SteamBun
Multicellular
Excited for Thrive 0.4.0!
Posts: 21 
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Post by SteamBun on Oct 21, 2017 16:44:11 GMT
First of all, good job development team for even getting the game this far, it may not look like much but I understand the mechanics are already quite extraordinary and amazing. I want to share some of my opinions in this thread.
So compared with Spore's cell stage, other than the lack of organelles most of our mechanics are already superior, except it doesn't seem like that to a normal user.
Currently in Thrive, you have to collect lots of glucose and oxygen to even sustain your ATP for a little while, and not even a little while anymore once you have more than 4 flagellum, this ruins the atmosphere of the game and acts like a barrier to exploration quite like Spore space stage's pirates and ecosystem events. So unless this can be balanced out with more advanced organelles/mechanics, I suggest greatly reducing ATP consumption.
Also, with the lack of sound and graphical effects, Thrive is not satisfying to play right now. In spore, when you eat something or attack another cell, it makes a sound plus some satisfying eye candy. Although unrealistic, this does make the game a lot more enjoyable. In Thrive I suggest cutting the border of realism a little bit to make the game more fun to play, an example would be to allow a sucking noise to play when you absorb compound clouds. And when you engulf another cell or organelle or maybe in the future assimilate bacteria, your cell should have some animation of wrapping around the object then eating it, paired with some sound effects this would be very cool and make hunting possibly more appeasing just because of this.
Finally I would suggest Thrive get a complete graphical overhaul after 0.4.0. Last time Thrive got a graphical overhaul was the switch from hexagons to what we have now, in 2015. Although an incredible jump and perhaps the graphics met standards of 2015. Thrive's graphics can barely be considered decent compared to the games of today, and less so in the future. If we in the future we release the microbe stage with the graphics as of now, it would be quite a disappointment for those who have seen the microbe stage concept arts or had big visions in their minds of what the game would look like. And a 2018 graphics overhaul does not seem impossible with even the current team which will defiantly increase in size after 0.4.0.
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Post by frogonunicycle on Oct 25, 2017 13:56:02 GMT
Hi i like your post but I think maybe an issue is that the science in ATP consumption is not good. Maybe before it was too hard for the player to collect atp so they changed it! So you're not right because of this change. I think idea for eye candy is delicious though  also, I never played much games in 2015 but I think thrive was more 2004 graphics update. winky face Cool ideas, so maybe we can play together in forum game sometime! |
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SteamBun
Multicellular
Excited for Thrive 0.4.0!
Posts: 21
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Post by SteamBun on Oct 27, 2017 2:11:56 GMT
Hi i like your post but I think maybe an issue is that the science in ATP consumption is not good. Maybe before it was too hard for the player to collect atp so they changed it! So you're not right because of this change. I think idea for eye candy is delicious though also, I never played much games in 2015 but I think thrive was more 2004 graphics update. winky face Cool ideas, so maybe we can play together in forum game sometime! Could you link where and which release made ATP easier to collect? Sorry I was looking through the 0.3.4 patch notes and the only thing about ATP balancing was increased compound cloud sizes. While it may make your cell die a lot less it doesn't remove my point that it makes the game grindy and provides an obstacle to exploration. As for the 2004 graphics, that might be pushing it a little, since most 2004 games had basically cs 1.6 graphics. |
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Post by frogonunicycle on Oct 27, 2017 14:36:42 GMT
Maybe the UI is like graphically on par with CS before ad now its like CS source. I will check in my notebook which release had ez atp. I remember before i would just die every day when i got home from no ATP and it was pretty sad. Now i can play the game and abuse the flagella mechanics
Edit: Wanted to mention that the new cs go is really cool! We should get TJ wahle to play it
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bismyb
Multicellular
Posts: 18
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Post by bismyb on Oct 28, 2017 7:31:27 GMT
Currently in Thrive, you have to collect lots of glucose and oxygen to even sustain your ATP for a little while, and not even a little while anymore once you have more than 4 flagellum, this ruins the atmosphere of the game and acts like a barrier to exploration quite like Spore space stage's pirates and ecosystem events. So unless this can be balanced out with more advanced organelles/mechanics, I suggest greatly reducing ATP consumption.”
I’m not sure what you mean because I experience exactly the opposite effect. I get oxygen and glucose way too often and most of the time ATP is not even a concern for me which I think is a little disappointing. This only gets worse when I evolve more mitochondria and vacuoles. I suspect it’s more of a subtle balance issue than a straight up lack of ATP generation.
“Also, with the lack of sound and graphical effects, Thrive is not satisfying to play right now. In spore, when you eat something or attack another cell, it makes a sound plus some satisfying eye candy. Although unrealistic, this does make the game a lot more enjoyable. In Thrive I suggest cutting the border of realism a little bit to make the game more fun to play, an example would be to allow a sucking noise to play when you absorb compound clouds.”
I’ve got to disagree with you there, because while I agree the game needs more atmosphere I don’t think that’s a good addition. Absorbing compounds happens a lot, and that sound would be played to death and get very repetitive and irritating.
“And when you engulf another cell or organelle or maybe in the future assimilate bacteria, your cell should have some animation of wrapping around the object then eating it, paired with some sound effects this would be very cool and make hunting possibly more appeasing just because of this.”
They are definitely already planning for such a feature, they never intended to have no animation here. Also the reasons hunting is not very enjoyable/satisfying is because of gameplay issues they’ve pointed out and discussed on the forums, which they’re planning on introducing in future updates. I think when implemented hunting would really become a fun and engaging experience.
“Finally I would suggest Thrive get a complete graphical overhaul after 0.4.0. Last time Thrive got a graphical overhaul was the switch from hexagons to what we have now, in 2015.”
Don’t worry they’re already planning that. Check out some of the threads on the development forums where you can see them
"Maybe the UI is like graphically on par with CS before ad now its like CS source. I will check in my notebook which release had ez atp. I remember before i would just die every day when i got home from no ATP and it was pretty sad. Now i can play the game and abuse the flagella mechanics"
Which flagella mechanics would that be? Also I don't think you can compare the graphics to CS because CS had detailed animations and textures, and the difference between original and source was not that major.
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SteamBun
Multicellular
Excited for Thrive 0.4.0!
Posts: 21
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Post by SteamBun on Oct 30, 2017 0:30:34 GMT
My point with ATP is not that it is hard to obtain but rather gets used up too quickly. They made compound clouds bigger in 0.3.4, so big they are almost always existing, that's the problem. We need to make oxygen and glucose have at least some difficulty to find without constantly worrying about ATP, and lowering ATP consumption would be a great solution to that.
As for the rest everything I said were quick examples to support my second point that more eye-candy was needed. Your right about the fact that a sound playing when absorbing compound clouds would be too much since your absorbing a lot of those, but again, it was only an example. Perhaps a better alternative would be to make the clouds surrounding the cell to have an animation of moving inwards toward your cell.
As for the graphics overhaul, oh thank god they are planning that! I would hate the cell stage to be released with its current graphics.
Btw that last quote didn't even come from me but I kind of have to back it up. Look up some videos of CS 1.6 and CS Source, the graphics in my opinion are on two different generations.
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Post by zyad137 on Nov 3, 2017 20:45:46 GMT
My point with ATP is not that it is hard to obtain but rather gets used up too quickly. They made compound clouds bigger in 0.3.4, so big they are almost always existing, that's the problem. We need to make oxygen and glucose have at least some difficulty to find without constantly worrying about ATP, and lowering ATP consumption would be a great solution to that. we are planning to make balance update in the new update of 0.4.0 Nick was working on this changing some values here and there and testing we will find the right values for the compounds and consumption of them and when we do we will implement it to the game. |
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Post by hhyyrylainen on Jan 7, 2018 12:43:14 GMT
As for the graphics overhaul, oh thank god they are planning that! I would hate the cell stage to be released with its current graphics. Which part of the graphics do you find looking not good / old? Is it the GUI buttons and style, or the textures or models of the different objects? If so that would be easy to fix for a 3d game artist. If you are instead referring to us not using the modern look of hdr or physically based rendering techniques that pretty much all AAA games use that's a bit more complicated to do and would require completely redoing all the graphics assets. Also related to that when we where doing the ue4 engine testing, which by default uses physically based rendering, many people didn't like the very bright look. |
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SteamBun
Multicellular
Excited for Thrive 0.4.0!
Posts: 21
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Post by SteamBun on Jan 7, 2018 21:04:10 GMT
As for the graphics overhaul, oh thank god they are planning that! I would hate the cell stage to be released with its current graphics. Which part of the graphics do you find looking not good / old? Is it the GUI buttons and style, or the textures or models of the different objects? If so that would be easy to fix for a 3d game artist. If you are instead referring to us not using the modern look of hdr or physically based rendering techniques that pretty much all AAA games use that's a bit more complicated to do and would require completely redoing all the graphics assets. Also related to that when we where doing the ue4 engine testing, which by default uses physically based rendering, many people didn't like the very bright look. I can't say anything in Thrive is looking bad or very old at the moment. The cell stage graphics are decent compared to other modern games. My main concern is that since this game will be done 10 years from now we ought to future-proof the graphics a little, off course I'm not suggesting making the graphics live up to the standards 10 years from now, that's impossible. But make the graphics good enough to last a while so we don't have to constantly change the graphics on previous stages because they don't look good. Also since Thrive is such an amazing and revolutionary game it would only be fitting to have awesome graphics alongside it's extremely ambitious mechanics. |
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Post by hhyyrylainen on Jan 8, 2018 20:37:03 GMT
It's quite hard to do anything to the graphics (unless some new team member is a designer who can redesign it) without specific improvement suggestions. So if you can come up with any concrete suggestions, please share.
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SteamBun
Multicellular
Excited for Thrive 0.4.0!
Posts: 21
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Post by SteamBun on Jan 11, 2018 0:08:03 GMT
Alright, I think some of perhaps the most necessary things to change would be the lighting and gui. Thrive still looks like a unity 4 game in terms of lighting and the some flat gui would make it look more modern (and maybe "feel" more simple to some new players).
Also, I'm not sure how hard this is to make because I'm not an artist so excuse me if I say anything that sounds obnoxious, arrogant or ignorant.
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Post by hhyyrylainen on Jan 13, 2018 19:41:42 GMT
The look of the GUI is easy to change. It is just a png file so any graphical designer (or image artist / anyone) can change it. The lack of lighting is slightly more difficult, but still it needs only changing the materials assigned to the different objects to enable lighting on them (and making sure it looks good).
So neither of these require any programming changes. We currently have no one active who is very good with ogre materials. That makes the lighting suggestion slightly harder.
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Post by NickTheNick on Feb 9, 2018 21:24:14 GMT
The main issue right now is that we are missing any good graphics developers to work on how to improve the game's visuals. We have plenty of plans and ideas (and threads) on how to improve the visuals, we just need to find the manpower to assign to it.
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Post by hhyyrylainen on Feb 10, 2018 22:50:17 GMT
The main issue right now is that we are missing any good graphics developers to work on how to improve the game's visuals. We have plenty of plans and ideas (and threads) on how to improve the visuals, we just need to find the manpower to assign to it. Yes, graphics programmers and shader makers, seem to be at least as rare as good programmers if not even more rare as we currently have none. |
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