Greetings thrivers (and some constructive criticism)

Welcome Uverion! We see that you have passion, and that is what we need! Hard at it!

~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.

When programming, you must generalize. When generalizing, you must look at everything. This is why games have a single focus. This game has so many in-depth foci, it's nearly impossible to generalize.

If we kept "adding on", the code would become unusable and buggy. Refactoring old code sucks.

I had a huge rant up, but I took it down since looking at the outline in rkg's sig somewhat addressed my concerns. Now I just have a couple of questions that I'll just put in this thread because I already posted.

Roadkill, where is the repo? It's not in the post where it lists old and new. Is this the current repo? I had to perform low level google wizardry to find it.
Where, really, is the development at this point? Have there been HUGE changes since last August, when I left?
Would my help be needed, or is the project not at the point where an additional programmer is neccessary?

uverion 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.

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...

We're not here to make another spore, they wanted to make a game like this but then just decided, they were lazy and wanted to make money and realeased a game that would attract hundreds of misled customers to buy it and completely forgot about it. We're here to make the impossible, at least that's why I joined this project. We're not here to make free version of spore, but s realistic, exciting game. I do agree with your concept art idea though, we need to promote it more. I only found it from a youtube comment.

guitar999111 wrote:

I had a huge rant up, but I took it down since looking at the outline in rkg's sig somewhat addressed my concerns. Now I just have a couple of questions that I'll just put in this thread because I already posted.

Roadkill, where is the repo? It's not in the post where it lists old and new. Is this the current repo? I had to perform low level google wizardry to find it.
Where, really, is the development at this point? Have there been HUGE changes since last August, when I left?
Would my help be needed, or is the project not at the point where an additional programmer is neccessary?

Oh hey, what's up? I haven't done anything, but keen apparently has. I want to do another rewrite/reorganization. I also switched to Arch Linux.

Hah, I switched to Arch too! Cool.

A rewrite sounds like a good idea, but I posted somewhere or another my qualms about the project as it is right now, but essentially I think significant focus on the first stage is needed before any big programming progress is likely to be made.

guitar999111 wrote:

Hah, I switched to Arch too! Cool.

A rewrite sounds like a good idea, but I posted somewhere or another my qualms about the project as it is right now, but essentially I think significant focus on the first stage is needed before any big programming progress is likely to be made.

No way that's crazy!

Nobody wants to focus on what really matters. Cells, and what cells can do. Plants and what plants can do. Whether we should even distinguish between plants and cells in the code! How the hell we're going to make cells assimilate eachother with just a single sprite, how collisions will be handled between cells, how dna will be simulated, how cells will be randomized, and etc.

This game isn't in development, it's in conceptualization.

roadkillguy wrote:

No way that's crazy!

Nobody wants to focus on what really matters. Cells, and what cells can do. Plants and what plants can do. Whether we should even distinguish between plants and cells in the code! How the hell we're going to make cells assimilate eachother with just a single sprite, how collisions will be handled between cells, how dna will be simulated, how cells will be randomized, and etc.

This game isn't in development, it's in conceptualization.

I think that we are talking about "focusing" in a generalistic way.

Focusing is needed on EVERY side of the project (artwork, programming, concepts...), and I think it must be done very wisely, considering the feasability of all the features stacked by the community over this 2 years, giving priorities to every feasible feature and making a list with them. With that list on hand we could develop every part of the stage, as everyone will know what to do every time.

IMO, we should start RIGHT NOW gathering features and confirming them on a separate thread, then we can move on to more specific tasks.

P.D. Since the visual look an feel of the game is more or less independent of his features, I'll keep working on it as it's being done with the background music

Ok ppl, I've done what in spain is called. "coger el toro por los cuernos" (to grab the bull by his horns) and I've ventured to post a "Developing Guide To Microbial Stage"

Let's fill it with awesomeness and feasability.

here's the link: https://thrivegame.canadaboard.net/t823-developing-guide-to-microbial-stage#16193

God, that is a long tangent for a welcome page. *Takes off waders*
Hi, Uveron! Welcome to the board. I'm currently flaking because I finally have a full-time chemistry job, which is why I wasn't here when you got in. (Which - this explains why we take so long to get things done, no?)

PEOPLE. Seriously, since we have to make this in order and release it in order, why don't you just install the Expansion Packs that you want? You don't even have to buy them. If you hate civ, don't install the civ bit. Not to mention, we need to finish making cells before we can even start on multicellular creatures.

To address Uveron's concerns... Well, okay, mostly Scio and Alaska got there already. Focusing sounds good. Thanks for the checklist, uverion.