethroptur wrote:

I have a few questions:
1) Will there be a sporepedia-like encyclopedia of all pre-made and dowloaded creations?
2) Will we be able to "share" our creations?
3)Will we have non-ingame editors like in Spore?

Just curious. Any answer would be greatly appreciated.

1) Requires a server, which requires money to maintain, which we don't have being non-profit. If someone offered to host one, it would still require a lot of programming to implement properly, which isn't preferable. We have also decided it isn't worth it for those reasons. In short, I'm afraid not.

2) The code for the organism (a reasonably humanly readable string of text) should be obtainable and editable, at most minimal it will be locatable in the game files, so yes, just post the code on a fan forum and someone else can copy it in.

3) I'm pretty sure none of Spore's editors were standalone. We probably will not have standalone editors, but I don't know for sure.

I hope you guys can reply with an open mind to this, but have you ever considered using kick starter? It could help with getting more programmers getting the things you might need like development funds I would say, and i feel it could help. I also feel you need to use youtube make an account because if you promote the game more, and more the more it gets looked into by more people and finally you'll get someone like ign to talk about it. Finally you need to look into ouya it's an open console that if you wanted to could help with getting it out there a lot easier since they said it's meant for developers who can't get there games out there. You guys have been at this for 3.5 years it's time to push this into a beta development as fast as you can, and you need a lot of support for it I want to help, but I think you need to consider these ideas and I am dead serious about doing them I don't want this game to fail please reply with what you think.

wwewar wrote:

I hope you guys can reply with an open mind to this, but have you ever considered using kick starter? It could help with getting more programmers getting the things you might need like development funds I would say, and i feel it could help. I also feel you need to use youtube make an account because if you promote the game more, and more the more it gets looked into by more people and finally you'll get someone like ign to talk about it. Finally you need to look into ouya it's an open console that if you wanted to could help with getting it out there a lot easier since they said it's meant for developers who can't get there games out there. You guys have been at this for 3.5 years it's time to push this into a beta development as fast as you can, and you need a lot of support for it I want to help, but I think you need to consider these ideas and I am dead serious about doing them I don't want this game to fail please reply with what you think.

Yes, very recently.
See page 11 of this thread, followed by this thread.

In addition to my previous four questions, I'd also like to know if we could use adfly on our download links and have a donate button on moddb? Money's not important to me, I hardly do anything important around here anyways I just think it would be good motivation for our programmers and also those of us who do important stuff just for more productivity?.

Gryphogrox wrote:

I also had a few questions if anyone has the time to answer.
1) Will the kardashev scale be present? I thought it would be neat if we could work Carl Sagan's version in and you could browse your rating from any stage in the game, perhaps in the top left corner of the menu.
2) could we have any majorly evil race like a type 2.5 race similar to daleks, or borg, or the empire? I have a very interesting empire in mind based off the borg, but I don't know if we want any type of storyline at all.
3) Will the galaxy be static, or will stars be born and die. If we're going for realism, we wouldn't want a static galaxy, but at the rate the milky way produces stars, we would end up with way too many eventually. Will it be sort of static, like every star that dies, another is born?
4) Will we work the Drake equation into code with blanks filled in to generate solar systems and planets?

In addition to my previous four questions, I'd also like to know if we could use adfly on our download links and have a donate button on moddb? Money's not important to me, I hardly do anything important around here anyways I just think it would be good motivation for our programmers and also those of us who do important stuff just for more productivity?.

1) I hadn't heard of that, but it seems like an interesting idea. It's something to consider.
2) I don't believe so, all races will be randomly generated, but we haven't really discussed it. I think having a pre-made 'evil' race is something better suited to a RPG.
3) Stars will be born and die, but I don't remember the specifics if we've covered them.
4) We won't generate civilisations based on that equation, since it doesn't work that way, if that's what you're asking...

5) We have decided long ago we will be non-profit, and the idea of raising money has been turned down many times, such as here, here, here, and briefly here, if you scroll down a bit. If you can take on all the arguments/problems raised in those threads, then maybe it's worth considering. That includes this argument:

~sciocont wrote:

THIS GAME DOES NOT INVOLVE MONEY. That has been a goal from the start. We want to show that you can make something fantastic for free, just through the dedication and skill of a select few.

Yeah, I knew we were freeware, I just wasn't sure if we were non-profit. I seem quite attatched to idea two for some reason, you say we haven't discussed it, where could I propose the idea?

Gryphogrox wrote:

Yeah, I knew we were freeware, I just wasn't sure if we were non-profit. I seem quite attatched to idea two for some reason, you say we haven't discussed it, where could I propose the idea?

You could make a new thread in the space section.

P.S. Any news on the new forum theme? The current one definitely isn't our best of themes...

The Uteen wrote:

Gryphogrox wrote:

Yeah, I knew we were freeware, I just wasn't sure if we were non-profit. I seem quite attatched to idea two for some reason, you say we haven't discussed it, where could I propose the idea?

You could make a new thread in the space section.

P.S. Any news on the new forum theme? The current one definitely isn't our best of themes...

[ot]I'm working on some new stuff for the theme[/ot]

Apologies for going off tangent, but I must got an idea for the tech tree, and I didn't want to start a whole new thread for it. Will there be a minimap in the game? If there is, we should have techs that correspond with improving the minimap, with the first of the techs enabling the minimap in the first place. I Was thinking a tech like tracking, such as what hunters use to track game. Through the process of hunting, hunters must have learned and even mentally mapped out the landscape and taught it to their apprentices. This tech, tracking, would thus enable a minimap (before this there would be no minimap), but it would be a very simple minimap, only showing land and water formations. there would be no dots on the minimap showing where you our your units are, you will have to your location in relation to nearby land and water for ation to estimate where you are.

The next tech in line would be cartography, which would be the equivalent of your society starting to study the land and make maps of it, such as Ptolemy's map of the world. This would add the option to open up the minimap and place landmarks and name them. That way you are literally mapping out the land as you explore, since it doesnt automatically update onto your minimap, you actually have to observe it in the game, observe where it is in relation to nearby landmarks, and then estimate as you place it on the map. Then, as I mentioned before, you name it, and the name shows up on the minimap (an idea i got from civilization 4). However, you and your units still do not show up on the minimap, you will have to use the landmarks you placed on the map as reference points to estimate your position.

The last tech would be GPS. GPS would enable your map to automatically update as you explore. For example, when you encounter a mountain, you dont have to place it manually on your map, the GPS automatically places it in the correct position. This is the equivalent of the regular minimap found in most games. Another huge advantage of GPS would be that there will be dots showing the precise location of you and/or your units.

I havent thought of how to extrapolate this into the futuristic phases of the game, but I was thinking there would be some tech such as Interstellar/Galactic/Stellar Cartography/Mapping that would be necessary for enabling a minimap in space.

What are your ideas on the topic? Do you like it?

NickTheNick wrote:

Apologies for going off tangent, but I must got an idea for the tech tree, and I didn't want to start a whole new thread for it. Will there be a minimap in the game? If there is, we should have techs that correspond with improving the minimap, with the first of the techs enabling the minimap in the first place. I Was thinking a tech like tracking, such as what hunters use to track game. Through the process of hunting, hunters must have learned and even mentally mapped out the landscape and taught it to their apprentices. This tech, tracking, would thus enable a minimap (before this there would be no minimap), but it would be a very simple minimap, only showing land and water formations. there would be no dots on the minimap showing where you our your units are, you will have to your location in relation to nearby land and water for ation to estimate where you are.

The next tech in line would be cartography, which would be the equivalent of your society starting to study the land and make maps of it, such as Ptolemy's map of the world. This would add the option to open up the minimap and place landmarks and name them. That way you are literally mapping out the land as you explore, since it doesnt automatically update onto your minimap, you actually have to observe it in the game, observe where it is in relation to nearby landmarks, and then estimate as you place it on the map. Then, as I mentioned before, you name it, and the name shows up on the minimap (an idea i got from civilization 4). However, you and your units still do not show up on the minimap, you will have to use the landmarks you placed on the map as reference points to estimate your position.

The last tech would be GPS. GPS would enable your map to automatically update as you explore. For example, when you encounter a mountain, you dont have to place it manually on your map, the GPS automatically places it in the correct position. This is the equivalent of the regular minimap found in most games. Another huge advantage of GPS would be that there will be dots showing the precise location of you and/or your units.

I havent thought of how to extrapolate this into the futuristic phases of the game, but I was thinking there would be some tech such as Interstellar/Galactic/Stellar Cartography/Mapping that would be necessary for enabling a minimap in space.

What are your ideas on the topic? Do you like it?

I like your idea.
What we're in this discussion I would like to ask someone who knows, how it is progressing the planning phase of microbe?

Microbe stage already has a complete concept, so there is very little left to plan.

I thought we had a plan for maps, but apparently not... I like this idea, though, the mini-map should have incremental upgrades.

The Uteen wrote:

though, the mini-map should have incremental upgrades.

I agree. That is what I intended with the consecutive upgrades to the minimap provided by the techs tracking, cartography, and GPS. However, are you referring to the fact that we need incremental upgrades in between those techs?

The Uteen wrote:

Microbe stage already has a complete concept, so there is very little left to plan.

I thought we had a plan for maps, but apparently not... I like this idea, though, the mini-map should have incremental upgrades.

I meant programming by programmers.