Microbe Stage Progress Report

Here are all the themes composed for the microbe stage to update the bulletin:

Microbe gameplay themes:
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gwI7tNKnXM
(2 was changed into a space theme)
3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJeekPuN16E
4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnE1PORPEv4
5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YByKw3LXtf0
6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO4050JsHvM
7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zypt6rtHZI
8: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i59ZNe_9Wbw

Microbe editor themes:
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dphwOGd-y0w
2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o0eU1MOd84 (Changed from gameplay to editor by request of Doggit)
3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYaLDPm7TlM

Okay, thanks, I'll make sure to update the bulletin.

Ok so scio said the art style should be more realistic and i see -Realistic art style everywhere in the Development Bulletin thread but what exactly does this mean? Should the models be more complex or the textures better or what?

Tritium wrote:

Ok so scio said the art style should be more realistic and i see -Realistic art style everywhere in the Development Bulletin thread but what exactly does this mean? Should the models be more complex or the textures better or what?

I think he means both.

EDIT: When i look at microbe dev. bulletin, i really see how close to microbe stage we are.

I'm not sure if that's what scio means, but I'd like to see a style that imitates looking through a microscope, but with a bit more color where appropriate. There are some YouTube videos that could serve as a reference, for example this one, this one or this one.

I think the defining qualities of this style are:

• Translucency of the microbes
  
• Clearly visible edges that hint at the three-dimensional, round form of the cells
  
• Stuff floating around in the background, out of focus
  
• Jerky camera movement as if moving around a slide on the microscope's tray
  

Those aren't a question of highly detailed models or textures alone, after all, how much surface structure do you really see in those videos I linked above? Achieving this style will probably require some hand-crafted shaders.

It would be cool if it was like that. Howewer, i think Scio posted somewhere about better textures or models... Im not sure though.

Nimbal wrote:

I'm not sure if that's what scio means, but I'd like to see a style that imitates looking through a microscope, but with a bit more color where appropriate. There are some YouTube videos that could serve as a reference, for example this one, this one or this one.

I think the defining qualities of this style are:

• Translucency of the microbes
  
• Clearly visible edges that hint at the three-dimensional, round form of the cells
  
• Stuff floating around in the background, out of focus
  
• Jerky camera movement as if moving around a slide on the microscope's tray
  

Those aren't a question of highly detailed models or textures alone, after all, how much surface structure do you really see in those videos I linked above? Achieving this style will probably require some hand-crafted shaders.

This is all good. I'd like to see microscope-like images, though with a bit less transparency and more color than in the youtube videos, since we won't always have a light background to see them against.
In terms of textures, I'd like to see

• Pseudo-randomness: Textures should look like they have a definite order or set of rules, but also should look organic. For this, I recommend checking out Perlin Noise, Voronoi textures (which were the inspiration for the "shatter" graphic art style), and real animal and plant textures for inspiration.
  
  
• Uniform sharpness: Texture should either contain bold, sharp edges, medium-sharpness edges, or soft edges. Don't mix edge types, and always try the sharp edges first, then blur them to the desired degree. If you look in a microscope, you'll see many different levels of focus, but our textures each apply to a single object, which will be either entirely in or entirely out of focus.
  
• Light, desaturated colors: Microbes usually have colors like this because they are small and mostly transparent, so there isn't much pigment in them to build up and create dark colors. When choosing colors for textures, keep this in mind.
  

Look at this color wheel:

The colors I think of are colors like  ████CCFF99C, ████FF9933, ████CC3333, ████6699CC, ████99CC99, ████99FF66, ████FF6633. I want to avoid purples, pinks, and yellows, since these are colors one generally doesn't see in the microbe world. Focus on blues, greens, and  pale oranges.

As for models, make cells look natural- give them tome taper, some flash, some intrigue. Make any other models look very close to what they look like in real life.

Have any of you ever tried Darwin pond? I don't think it would be a bad inspiration for the microbe stage.

I've just pushed a whole bunch of stuff related to the microbe stage to the git repository (branch "prototype"). You can download a precompiled version here as a zip. Don't expect too much, it's still far from something you could call "game".

Notable stuff:

• Systems for emitting and absorbing agent particles
  
• Classes for microbes and their organelles, completely in Lua
  
• Organelles for moving / turning and storing agents
  
• Mouse and keyboard controls
  
• A nonsense example that will give the player control over a microbe consisting of a storage organelle (green) for an "energy" agent and two movement organelles (red) for forward / backward movement
  
• A display for the amount of "energy" the player microbe has stored. Energy is used when moving and restored by gathering the little particles that shoot out of the big molecule looking thingy. If this doesn't make sense to you, don't worry. It just doesn't.
  

Notable missing stuff:

• A mouse cursor. I recommed you start in windowed mode for now
  
• Saving / loading game state. This will probably be the next thing I tackle since it could get rather complicated.
  
• Microbe editor. If you want other shapes, you'll have to play around with the Lua script constructing the player microbe. See "scripts/sandbox/player.lua", especially the last 15 lines or so. Beware the hex coordinates, I'll have to upload a picture explaining those. But until then, you're on your own.
  
• Everything else I haven't explicitly listed.
  

I would really like to try it, but the link is broken for me.

EDIT- Nevermind, it works.

EDIT2-Very nice, its a lot when compared to what we had before.

Awesome work Nimbal! I'll be sure to download this soon. Would you like to post on reddit or shall I?

Download file, extract, then go into folder: Thrive -> Thrive -> bin -> and run the file Thrive.exe.
Once open select the only Ogre option available then run.

p.s. once you select the Ogre option, it never asks you to select it again and instead just runs the demo.

The demo is simple you control a Red & Green cell, which moves towards the mouse pointer by using the [W] key, and moves away from the mouse pointer by using the [S] key. Doing this uses ENERGY, if you have 0 (zero) energy you may not move. Your cell moves around on a blue background.

The double spherical blue object emits tiny blue agents. If you collide with these agents you "pick" them up and replenish ENERGY.

If you collide with the Energy Maker it stops you.

It all worked fine for me, it automatically made it full screen and my mouse pointer was visible.

I am running Windows 7 Home Premium service pack 1
on a HP with an AMD Athlon II p340 Dual-core processor (2.2ghz)
4gb ram
64 bit operating system

edit: wrong keys, and type fixes

WJacobC wrote:

Would you like to post on reddit or shall I?

Go ahead and post it. Just be sure to label it appropriately with "work in progress" or similar. We don't want people to expect too much.

@meldebious: Thanks for the instructions! In retrospect, I'm actually a little surprised that someone figured out so fast that no energy means "dead in the water". I fully expected a bug report about that.

Really? no that makes sense to me, maybe have a slower rate with no energy, such as you can't use any of your speed boost parts.

Also [Esc] key exits and closes the game.

Nimbal wrote:

Microbe Stage update

Wow nimbal, I have to say I'm pretty impressed. You're really making this happen, and it's going well. Guiding my microbe around feels perfect. I really get the feeling of viscosity and it's easy to prioritize movements based on my momentum. With a about 5 other programs running, I was averaging ~600 fps (I think?), and I'm running off of a pretty basic desktop. This feels fantastic. Awesome, Awesome work. I'll test this out on my laptop and see If I can do some cell editing.

Quote :

Wow nimbal, I have to say I'm pretty impressed. You're really making this happen, and it's going well. Guiding my microbe around feels perfect. I really get the feeling of viscosity and it's easy to prioritize movements based on my momentum. With a about 5 other programs running, I was averaging ~600 fps, and I'm running off of a pretty basic desktop. This feels fantastic. Awesome, Awesome work. I'll test this out on my laptop and see If I can do some cell editing.

Really? I had a pretty hard time with the controls myself. What's wrong with the good ole arrow keys?

I find the cursor based movement perfectly fine. It would merge well with the later stages of the game.

The good old arrow keys are nearly never used today for 2 good reasons:

1.Its very close to the mouse, so it can be uncomfortable to use.

2.Its far away from the rest of the main letter keyboard, so if you want to press say E, you would have to make an entire journey from the right to the left part of the keyboard, while with WASD you can easily do that without even taking your hands off the controls.

why not giving a free configurable keyboard layout?

Peoples who want the arrow keys can use it, other peoples (including me), who prefer the wasd movement could use this then.

But key config wouldn't be able to change the fact that, in the one case, the cell would move to the mouse when the up arrow is clicked, and in the other case, would move straight up when the up arrow is clicked. From what I know, the system being direction based or cursor based is not-configurable in game.

Silver Sterling wrote:

why not giving a free configurable keyboard layout?

Peoples who want the arrow keys can use it, other peoples (including me), who prefer the wasd movement could use this then.

I've seen in some games you have 2 options:
1: Use the mouse to control direction, and WASD (or WS in this case) to control movement.
2: use arrows keys to control direction and movement, have the left and right change direction, and up and down to change movement.

Many simple games I've played implement both these uses. But of course that is games that don't use the mouse click because then if you are using the arrow keys its harder to use the mouse. So it would depend on mouse useage in the game, which in cell stage might not be as used, in later stages would be used a lot more. So it would be stupid to get you used to using arrow keys to only have you switch to another system or throw you off with your hands trying to make out on the keyboard.

edit: did not see Nick's post above me. Take that into account with what I have stated.

Should we consider this 0.2.0? Seeing as it is a massive upgrade.

Fine by me.

I just wanted to add, since I forgot to say, spectacular work Nimbal! :D I can't wait to get back home to try this out. It's great to see hard development going again.

Tarpy wrote:

The good old arrow keys are nearly never used today for 2 good reasons:

1.Its very close to the mouse, so it can be uncomfortable to use.

2.Its far away from the rest of the main letter keyboard, so if you want to press say E, you would have to make an entire journey from the right to the left part of the keyboard, while with WASD you can easily do that without even taking your hands off the controls.

Fine. Point-n'-click or merely dragging the cell with the cursor are perfectly viable options. This seems needlessly offputting to potential players. I shouldn't have to hold down a key constantly to get it to do what I want.

Mouthwash wrote:

I shouldn't have to hold down a key constantly to get it to do what I want.

Well then what do you expect? Telekinesis?