Greetings thrivers (and some constructive criticism)

Hi everybody, I've just read all the relevant posts regarding the development of this awesome idea you had, and I finally decided to start taking part of it. Once presented, I have to say two things:

- This idea is awesome. Keeping in mind the mantra: "thrive is not spore", everyone that crosses in thrive's path hopes that some day thrive would surpass the final quality of EA's Spore, taking back from 2005 that hype and freshnes sense of it's first GDC presentation. keeping this in mind:

- This idea is BIG. TITANIC I must say, and after reading all the big posts, and some of the minor ones I'm afraid that the titanic sense of the task is only reflexed by words. What do I mean? a promise is only a bunch of words, we humans need empiric facts to keep waiting for a promise to make real, and this is something that, after searching for hours in the forums, I can't find in thrive.

I didn't came here to troll all you, nor to start a flame or fight. I came here to help and to work really hard, this is a great idea, and I want it to reach good havens. I can help in anything artistical (drafts, ideas, gui's... etc), I'm not the best plastic artist, but I bear a great sensibility in all types of artistic representations.

I hope not to take this post much farther away... But I see to much flaws in the organization of this project to simply turn my head and walk away... Again, I'm not personally arguing with no one, but there are things that I see illogical... I will list them and expand if anyone of you are interested

- There's no actual code of the real game anywhere, being open source, where is all the 2 years real coding progress listed? I can find a direct link to any repository with all the advancements. Not to mention that the devblogs are all about "ideas" an whitepapers.

- The concept art part of the forum is empty, is there any artist actually working with the overall aspect of thrive? or is it all internally decided and no one can see it until is finished?

- I see lots of comments giving ideas, discussing technical, physical, chemical and all sort of things in every corner of the forum. People taking part of the project are more worried about theoretically thriving underwater than actually giving real info of the development progress.

- I can't see a fixed path to follow with this development... The overall feeling is that everyone is jumping from stone to stone without worrying to really cross step by step to the other side of the river. Being clear with the steps to take, a clear path to follow by artists and a separate one for coders, feedbacking one with each other will make this project advance more continuously IMO.

- Another thing is the overall feeling that people working hard in this project just talks one to each other within skype, email, messenger, etc. and the real progress is obscured to the rest of good willing helpers out there. Probably lots of people that randomly passes here every day see what I just saw and thinks "meh, two years and they have no code or screenshot... not worths my time..." I personally don't know what happened do black mesa source, for example, but every week there was new footage to newcomers to hype.

Hope all this testament hasn't bored you... but this is what my inner feelings are about this epic and awesome project, and if some of you were expecting the OMGZ!!! I WANA DOO SPORE GAMEZ!!!1! typical bieber-fan post, i'm sorry, that's not going to happen.

Will think in some more things that could help us in this project and post it in it's right place, hope that my work can fit in the project's actual direction. Thanks for giving this great idea a shot and keep up the good work!!

And god save Belgium

Hey there. It's nice to see a concerned, intelligent, coherent fan share some of their observations for us. Since I'm probably best qualified to answer your questions, I'll go ahead and do so.

Quote :

- There's no actual code of the real game anywhere, being open source, where is all the 2 years real coding progress listed? I can find a direct link to any repository with all the advancements. Not to mention that the devblogs are all about "ideas" an whitepapers.

Actually, you can acces our code database through a link in teh information section. If that link is no longer valid or maintained, you can PM roadkillguy or Commander Keen for a link to their code repository. I'm not a programmer, so I don't maintain the database. I prefer not to micromanage them.
keep in mind that the devblogs are meant for internal use, so lots of the concepts in them might not seem fleshed out. There's a lot of information and knowledge that's been buried here, but the members still remember it and usually know where to find it, or have already done so and put it on the wiki.

Quote :

- The concept art part of the forum is empty, is there any artist actually working with the overall aspect of thrive? or is it all internally decided and no one can see it until is finished?

I'm probably our biggest concept art producer, and I'm a really busy person. I have sketchbooks full of notes, ideas, and, of course, images, but these usually don't make it onto the internet, due to how little time I have.

Quote :

- I see lots of comments giving ideas, discussing technical, physical, chemical and all sort of things in every corner of the forum. People taking part of the project are more worried about theoretically thriving underwater than actually giving real info of the development progress.

We want to make the game very realistic, so we often discuss tangential topics in order to pin down ingame procedures. This is very important, and has given rise to the organism editor and auto-evo procedure,m which are essential to our game and were extremely hard to figure out. The reference to underwater civs is an example of a discussion that was mainly between new members and senior ones. Those of us who have been here for a long time already knew that it wasn't going to happen, but we have to respect the ideas of newcomers and go through the ideas that they propose.

Quote :

- I can't see a fixed path to follow with this development... The overall feeling is that everyone is jumping from stone to stone without worrying to really cross step by step to the other side of the river. Being clear with the steps to take, a clear path to follow by artists and a separate one for coders, feedbacking one with each other will make this project advance more continuously IMO.

There really isn't a fixed path for development. We have many ideas and topics to cover, and not all of us have expertise or interest in all of them, so we don't direct what we discuss and develop most of the time. We fix problems as they come up. Personally, I do little work through PMs and such, and only use it when it's necessary to go into very esoteric topics.

Thanks for the fast reply sciocont

I've just entered the code repository, i don't want to sound overbearing... but inside the repository i only saw some place-holder code and one or two tests for the menu with the fading opening title...

Sincerely I was expecting a lot more code for a two year project, I took part on a college videogame project far less epic than this and we were touching results in two or three months, why is this so paralyzed?

I was willing to help get this great project onwards but the glimpse i just took about the project's actual state has just extremelly dissapointed me... Don't get me wrong, but i was expecting at least an alpha stage were to put some creative skills

Anyway, I hope that I'm getting it wrong and there's some other place filled with epicly written code for us to populate with art

Welcome! Quite an impressive first post.

uverion wrote:

Sincerely I was expecting a lot more code for a two year project, I took part on a college videogame project far less epic than this and we were touching results in two or three months, why is this so paralyzed?

Our original programmer left, and I'm fairly sure Roadkill started again from scratch with the new code. Either way, there was a time while we weren't sure if he was going to return when no coding was being done. The coding is also being done in people's spare time, it's not going to be very fast.

Hi, I'm Shane btw. Iwouldn't know stuff as far as coding goes, but we do have a microbial Phase prototype, if it makes You feel any better, and we have amazing work now made by: Doggit, so it's not too bad.

Ok ppl, i have an idea, I think we need things to show to the rest of the world, but since our coding pipeline is more or less "stucked" because of time manners, we can focus our effort on the graphical part of the game. I mean, we can get nice and visual things, show them to the rest of the world and pray for some epic coder to help us get a really nice boost to our coding pipeline

I'll post a thread on the conceptual part of the forum with details on this plan, we can discuss it, see pros and cons and get started as fast as we can.

what do you think? shall we do this and stun all the world for once and for all?

Just came here to apologize a bit...

I said earlier that the concept art section is empty. Well... Thats not true, there is plenty of concepts in there, i was viewing the forum with my smartphone, and the mobile version of the boards doesn't show the images right away.

Yes, uverion, unfortunately because of the scale of the project we are unable to attract many coders (Roadkill and doggit must be very brave people to tackle this). The other thing is that because of the open nature of our conceptual stage, everything was very much just piled on when it came up. There was a time when we tried to crack down on certain things, but it has worked much better to just allow the concepts to grow organically. Me and scio tend to just start posting about the things that we see need work and eventually it will grow.

And we do have a lot of the concepting pretty much done. I know that my team has worked very hard on the Society Stage, and we've pretty well nailed down all the concepts that make it manageable. Have you looked at the wiki? While our work here may often be incoherent blabber, it is assorted there in something resembling a sensible, understandable format.

Also, remember that this isn't people's main jobs. People do this whenever they are able to, and we are aware that it is going to take a long time. That is why it is taking so much longer than your team. There is also the problem of having to have most of it conceptualised before we started production. I mean, we can't very well do something then realise it's incompatible with the concept. So there was a sort of "where do we start?" feeling as well as a "HOW do we start?" feeling.

I hope that answers a few of your questions and makes us seem less hopeless :p

My suggestion? Turn it into an evolutionary simulator, nothing more. Get rid of the idea of the player's species, and play god with evolved creatures on different planets.

Then we have something plausible, and interesting. I don't want to write another civ game, I want to write something new.

Spoiler:

roadkillguy wrote:

My suggestion? Turn it into an evolutionary simulator, nothing more. Get rid of the idea of the player's species, and play god with evolved creatures on different planets.

Then we have something plausible, and interesting. I don't want to write another civ game, I want to write something new.

Spoiler:

While I agree that the project is extremely ambtious, without being able to have your own character it would be just as good as everything else. It would be a modern SimLife.
I think we should cut out society, industrial, space, and all the other civilization parts. But, thats just my opinion.

Grep42 wrote:

roadkillguy wrote:

My suggestion? Turn it into an evolutionary simulator, nothing more. Get rid of the idea of the player's species, and play god with evolved creatures on different planets.

Then we have something plausible, and interesting. I don't want to write another civ game, I want to write something new.

Spoiler:

While I agree that the project is extremely ambtious, without being able to have your own character it would be just as good as everything else. It would be a modern SimLife.
I think we should cut out society, industrial, space, and all the other civilization parts. But, thats just my opinion.

It makes no sense to remove the phases tribes, industry, civilization and space. Thrive not only based on the evolution of physical creatures, but mostly about evolution of intelligence.
One of the main points of the evolution of intelligence and the creation of a society.

If we delete the later stages of the Creature stage is theoretically more realistic Spore Thrive 2008 that Thrive without these steps.

Please do not make this cut to the game. Thrive could be fantastic with ALL the stages.

roadkillguy wrote:

My suggestion? Turn it into an evolutionary simulator, nothing more. Get rid of the idea of the player's species, and play god with evolved creatures on different planets.

Then we have something plausible, and interesting. I don't want to write another civ game, I want to write something new.

Spoiler:

Shhh, don't tell them my hidden motives. Remember that we necessarily have to have the organism stuff done for civilization to be written, so wen need to just make a game about being an animal first. Remember though, that this is a game. Our evolution system doesn't follow the real process of evolution, it's just designed to look like natural selection.

Well, I do see your point. I've never really cared that much about civilization though, and it'd be a lot less work. Why can't it be about evolving your own creature anyway? There could be different challenges like diasters and stuff if it gets too uninteresting.

I vote for making Your own creature, because that was the original plan, and I want to make my OWN alien.

Yeh, Thrive is a game, not a simulator. If I wanted a simulator, I'd just use god tools!

I say it even now: if you eliminate the tribal stage, the industrial stage, civilization stage and the space stage, thus erasing the design of an almost perfect game, I prefer not to work more to Thrive. I do not want a game that is a mix between Pokemon and World of Warcraft with the addition of some scientific concept.

So please, tell me what you want to do.

Holomanga wrote:

Yeh, Thrive is a game, not a simulator. If I wanted a simulator, I'd just use god tools!

Surely you mean Observer Mode? Then I suppose God Tools and the Sandbox would be customisation...



Anyway, I say we stick to the plan - Have your own creature. There's no point wasting half of all of our concepts up to this point, and it's more fun to play that way. Indeed, controlling your own creature can be implemented properly later on, there's no problem with focusing on simulation over player interaction, but we should still include it, we shouldn't get rid of most of the game's plans without good reason.

The same for sapience - If we remove it, what about US Of Alaska's grand Research & Tech Web? I can't even summon the effort to read the entire thing, that's how grand it is! Will all that effort put into it be for nothing? Cumulative hours of typing out our ideas, thinking up concepts for post-awareness gameplay, and whole calories of energy would go to waste! We can't decide to turn back now...!

I say we stand proud, and defend our traditions, our culture, and our game! We shouldn't turn back because it seems easy. No, we should fight on, burn our calories, free from artificial flavours and colourings, and stay up chatting on these forums late into the night to make a better future for sim-gamers! Will you join me in my quest, fellow peasants, to stand up (not if you're on one of those swivelling chairs, though, that would be dangerous) and let Thrive thrive?



Or whatever. We could just go for the democratic way of voting. I suppose a poll would suffice.

The Uteen wrote:

Anyway, I say we stick to the plan - Have your own creature. There's no point wasting half of all of our concepts up to this point, and it's more fun to play that way. Indeed, controlling your own creature can be implemented properly later on, there's no problem with focusing on simulation over player interaction, but we should still include it, we shouldn't get rid of most of the game's plans without good reason.

The same for sapience - If we remove it, what about US Of Alaska's grand Research & Tech Web? I can't even summon the effort to read the entire thing, that's how grand it is! Will all that effort put into it be for nothing? Cumulative hours of typing out our ideas, thinking up concepts for post-awareness gameplay, and whole calories of energy would go to waste! We can't decide to turn back now...!

I say we stand proud, and defend our traditions, our culture, and our game! We shouldn't turn back because it seems easy. No, we should fight on, burn our calories, free from artificial flavours and colourings, and stay up chatting on these forums late into the night to make a better future for sim-gamers! Will you join me in my quest, fellow peasants, to stand up (not if you're on one of those swivelling chairs, though, that would be dangerous) and let Thrive thrive?



Or whatever. We could just go for the democratic way of voting. I suppose a poll would suffice.

I have to whole heartly agree with you there Uteen!

roadkillguy wrote:

My suggestion? Turn it into an evolutionary simulator, nothing more. Get rid of the idea of the player's species, and play god with evolved creatures on different planets.

Then we have something plausible, and interesting. I don't want to write another civ game, I want to write something new.

I personally think that all this idea es inmense, titanic and fairly unabarcable. Even with that cut it will be really epic to came to something plausible. I keep insisting on focusing on the art (look and feel) of the entire idea and giving it to the rest of the world to hype themselves. Some more people will eventually see it and join us on our quest.

There's one thing that life has teached me about artistic projects: the only important thing is results, not procedures. I don't care if that costed you years to acomplish, if it is not optimal, or if it slows out its own development in the future, then its value tends to 0.

Personally I can't decide what posture to defend:

- cutting radically and asking for something really innovative?
or
- keep defending this unabarcable project and focus it with some strategies?

as stated above, democratic poll will be fairly intelligent, but some well supported solutions can be smarter than this poll, since over-hyped votes cand tend to unrealistic and unwise results...

Personally, I think that we should keep the big idea, but work on it in chunks. We finish the world of the Microbial stage, with the cells and cellular evolution, and then we present that. Then we add in the player (Unless the player is already part of it). Then we make the underwater world, with organisms, and our prototype organism evolution, and then we move that to include land. Then we add the player. And then continue in that fashion. Make sure the game works as a simulation before we add in the player.
Any constructive criticism?

Pyrotin wrote:

Personally, I think that we should keep the big idea, but work on it in chunks. We finish the world of the Microbial stage, with the cells and cellular evolution, and then we present that. Then we add in the player (Unless the player is already part of it). Then we make the underwater world, with organisms, and our prototype organism evolution, and then we move that to include land. Then we add the player. And then continue in that fashion. Make sure the game works as a simulation before we add in the player.
Any constructive criticism?

This has always been the plan. what people forget is that we're not making this entire thing in one go.

~sciocont wrote:

Pyrotin wrote:

Personally, I think that we should keep the big idea, but work on it in chunks. We finish the world of the Microbial stage, with the cells and cellular evolution, and then we present that. Then we add in the player (Unless the player is already part of it). Then we make the underwater world, with organisms, and our prototype organism evolution, and then we move that to include land. Then we add the player. And then continue in that fashion. Make sure the game works as a simulation before we add in the player.
Any constructive criticism?

This has always been the plan. what people forget is that we're not making this entire thing in one go.

QFT
I'd prefer to stay with this, even if it means slower development, because that way it will be a better game.
We also don't necessarily have to do it entirely in order. We could make cellular gameplay, work on some multicellular, then go back and add some more features to cellular, etc.

The Uteen wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Pyrotin wrote:

Personally, I think that we should keep the big idea, but work on it in chunks. We finish the world of the Microbial stage, with the cells and cellular evolution, and then we present that. Then we add in the player (Unless the player is already part of it). Then we make the underwater world, with organisms, and our prototype organism evolution, and then we move that to include land. Then we add the player. And then continue in that fashion. Make sure the game works as a simulation before we add in the player.
Any constructive criticism?

This has always been the plan. what people forget is that we're not making this entire thing in one go.

QFT
I'd prefer to stay with this, even if it means slower development, because that way it will be a better game.
We also don't necessarily have to do it entirely in order. We could make cellular gameplay, work on some multicellular, then go back and add some more features to cellular, etc.

QFT, i've been following this project since the "Evolutions" forum and i havent been after Thrive just to get an extended version of SPORE's Creatures Stage, i came here to create a univ...err, a Galaxy full of space faring species, not just a bunch of creatures stuck in a planet........i dont care if this takes 5 6 or even 10 years to make.......

penumbra espinosa wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Pyrotin wrote:

Personally, I think that we should keep the big idea, but work on it in chunks. We finish the world of the Microbial stage, with the cells and cellular evolution, and then we present that. Then we add in the player (Unless the player is already part of it). Then we make the underwater world, with organisms, and our prototype organism evolution, and then we move that to include land. Then we add the player. And then continue in that fashion. Make sure the game works as a simulation before we add in the player.
Any constructive criticism?

This has always been the plan. what people forget is that we're not making this entire thing in one go.

QFT
I'd prefer to stay with this, even if it means slower development, because that way it will be a better game.
We also don't necessarily have to do it entirely in order. We could make cellular gameplay, work on some multicellular, then go back and add some more features to cellular, etc.

QFT, i've been following this project since the "Evolutions" forum and i havent been after Thrive just to get an extended version of SPORE's Creatures Stage, i came here to create a univ...err, a Galaxy full of space faring species, not just a bunch of creatures stuck in a planet........i dont care if this takes 5 6 or even 10 years to make.......

Wait a minute, did you just compare this to Spore? Spore was a idiotic excuse for a game, it's creature stage had the most potential and they ruined it. Anyway, that is just my opinion, it's not like thats going to happen.

Grep42 wrote:

penumbra espinosa wrote:

The Uteen wrote:

~sciocont wrote:

Pyrotin wrote:

Personally, I think that we should keep the big idea, but work on it in chunks. We finish the world of the Microbial stage, with the cells and cellular evolution, and then we present that. Then we add in the player (Unless the player is already part of it). Then we make the underwater world, with organisms, and our prototype organism evolution, and then we move that to include land. Then we add the player. And then continue in that fashion. Make sure the game works as a simulation before we add in the player.
Any constructive criticism?

This has always been the plan. what people forget is that we're not making this entire thing in one go.

QFT
I'd prefer to stay with this, even if it means slower development, because that way it will be a better game.
We also don't necessarily have to do it entirely in order. We could make cellular gameplay, work on some multicellular, then go back and add some more features to cellular, etc.

QFT, i've been following this project since the "Evolutions" forum and i havent been after Thrive just to get an extended version of SPORE's Creatures Stage, i came here to create a univ...err, a Galaxy full of space faring species, not just a bunch of creatures stuck in a planet........i dont care if this takes 5 6 or even 10 years to make.......

Wait a minute, did you just compare this to Spore? Spore was a idiotic excuse for a game, it's creature stage had the most potential and they ruined it. Anyway, that is just my opinion, it's not like thats going to happen.

Spore? were'nt we making a need for speed remake?