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Post by Oliveriver on Feb 17, 2017 12:46:34 GMT
At some point in the near future, we’ll be implementing a behaviour tab to the microbe editor (currently an unselectable grey button in the new GUI). It might include options to synthesise and upgrade agents, but that’s a topic for another day. We have some ideas, but it’d be a good idea to have a discussion about it with the wider community to see what the general feeling is. There's an existing thread on our dev forums which I recommend you read first. I don’t think there was really much of a conclusion there. Ages ago, right after this forum was created, Scottnov suggested an idea I quite like here as well. Before I begin, I’ll point out this is the first of our so-called in-depth discussion threads. Anyone can participate, but moderation here will be stricter than usual to promote an environment the developers would want to join in with. Your post must contribute to the discussion, stay on topic and be linguistically coherent. How much of an impact do we want the behaviour editor to have on gameplay? Is it only editing the behaviour of AI members of your species or are you affected by automated decisions as well? If so, to what extent? Somewhere in a past discussion someone suggested that another member of your species could come along and force you to bond to it for a few seconds using bonding agents. Is that a good idea for gameplay or just plain annoying? At the same time, auto-evo could affect species behaviour just as it does your own species. Mutations could involve changes to reflex actions or something. As for the interface, I quite like the idea of having input blocks, process blocks and output blocks, a little like Scratch. Drawing wires between blocks to activate them would cost mutation points, so in some cases you’d have to choose between evolving a new organelle or upgrading your species’ intelligence. What would those inputs and outputs be? Is there a better solution to all of this?
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Post by Oliveriver on Feb 16, 2017 18:31:03 GMT
I felt my condescending Beethoven profile picture was too confrontational, which is why I'm now Gustav Mahler. Not so iconic perhaps, but a bit more pleasant. This is a great avatar but Beethoven was like your brand, man. I know, but I didn't want my brand to be an angry disapproving person.
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Post by Oliveriver on Feb 15, 2017 21:40:23 GMT
Graphic design, XML and Lua scripting. We have a tutorial here which roughly guides you through adding GUI content to the game, but as I found, there are countless annoying bits off to the side you have to learn to work with for everything to function correctly. Plus, if you're not well versed in graphic design in the first place you can't exactly get anywhere.
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Post by Oliveriver on Feb 15, 2017 21:36:36 GMT
I felt my condescending Beethoven profile picture was too confrontational, which is why I'm now Gustav Mahler. Not so iconic perhaps, but a bit more pleasant.
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Post by Oliveriver on Feb 15, 2017 18:14:37 GMT
You have valid points. But from now on I have no opinion on the GUI because my work on it is done. Next time it needs updating, someone else is doing it.
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Post by Oliveriver on Feb 15, 2017 18:10:52 GMT
We'll be attempting another livestream at 20:00 GMT this Saturday. I've updated the opening post with the info. At the moment, it looks like participants will be: me, seregon, TheCreator, hhyyrylainen, montiegm and maybe some others depending on whether they're available. The stream will appear here if you want to set a reminder.
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Post by Oliveriver on Feb 12, 2017 22:12:53 GMT
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Post by Oliveriver on Feb 1, 2017 20:42:15 GMT
The health bar is all the way at the opposite corner of the screen from the other bars, which makes it difficult to focus on them both (plus that DNA coloring is really off-putting and the numbers on all bars need to be bolded at the very least). I'll concede it's difficult to focus on both, but in future the health bar will flash red whenever taking damage so the issue might be reduced a little. Where would you suggest the health bar and compound bars go, considering moving themwould involve displacing other buttons and breaking symmetry with the editor? I personally like the DNA fill but will make it a bit more transparent. Without it the health/mutation bars look bland. Emboldening the text is possible but tricky, since CEGUI needs an new font file, and a new font definition file for italic and bold variants. Also, what is that tiny ATP tracker doing right down there by the menu button? In future that lower bar will contain a horizontal scrollable list of all the organelle bars the player has selected to have close to hand (see here), so the tracker is supposedly temporary. Although now I think about it, a permanent mini ATP tracker next to the health bar might work. I think that could be solved by shading their buttons different colors (green means health, purple means poison, blue means speed, etc.) as well as separating their costs and names by either color or font so they catch the eye better. I see your point, but this risks confusing colours between compounds and organelles. We're having trouble finding enough distinct compound colours as it is. We will definitely have major guidance on organelle functions in the form of tooltips or info windows in future. Finally, your tutorial popups are kinda hard to read given that they are white text on a light blue background and the environment is light blue with white bubbles. Noted. I don't think black or bright colours would match the aesthetic, and I'm reluctant to use the blue of the rest of the buttons unless the panels are made to look like buttons - given the way the tutorial is coded with the tutorial panel changing size willy-nilly, this would wreak havoc with the bevel sizes unless the buttons were dynamically defined, and I don't know how to do that. I'll try working with other shades of white or blue. Please don't interpret it as grouchy nitpicking Apologies but it's kind of hard not to given the overall tone. Your points are valid but you could phrase them a little differently, both here and in other similar posts.
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Post by Oliveriver on Jan 30, 2017 20:20:06 GMT
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Post by Oliveriver on Jan 21, 2017 21:48:56 GMT
roadkill I've moved your threads to this thread because they didn't exactly merit being threads on their own. Apologies, but we'd like to reduce clutter. You're free to keep discussing them here.
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Post by Oliveriver on Jan 18, 2017 20:48:31 GMT
We're not going to have a dedicated humping button guys. Finally, some damned sense. And with that, consider this thread locked.
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Post by Oliveriver on Jan 15, 2017 8:59:54 GMT
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Post by Oliveriver on Jan 14, 2017 22:09:15 GMT
Ok, so now that the livestream is over (or rather, as I type we're preparing to end), what did everyone who watched think of it? What suggestions do you have for next time? What would you like to see us talk about in detail? Here's the video on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkWGQYIxgVA
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Post by Oliveriver on Jan 14, 2017 15:51:24 GMT
Does anybody else here get 'ticks' as I call them? Sometimes my neck, one of my arms or legs randomly spasms a bit. It doesn't hurt and I've had it all my life but I wanted to know if anyone else here had them or knew what they're really called and causes them. If you mean what I think you mean, I get these all the time, sometimes for worryingly long periods of time in worrying places. They're called fasciculations, and while they can be caused by conditions that warrant concern, they're far more likely to be benign, no threat to your health at all if you can handle their annoyance.
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Post by Oliveriver on Jan 13, 2017 21:32:41 GMT
I'm making this the notice thread for all livestreams, at least for the time being. We're having another to celebrate the release of Thrive 0.3.3 this Saturday at 20:00 GMT. We'll again be taking questions from the YouTube chat, and perhaps we'll actually have some proper topics to talk about this time. Be there or be poorly adapted. Just so everyone knows, a few of the devs (which will probably be me, seregon , crodnu , hhyyrylainen , Narotiza , TheCreator and maybe a few others if they're around) will be livestreaming a casual chat thing tomorrow at 20:00 GMT. We don't really have a topic, but we'll answer questions from the YouTube live chat system if we can. If you have anything specific you'd like us to talk about, reply to this thread. Don't expect anything professional - we're not entirely sure what we're doing. It might be fun though. The livestream will appear at the address below when it's time:
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Post by Oliveriver on Jan 6, 2017 21:49:22 GMT
Just one minor thing: the organelles no longer glow green or red in the editor to show whether they can be placed or not.
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Post by Oliveriver on Dec 28, 2016 16:27:49 GMT
LongisquamaHere's something to try. Open ogre.cfg in the bin folder, and next to 'Video Mode' change the resolution to the resolution of your screen.
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Post by Oliveriver on Dec 27, 2016 13:03:24 GMT
- Why is there an active cilia button in the editor? There are no cilia in the game yet unless you've sneakily added them, in which case they're not loading when clicked. - The intro video goes stupidly fast and doesn't sync with the intro music. - My cell seems to be travelling much faster than it used to, to the point where items in the environment can't load before I arrive at them. It might be the same for NPC cells, I'm not sure. - Clicking the editor button in the tutorial crashed the game, but didn't when I tried reproducing it. It happened after I entered the editor from the main menu, finished to enter the environment, then returned to the main menu and clicked new game again. - A couple of GUI glitches and oddities (hitbox for the main menu editor button, for instance), largely irrelevant since the new GUI will replace them. - Same as in the last few versions, music and sound effects keep playing for a few seconds after entering a new scene. The intro music even played in its entirety after I entered the game from the main menu. - The membrane is tighter than before, which means the oscillations distort it more and make it look boxy. Plus the flagella end up hovering unconnected to the membrane as it wobbles.
Other than that, great work!
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Post by Oliveriver on Dec 21, 2016 22:00:02 GMT
That the system he's implemented (to my knowledge) doesn't follow many, if any, of the concept the theorists have devised for the CPA (Compounds, Population dynamics, Auto-evo) system. It basically just randomly mutates NPC microbes each time they split. AI cells will no longer be static, but there isn't any feedback between their success levels and transfer of genes as there is in real evolution. Here's some interesting reading on the full CPA system, which we'll implement at some point in the future: forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/cpa-prototype/160forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/cpa-algorithm/145but wouldn't random evolution create a tonne of creatures that are too bad too live, like a creature like 50 flagella but only 1 mitochondria? That's my point - the system being implemented at the moment doesn't check. The checking part is the complicated bit the team's spent so long devising.
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Post by Oliveriver on Dec 21, 2016 19:19:38 GMT
That the system he's implemented (to my knowledge) doesn't follow many, if any, of the concept the theorists have devised for the CPA (Compounds, Population dynamics, Auto-evo) system. It basically just randomly mutates NPC microbes each time they split. AI cells will no longer be static, but there isn't any feedback between their success levels and transfer of genes as there is in real evolution. Here's some interesting reading on the full CPA system, which we'll implement at some point in the future: forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/cpa-prototype/160forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/t/cpa-algorithm/145
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