The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 9, 2016 22:16:33 GMT
I was under the impression that Multicellular Stage encompassed both multicellular organism where the individual cells are visible and also, as you put it, macro-multicellular organism. Aware Stage begins when you reach a certain threshold of intelligence. But maybe it would make sense to call them something different, as the gameplay between micro-multicellular organisms and macro-multicellular organism would be quite different, especially in the editors. But, assuming we stick with the current idea, plants and the like should come under multicellular, right? Edit: I just noticed the little Hi! at the bottom of your signature. It's lovely. I was originally under this impression, too, but looking at the forum subsections, multicellular does seem to have largely been cell-colony discussion. Otherwise, it still seems to make sense to separate cell-colony and macroscopic multicellular into separate stages, considering the gameplay differences. Macro-multicellular and aware are almost indistinguishable by comparison. Also, thanks. This is (apart from the ‘incoming […] message-o-mat’ being an image now) my original signature, first signature I used on the old forums. Since then I used to periodically change the message.
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 9, 2016 22:11:10 GMT
What do the programmers think of using C++ for coding the game?
From my limited experience, it's a pretty low-level language, where memory-management is something you have to think about, and this is largely its appeal. In addition, it boasts a wide range of features, including function pointers. As for the low level aspect - does this have a significant impact on how effectively you can get stuff done, once you become familiar enough with the language?
I think one of the benefits of C++ is cross platform support (and performance would clearly benefit) - are there other benefits, and are the tradeoffs worth it when working on something like Thrive?
As powerful as C++ is, I can't get over the semi-acronym function names, and weird __gg_wp type parameters. So, any good tips for a high-level programmer on getting to grips with these more off-putting aspects of the language?
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 9, 2016 21:49:18 GMT
EDIT: I'll work on a shorter version of that signature at some point. So… I've finished a new signature image to match the ‘new’ avatar I made years ago. I still have the original .acorn files. Figured out how to make it resize properly, too, so it doesn't crop on small screens, and hopefully it wont be too tall even on phones. My sig is currently set to scale depending on screen size, so hopefully it shouldn't be too big no matter what your screen. It seems to all be based on HTML & CSS, too, making post-formatting in general pretty flexible. For your web development skills, here's the code I used: [div align="center"][img width="600vw" src="https://i.imgur.com/vC0cgUK.png" alt="Incoming hyperdimensional transitional hypothetical message-o-mat from the ultimate all-powerful mythical Uteen Citadel"][/div]
EDIT: Also, I'm not sure what the Apple-in-recycle-sign was originally about, but it certainly makes sense now that Apple (used to?) emphasise how green their products are. The reason for the segway symbol is obvious - they're cool. I had the chance to try one a while ago, walking is so clumsy in comparison.
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The Uteen
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my status: very quo
Posts: 83
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 9, 2016 21:25:47 GMT
> late multicellular Somewhere along the line, late multicellular merged with Aware, simply because mechanically, they were just about the same. But maybe you can make a case for there being a difference -- is there one, in terms of conflicting game mechanics, or is it just a difference of degree, for example, of how much you can edit tissue types, or how much you can edit behaviour? I suppose this makes sense, dividing up stages based on gameplay. The original distinction for aware wasn't very specific. So this means ‘multicellular’ is what we used to call ‘early multicellular’, where you can see individual cells? If late multicellular is merges with aware, I'm not sure ‘aware’ is the best name for it anymore, since plants, fungus, and worms are also covered. I can't think of a name to accurately describe it which isn't ‘multicellular’, really. Maybe ‘macro-multicellular’? I'll move this discussion over to a new thread. So, getting back on topic, hi there Poisson.
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 9, 2016 21:22:59 GMT
Continuing from the early/late multicellular tangent over here.
This thread is to get our stage names straight, as they relate to plant, fungus, and otherwise inanimate or unconscious organism gameplay. I'll call this the ‘macro-unaware’ category. If ‘multicellular’ covers cell-colony gameplay, I would infer that ‘aware’ currently covers macro-unaware, which gives reason to rename ‘aware’ to something more appropriate. If macro-unaware gameplay is structurally similar enough to cell-colony (currently ‘multicellular’), just at a macroscopic scale, it could be merged with ‘multicellular’. I expect gameplay would be similar in terms of involving nutrient distribution, and growth, but differ in that individual cells are no longer visible or relevant, and gameplay would be in 3D. Perhaps the 3D environment around you would be visible as well, depending on settings/senses. Gameplay involving these organisms could also be branched off into a new stage, ‘3D multicellular’, or equivalent. What do you think? Are the current categorisations enough, or do we need to make changes?
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 7, 2016 13:52:29 GMT
To put a date on this: it was most likely in 2009, I think the original forums were around for less than a year. Based on a quick search, I found a thread talking about the project by Rex ( here), another member of the old team, and who stayed with us for quite a while ( he's on the old forums). The link to the original thread only seems to show a poll. ParadoxJuice, also mentioned in that thread, made it to the old forums too. EDIT: here it is on the wayback machine, the original thread.
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 7, 2016 0:01:55 GMT
I meant it as in people spent a lot of time and energy thinking about the advanced, often unnecessary features of later stages when they didn't have the basics in place first. For instance, coming up with increasingly convoluted ways to create underwater civs when evolution, the main feature of the game, was still hugely unfinished. Fair enough. I've moved the discussion of Sven, and Thrive's history, over to its own thread.
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 6, 2016 23:47:46 GMT
Following on from the conversation here. I didn't realise Sven had returned. It's disappointing he's angry, but not unexpected. I'm surprised he's talking about the stealing of his intellectual property, though, and find his talk about restoring his database as proof interesting. Since you don't have much in the way of Thrive's history, I'll give a brief account as it relates to this, as best I remember. Evolutions! originally began as a hoax by Sven on the Sporums (a fairly good one, too, in terms of effort put in, I think there were pictures). It followed a worm creature's evolution. It was revealed fairly quickly, but a group of people came together who wanted to make it a reality. The Evolutions! forums were made, with the worm as its mascot, in a nice banner at the top. The main goal was to build the game Spore should have been. There were the basic ideas for editors, stages, and everything, but being so new, they were mostly just outlines. I'm not sure if the idea of auto-evo was around back then, but there was a desire for actual realism, I think, in terms of survival, and scientific accuracy where possible. There were a couple of detailed concepts, though, even back then, the main one being ~sciocont's detailed, comprehensive document describing the Organism Editor, a unified creature and plant editor. I join some time after the Evolutions! forums were created (several months, probably). There was already a small team, with most, if not all, having played Spore and been disappointed. I would infer from this, and Spore's target audience and the average age of gamers, that most of us would have been young teens at most, and certainly only a few older than 20. Sven contributed too, but was generally much less active than the ‘core team’. The forums were nice. There was plenty of ‘work’ to do thinking up how the game should be. Some people questioned if we needed to keep the ‘!’ in the name, but otherwise things were good. Then we started getting a few spambots. Maybe we had always been getting them, but the admins were doing less to filter them out. Some people wanted to reorganise the forums. So much was changing, the old layout was getting a bit dated. Nothing really changed, and this was probably the main problem. Spambots continued, starting becoming more of a regular sight; the requests for changing the layout went unanswered, and people got irritated. We turned to someone to blame. We turned on the person in charge. We turned on Sven. I'm not sure whether this was the case, but I believe the consensus was he was the only one who could change the forum layout. The spambots were more of an issue, and required active filtering from people with the permissions to delete posts, of which there were few online regularly, and probably few to begin with. Sven may have been the only one able to give permissions to users, but clearly the people with power weren't acting to remove the spam, or share the ability to do so. What is the right thing to do in this situation? We decided to move to a new forum. We didn't just decide, though. There was, as was repeated at the time, a ‘revolution’ to ‘overthrow’ the ‘dictator’ Sven. As I said earlier, we were probably, on average, young teens. We felt abandoned by the person in charge, and wanted more than was being provided. There was a legitimate problem, but it was regrettably responded to, in part, by hate posts. It didn't help that Sven was virtually absent throughout this. He wasn't online regularly. He didn't fix the forum. He didn't solve the spam problem. We rarely ever saw a post from him. He became an abstract figure to blame for the problems we were facing. Amidst this, discussion continued. We had a poll for a new name, and decided on Thrive. Concise, grammatical, and the awkward ‘!’ was gone. Eventually, a link was posted to a new forum, free of spammers, a forum whose layout could be changed as we pleased, and a forum without Sven. Those of us that saw the link, moved. The forums went offline shortly after. Gradually, most of those left behind discovered the new forums, and we regrouped. We kept these forums for a while. Extended periods of downtime forced us to retreat to a backup forum on occasion. Eventually, it became a problem, and we decided to move once more. Again, people were left behind as the old forums went offline for good, particularly those who didn't know about the obscure backup forums on which we had to post the link. We regrouped over time, as before. This forum, I think, is what is now referred to as the old forum. Sven has a right to be upset. A ton of hate was directed at him, and the community held a grudge for a while, for no reason other than that he had probably more important things to do, than manage a forum all day. I'm not sure how valid he is in that we stole his work. He posted the hoax that was the inspiration, but Evolutions! as it existed in the forums was always a collaborative effort (after the intial hoax, many other members were far more active, more invested even, than he), and the team moved as a whole to the new forums. There was no ‘small group branching off’. There was no-one left on the old forums when it went offline. His refusal to acknowledge Thrive as what he created is upsetting, and his desire to create a new Evolutions!, rather than come back to a new Thrive community which would now welcome him, doesn't help his image. He is correct in saying we stripped his name from the idea, and continued the work he began without him. We paid respect to our origins, in a way, by inventing a ‘company name’, Revolutionary Games, as a reference to Evolutions!, and the events which led us to become Thrive. As for Sven, after Evolutions! he seemed to just disappear, and in the time that followed we rarely mentioned him. It was a matter of the past, and a low point in our history. I'm a bit disappointed that we have defended ourselves by saying that Thrive is different to the original idea of Evolutions!. The original outline was created then. Tweaks were made, but I'd say most of our efforts went into filling in the details, which were admittedly scarce at the time. The truth, from my perspective, is Evolutions! abandoned him, and he abandoned us.
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 6, 2016 21:00:08 GMT
Never heard of this i'll try it out also are you new? I have never seen you before. On the contrary, very, very old (no offense TheUteen), from the old Thrive forums. Yup. Still getting to know the new folk. Greetings.
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 6, 2016 0:17:04 GMT
I think I tried the one in the main folder first, and then had to check a readme or something to figure out I needed the one in /bin/. If it's meant to be a shortcut, it's not in the version I downloaded.
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 6, 2016 0:10:36 GMT
I think this is the thread where we came up with early multicellular stage. I'm surprised there isn't a separate sub-topic for this on the news forums. It's completely different to late multicellular, it seems odd to group them together. EDIT: it's a thread, at least. Looks like the discussion is all over the place.
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 5, 2016 23:58:15 GMT
Do we still have a list of these people? They deserve an honorable mention in the credits. ~sciocont was one of them… And as much as we like to criticise him, Sven made the post that was the inspiration for this whole idea, and set up the forums. Was Poisson around back then? I think Noitulove might have been. And there were others, some of whom never made it to the Thrive era. I wonder if the forums are still accessible via The Wayback Machine. We'd probably need to hunt around in the old forums for a link to the older forums, then search them for the link to the Evolutions! forums. Providing the context of Spore is helpful. Released in 2008… It's nearly 8 years old now. There could be people talking on these forums who were born after that game was released. Makes me feel old. That's… One way to put it. Is it just me, or does this sentence seem to contradict itself? All we ever seemed to do was talk about concepts. But we were really commited to those concepts, the idea of a game which always seemed on the verge of becoming a reality. Just a few more developers… A few more prototypes. Then we'll have something to show for our dedication. Sounds familiar. Looks like I was just around for this. My… failed attempt to continue to check in a bit less regularly… was a month after. Maybe all those people coming in calling the game vapourware (legitimately, at the time) got to me… I have great respect for everyone who stuck with Thrive through that time. All the progress in the past year is really promising. Anyone looking at those devblogs would see a game actually being made. Anyone looking through the new development forums now would see that we actually have knowledgeable, dedicated people actively working to make Thrive a reality. Anyone trying the recent versions of the game would see that we have actually made something worth playing. Good work, to all of you. Thank you all for making Thrive a reality. And thanks, Oliveriver, for the article. Hopefully the most interesting parts of Thrive's history are still to come.
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 5, 2016 22:48:34 GMT
How hasn't this been posted yet? Simple, fun, relaxing natural selection game. Darwin Pond
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 5, 2016 22:34:53 GMT
The graphics still look fine, in my opinion. It's aged better than some games. I recently rebought this on GOG ( link). On there it's DRM-free, only £6.89. Original version with patches, so all the old mods still work. Creature Chaos & Insect Invasion are the big ones to try out. GOG take old games, update them with support for modern computers (and OSX sometimes), and make them available for download DRM-free. No client or online checks, just the game. Might be preferable to Steam for some people. Impossible Creatures summary, for anyone interested: You first build an army in the editor, then when you start a game you can select an army to use. In the campaign, you build up a single persistent army using creatures you collect from the islands you travel through. The game has a sense of humour, and, in my opinion, quite a difficult campaign (I got stuck in later levels, beat it once with cheats). Really a great game, worth a try for anyone who likes Thrive. EDIT: multicellular already?
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 5, 2016 21:39:53 GMT
One in the main folder, one in /bin/. Just a bit confusing, is there a technical reason for this?
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 5, 2016 21:36:04 GMT
I use Parallels, which likes to reset the DPI at every opportunity.
I managed to get Windows working fullscreen with 1× DPI once, allowing me to make the high resolution report, but since then I've been struggling to make it stick. There's probably a trick to it I need to figure out.
I can probably solve all these issues easily just by running Windows at a lower resolution, just a bit of a hassle and doesn't look as pretty.
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 5, 2016 14:39:26 GMT
Thanks, everyone!
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 5, 2016 14:02:25 GMT
Tested at 2880×1800: Main menu buttons overlap, labels don't always fit in buttons.
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 5, 2016 12:55:47 GMT
Currently, trying to run the game at a high DPI settings causes the game to no longer fit the screen:
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The Uteen
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Post by The Uteen on Mar 5, 2016 12:29:52 GMT
Lots of text wrapping in-game, and buttons overlapping in the main menu.
This is without changing the DPI. Usually I'd have the DPI at 1.5× or higher, so I can actually see things, but that causes the game to start rendering offscreen.
EDIT: Does a thread exist for resolution & DPI issues? If not, should it be made in the community forums, or development?
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