Hello everyone!

Hey guys!

I just stumbled across this site and thought you guys had some pretty sweet gameplay ideas and I figured that I could lend a hand.

I'm an indie game developer with a degree in computer science. I'm fluent in Java and C/C++ and I'm VERY good with OpenGL (I've made a lot of games from scratch- never used a pre-built engine).

That being said, I have a few questions (might be best to ask them on other boards?)

I see a lot of concepts on here, but nothing seems to have actually been implemented yet- throughout this whole site, I see not one screenshot! Do you guys even have a basic engine working yet? I've seen mentions of a mercurial repository, but I can't seem to find a link any sort of repo. Personally, I highly suggest switching to git and using github to host all of the code; it's a lot easier to manage. I'd love to take a look at what code you guys have gotten down so far! I'm eager to help!

Is there some sort of place where all the ideas are being neatly organized? I noticed the wiki, but it seems to be pretty lacking (especially when compared to these forums!). A majority of ideas I see on here seem way too lofty to be achievable in a free and open-source project- maybe it would be a good idea to organize them by how achievable they seem? It would be nice to have a list of ideas organized by short-term, medium-term and long-term goals. A bone structure editor would be nice, yes, but what would the game need before it could have that? A working rendering system, a physics system, working menus, save file specifications- the list goes on and on. Games need to be built from the ground up, starting with the basic building blocks and then working up towards fancy things like editors (kind of like evolution lol). Having an end goal is great, and I know what it's like to have dreams for where a game project will go (and what it's like to have those dreams crushed) but without clear stepping stones, this project could end up dead in the water, which I would hate to see!

You'll have to wait for the admins/mods to answer your main question, but welcome to Thrive!

Let me start by saying, welcome aboard TranquilMarmot! (Are you fine with the nickname Tranquil? Or Marmot?)

Now, I'll try to answer your questions as best I can, but I myself am a relative newcomer as well. Over the past years it was mostly concept and models that was designed in these forums. Code was few and far between, and mostly done by individual coders, of which I think Roadkillguy is the last remnant. It is only within the past couple of weeks prior to your arrival that we have gained a substantial number of programmers, who have now been oorganized into a team and who hold regular meetings. I don't think the coding has started just yet, but it is about to start very soon. Right now everyone is just agreeing on the standards and such. If you could, it would be a great help if you posted about yourself on the Programmer Coordination Thread here, following the format everyone else used. I also highly recommend you read through this thread, as it is the discussion counterpart to the earlier thread, and contains a lot of useful information and links. If you read that, you should pretty much be up to date coding-wise.

The lack of a repo I am assuming is due to our recent start at programming (When I say "our" I mean the programmers on the team, as I am still learning). It has actually just been decided recently that we are going to use github to host the code, so we are one step ahead of you.

Currently, concepts are mostly just thrown out there for the different stages of the game. The only two areas that are really being organized currently are the Microbe Stage, as it will be the first stage we will complete, and post-sentience, since I have spent much time making many of the recent models and organizing them into single threads that contain overviews of the systems.

Microbe Stage Progress Report here.

Microbe Stage First Build Concept here.

Socio-Economic Model Full Draft here.

And lastly, I completely agree with you on your final point. We need to build the game from the basic building blocks upwards. I am sure that we are doing so for the Microbe Stage, which should be quite easy, however for the later stages there still is a lot more work.

Again, welcome to the team, and I am glad to see another skilled programmer join our ranks!

Welcome!

Nick summed it up pretty well, so I'll just add that any minor questions you have can go in this thread, or, of course, any other thread of a relevant topic.
Your programming skills will also be a great addition to the programming team.

I vote we name him Marmot. Hi, Marmot! (Seriously, feel free to object.)

As Nick said, you are right in time for the big programmer organizational push, so step right up and claim your place in our corner of the internet. Most of the rest of us are scientists, gamers, or otherwise interested observers, so while we've spent quite a while hashing out the theory of the game and making it as scientific as possible, we've been direly in need of programmers for quite some time. As a result, we tend to welcome them with open arms.

Hey look a possible clone from across the internet. Do you use linux?

Welcome Marmot,

It's good to see you here, especially with your development experience. I'm one of the programmers here, and have been coordinating our coding efforts for the past month or so.

What Nick said is largely correct, over the past few weeks we've set up a github, decided on libraries, compilers and standards to use (all available through the programmer discussion thread. We're now populating the repo with an initial code base, and learning how to use some of the libraries we're not so familiar with (Ogre specifically). We do have source code from a few previous engines, some of which we'll be reusing.

As you say, a lot of information is spread out, Nick linked a few very useful threads which gather up information on concepts and other work. I've been meaning to post a programming information thread with everything I've gathered up recently, and will do so as soon as possible.

We're currently working on building solid foundations on which to build the rest of the game. As you say, that means things like rendering (ogre), saving and loading, and an overall framework. We've had a fair few discussions too about how we can simplify some of the more ambitious aspects of the concept while we work on the fundementals.

I hope that answers a few more of your questions. If you want to discuss anything further I'll be on the IRC for the next two hours or so.