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Post by StealthStyleL on Jan 24, 2016 13:37:15 GMT
It has long been in the plans of Thrive for players to be allowed to evolve into multiple types of organisms, plants included. However, one problem with this is that it is difficult to perceive how playing as a plant would be fun. Thrive is, after all, a game. As a plant you would be rooted to the same spot with no ability to explore. So, how can we make this fun? Feel free to post your ideas in this thread and comment on mine.
This is my idea for it. I got this during a conversation with tjwhale on Reddit. The idea is that during an OE session the player creates things such as the leaf type, the flower, the seed etc. Then the player will leave the OE and enter into normal gameplay. They will start the session as a young plant with just enough features to enable them to create energy. Over time, the player will gain more of these "energy points" which they can then spend on growing their plant. For example, they can extend the stalk or add a flower, much like a city-building game. It works similarly for other plants like trees. This means that the player, although not moving throughout the world, will not be limited to staring at a plant they created in the OE and not doing anything.
This description of my idea is a bit rushed and needs some polish. I haven't yet been able to think through it all but I wanted to get this discussion started. Thoughts? |
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Post by Atrox on Jan 24, 2016 14:33:09 GMT
So it's like one of those games where you're constantly gaining money through gameplay, and you use that money to buy power ups to help you get more money to buy better power up until you buy all the power ups and are raking in all the dough??
I actually tend to get addicted to games like that, at least for a few days. It's better if there's a bit more interaction with the game instead of just buying the upgrades. The player should also he able to choose to release signals to ward off predators or summon back up.
I imagine the game could be played similar to a tower defense game or even Plants versus Zombies (albeit MUCH more realistically).
It could even be RTS style gameplay.
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Post by StealthStyleL on Jan 24, 2016 14:51:59 GMT
Yeah, I mean interaction with the environment is good, I just neglected to think about it.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 24, 2016 18:41:04 GMT
How would seeds work? Would you need enough energy points to make more of yourself and they can help you grow with the root systems? Do they need some type of organisim like a worm and would any Human like organisims use your species? I know I am asking a lot of questions sorry.
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Post by limeyhoney on Jan 25, 2016 2:53:25 GMT
If playing as a fungus, I would think that instead of playing a single one, you play as a colony. Starting with 1, then expanding the colony. So, after a "layer" of fungi, you would then go into the editor. Any new fungi added to the colony would then have the evolution. So you would have it gradually get more advanced the farther from the center you get. Eventually, the old ones would die, and it would be like a ripple of advanced ones going out of the center. Once all of your fungi die in the colony, you would restart in a new place.
I thought* of all this on the spot and it made me very excited to play this.
*There is proof that "original" ideas actually come from something you saw earlier and don't remember.
They should also put warnings for turning into plants/fungi/any thing like this.
It would be a little like this;
"This evolution trait will make you a (NAME OF TYPE HERE) later in the game. Are you sure you want to do this?"
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Post by Atrox on Jan 25, 2016 3:24:06 GMT
If playing as a fungus, I would think that instead of playing a single one, you play as a colony. Starting with 1, then expanding the colony. So, after a "layer" of fungi, you would then go into the editor. Any new fungi added to the colony would then have the evolution. So you would have it gradually get more advanced the farther from the center you get. Eventually, the old ones would die, and it would be like a ripple of advanced ones going out of the center. Once all of your fungi die in the colony, you would restart in a new place. I thought* of all this on the spot and it made me very excited to play this. *There is proof that "original" ideas actually come from something you saw earlier and don't remember.They should also put warnings for turning into plants/fungi/any thing like this.
It would be a little like this;
"This evolution trait will make you a (NAME OF TYPE HERE) later in the game. Are you sure you want to do this?" Would the player still get a warning if they want to make photosynthesizing animals or animals that reproduce via spores? I feel like one of the really fun aspects of the finished game will be the fact that we'll be able to create organisms that smudge the line between any forms of life we have on Earth. |
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Post by limeyhoney on Jan 25, 2016 3:43:53 GMT
Would the player still get a warning if they want to make photosynthesizing animals or animals that reproduce via spores? I feel like one of the really fun aspects of the finished game will be the fact that we'll be able to create organisms that smudge the line between any forms of life we have on Earth. I suppose cell walls is the major distinction from plant and animal. |
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Post by Atrox on Jan 25, 2016 3:47:23 GMT
Would the player still get a warning if they want to make photosynthesizing animals or animals that reproduce via spores? I feel like one of the really fun aspects of the finished game will be the fact that we'll be able to create organisms that smudge the line between any forms of life we have on Earth. I suppose cell walls is the major distinction from plant and animal. Who's to say that an animal has an outer layer of cells with a cell wall instead of skin?  |
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Post by limeyhoney on Jan 25, 2016 3:50:13 GMT
I suppose cell walls is the major distinction from plant and animal. Who's to say that an animal has an outer layer of cells with a cell wall instead of skin? That is a good point. Let me revise. " This evolution trait COULD make you a (NAME OF TYPE HERE) later in the game. Are you sure you want to do this?" |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2016 6:02:53 GMT
Goood idea limehoney  |
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Post by tjwhale on Jan 25, 2016 20:42:58 GMT
These are both really nice ideas (flowing colony of fungus and plant based RTS). They're exactly the kind of path to go down when thinking about how to make it fun to be stationary, IMO. I think another key aspect is having time go faster, so maybe a season is 1 minute or less and so you can build build build in the spring and then flower in the summer and then you have to hibernate a bit in the winter. That means you don't have to feel like you are waiting around all the time.
Hell it could even be a rhythm game where each season is like 2 seconds long and you have to flower in the right rhythm.
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Post by Atrox on Jan 25, 2016 20:58:34 GMT
These are both really nice ideas (flowing colony of fungus and plant based RTS). They're exactly the kind of path to go down when thinking about how to make it fun to be stationary, IMO. I think another key aspect is having time go faster, so maybe a season is 1 minute or less and so you can build build build in the spring and then flower in the summer and then you have to hibernate a bit in the winter. That means you don't have to feel like you are waiting around all the time. Hell it could even be a rhythm game where each season is like 2 seconds long and you have to flower in the right rhythm. A rhythm game sounds fun!! It's one of my favorite genres. As for sped up time. I feel like seasons should be 5 minutes maybe. |
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Post by StealthStyleL on Jan 30, 2016 9:27:43 GMT
These are both really nice ideas (flowing colony of fungus and plant based RTS). They're exactly the kind of path to go down when thinking about how to make it fun to be stationary, IMO. I think another key aspect is having time go faster, so maybe a season is 1 minute or less and so you can build build build in the spring and then flower in the summer and then you have to hibernate a bit in the winter. That means you don't have to feel like you are waiting around all the time. Hell it could even be a rhythm game where each season is like 2 seconds long and you have to flower in the right rhythm. I can imagine this, with some very beautiful music, being quite special and picturesque. |
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RoboTrannic
Spacefaring
haunting deviantart
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Post by RoboTrannic on Jan 30, 2016 22:45:50 GMT
how about it being more like a creative mode where we just constantly build the plant
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veyraa
Multicellular
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Post by veyraa on Mar 14, 2016 8:26:09 GMT
If I may toss in my two pence, my idea was to make creatures akin to the Yith/Great Race. Something that is neither entirely animal nor plant. As for what defines plants/animals/fungi/bacterium, it is a bit of an odd area. After all, these are Cambrian era entities (correct me if wrong) which was when life was more of a gray area than today. That, and the game will not be following our own evolutionary timeline, so who knows what kind of quasi animal-plants will be born of this. (Example of a between the stages species: Dimetrodon.) |
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The Uteen
Sentient
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 14, 2016 11:07:13 GMT
I like the idea of plant gameplay being RTS-like, based around growing efficiently and strategically distributing resources. One thing to bear in mind, though: We can't just have two separate gameplay styles for plants and animals, or we end up with edge cases (related: Sponges are animals). I think we should attempt to have gameplay which changes based on the organism, where possible. If the organism has fewer senses or moveable parts, the gameplay revolves more around growing efficiently.
Here's a concept for how this could work: All organisms have controls relating to distribution of resources and priorities for growth. These take effect of longish periods of time (days, maybe), so can't be used too heavily to respond to the immediate environment (such as predators). Usually, these could be set to some sensible defaults, or be automatically controlled (Civ players: like ‘Citizen Management’). Organisms with fewer moveable/actionable parts are more restricted in what they can do. However, good gameplay is still possible, since the player can start to control their organism using the ‘lower level’ controls mentioned above, and control growth manually. If the more plant-like organism has senses, the player can respond to their environment (in the longer-term) to a greater extent, with the drawback of fewer resources to work with, as a portion of them go towards the organs and neural systems dealing with the sense. These resources could be the compounds currently present in cell stage, one system for both photosynthesis and eaters of other organisms. A fully plant-like organism would have to senses to examine its environment. This, at first, seems restrictive in terms of gameplay. But, consider this: you can still get information about your environment. As you distribute resources around the organism, you can ‘see’ your enviroment in terms of its effect on your growth rate. Since you have no real senses, you have more resources to work with, and can afford to make more mistakes than if you had senses. The actual resource cost of senses should balance their benefit, making difficulty fairly even between modes. And here's the best part: these settings for distributing resources and controlling growth… They are not a new idea: they can be carried over from early multicellular. As the cell colony gets larger, the controls would need to become more abstract. By the time the game transitions to 3D, the player would already be familiar with this style of gameplay. The distributed resources, once processed in a photosynthesiser's leaves, or digested by an eater, would be the compounds currently present in cell stage. As you transition from 2D multicellular to 3D, this sort of gameplay would remain fundamentally unchanged, just with controls for the extra dimension. Which just leaves the simpler question of figuring out the details of early multicellular - obviously we want something better than sliders, so whatever we decide on will probably include a visual overlay of some sort, which could then be expanded to 3D for use with this idea.
Additional note (edit): The player would be encouraged to ignore this section if playing as an ‘eater’, since eating provides a lot more energy than photosynthesis. With a (pure) animal, the player's effort would be better spent gathering the food itself. If this still needed balancing to discourage use when not appropriate, one possibility is that we could make time spent in this mode be proportional to real-game-time. So, for example, time could pass at quarter speed in this mode, so it can be used when playing as a mobile organism, but leaves the player exposed to predators which could otherwise be avoided. |
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Post by tammio on Mar 14, 2016 23:03:34 GMT
Maybee, when playing as a plant (or stationary anmial, eg. sponge, so what?) you could have a different type of "herd" mode. So many plants live in symbiosis, and it is a commmon mistake to assume plants don't interact with their surroundings. Some trees like Oaks often live in symbiosis with colonies of fungus, and tomatoes "fertilise" themselves by killing off small insects who then decompose DIRECTELY OVER THEIR ROOTS(you know those fine hairs tomato plants have? Yea they are poisinous. Tomatoes are relenteless Killers  ). Consequently, after evolving far enough you might gain control over a "cluster" of plants instead of just one. This would be similar to when you play those City-building games, when you realise that your City will be so much more effective by setting up specialised satelite cities around it, and then youre builing towns arround those sattelite cities to provide bigger markets and mine new resources. And then you set up rural villages on the fringes of those towns and so forth unitll you realise you've just filled the global map with settlements of decreasing size and your "central" city is so bg it has "spillt" over into the satelite sites... Similarily you could begin as a simple seed seeking a better life in the Savannah and then realise after some time, in fact you're now managing a complete FOREST where once Elephants roamed wild and free... |
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Post by limeyhoney on Mar 15, 2016 4:16:11 GMT
Anyone play Europa, or any of those in that series of games? We could borrow the thought of time manipulation. YOU can make it go faster or slower. YOU can also micromanage everything, or set up routes and set it on fast forward. It is starting to seem like you would first make organisms that don't achieve sapience before you do make one. Maybe we need some in-game encouragement! "Your species has gone extinct, but that will happen on your first few goes. Try again sometime!" |
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The Uteen
Sentient
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 15, 2016 14:33:02 GMT
Unless there's been a major revolution recently, Strategy Mode still exists. You'd play as a single organism in Organism Mode, but would be able to take control of a group of them by entering Strategy Mode. See (on the old forum): thrivegame.canadaboard.net/f10-modesThis would allow you to control a population if wanted. Maybee, when playing as a plant (or stationary anmial, eg. sponge, so what?) you could have a different type of "herd" mode. So many plants live in symbiosis, and it is a commmon mistake to assume plants don't interact with their surroundings. Some trees like Oaks often live in symbiosis with colonies of fungus, and tomatoes "fertilise" themselves by killing off small insects who then decompose DIRECTELY OVER THEIR ROOTS(you know those fine hairs tomato plants have? Yea they are poisinous. Tomatoes are relenteless Killers ). This is true. Poison and such would be added as passive parts in the Organism Editor. The way I see it, my suggestion allows (perhaps unrealistic, but hopefully not too much to be a problem) control of long-term behaviour (growth-related Acquired Characteristics), while the design created in the Organism Editor determines what short-term responses are possible, either passively (poison, spines) or through user action (grasping, walking). |
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Post by tammio on Mar 15, 2016 15:13:10 GMT
Actualy, what I tried to suggest was a sort of advanced or modified strategy mode. So you begin with control over your one plant, and where another player might gain awereness, you instead gain control over another plantlike (long term controlled) organism, for example a fungus living in symiosis with you. So from now on, you not only "engineer" your plant, but the fungus too, and maybee later some shrub and so on. With advancing complexity of the ecosystem you control you would have to give up micromanagement (except if your one of those perfectionists like me) and begin managing your "planty" network of interlinked plants.
Furthermore this would allow the creation of specialised plant-animal hybrids like sponges or whatever our sick minds come up with. All in all this would sum up to a city sim, but plants (preferably desighned o tweeked by your godlike hand) would take the place of buildings.
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). Consequently, after evolving far enough you might gain control over a "cluster" of plants instead of just one. This would be similar to when you play those City-building games, when you realise that your City will be so much more effective by setting up specialised satelite cities around it, and then youre builing towns arround those sattelite cities to provide bigger markets and mine new resources. And then you set up rural villages on the fringes of those towns and so forth unitll you realise you've just filled the global map with settlements of decreasing size and your "central" city is so bg it has "spillt" over into the satelite sites...