Before anyone gets too excited, I have to, regrettably, start out on a low note -- No, we don't have a game for you right now. Development is a painstaking process, and we have multiple people working on the code from multiple ends, but today, we still can't release.
That being said, many grand symphonies have started out low. It is my pleasure to introduce to you a beautiful piece of art created by our newest composer, Alessandro Penna, aka "Doggit" - The Underwater Theme.
This, along with a space theme by the same talented composer, will be available for you to download shortly.
Now that you've something nice to listen to, I can begin to fill you in on some of the mysteries of development. All aspects are still coming along quite nicely, and we've been developing a lot of new ideas and trying to find holes in old ones to fill. Personally, I've been doing a lot of maths, which will aide us in the future, but can already tell you a lot about the game. Gallileo once said that "Mathematics is the language with which God wrote the universe." We're using C++ and OpenGL as well, but the process is fairly analogous.
Since you will be evolving on a planet, it's a good idea for me to elaborate on how the planet will work and be constructed. This might get a bit dense, so I'll try to find some pictures to help out.
Our planet is a cube, but not an ordinary cube- it's distended into the shape of a sphere so that it resembles a planet. We use the cube because surface coordinates and mapping are easy to do on a cube, and can be easily transferred to a sphere mathematically. Our planets will essentially be very complex versions of this:
Only the geometry of the original cube can be maintained, so we can only have a certain level of detail. We've based the following figures on an edge length (for each single unit on the planet's surface) of 3 meters. Of course, they'll all have slightly different lengths when distended, but the original length will be 3m.
Given that, we've discussed using a 4096*4096*6 tile arrangement for the cube, which would result in a total flat surface area of 474.36 km2. People often make comparisons between thrive and spore- spore players estimated the total surface area of a spore world (including areas that you couldn't visit because they were underwater) to be roughly 1.5 km2. This means that a planet in thrive will have at least 316 times more area to explore than a spore planet. And you can explore it underwater, which brings us to our next bombshell.
We've assured you that you can play as an underwater organism in Thrive, and that's a promise we plan on keeping. However, we've always discussed in depth the possibility of creating a civilization underwater, and always agreed that it's a distinct possibility- to a point.
The problem is that just about every technology known to man requires a certain prerequisite technology, that we've had for a long, long time, and that is impossible to have underwater. If you're some sort of genius, you'll have already guessed that that technology is fire. Fire is a prerequisite for metalworking, which pretty much defines all technology after the stone age. Underwater, you'll never be able to work metals, and therefore will be trapped in the stone age forever, unless you:
- Are given technology by another race (we call this being "uplifted")
- Are amphibious, or somehow develop technology that allows you to be amphibious
Unless either of those is fulfilled, you're not going very far. And believe me when I say that we've explored every angle, from underwater volcanoes (not hot enough), to seawater batteries(difficult to control if you somehow build them underwater), to electric eel farms (ridiculous) to try to find a way to work metals underwater. Sadly, we've found none.
Our number one concern after we'd finished the evolution concept (which has been tweaked a little, but remains basically the same), was the Tech Editor. Unlike the OE it should be able to build anything, and doesn't have any certain hierarchy with which to build it. We've recently done a lot of conceptual work on the TE, and created a basic conceptual framework upon which to build it. Here's a quote from the thread:
Someone wrote: Structural Design Tab- for supports and the internal skeleton of the tech contains different beams, boxes, etc that will support the surfaces and FPs laid onto them.
Surfacing Tab- for the smooth surfaces of a TO, the walls of a building or the sheetmetal of a car
Internal Systems Tab- the tab in which FPs are placed onto the structureThese tabs don't need to be used in any specific order (unlike the OE) so you can drag out a FP and then build up from it if you wish.
There will be several different tools for shaping in the surfacing and structural tabs, which we should discuss in greater detail soon. These tabs will also hold some simple machine FPs so there won't be a need to constantly shift from one tab to another If you are making, say, a folding chair, because its hinges are "joint" FPs.
A materials tool is present in all of the tabs, which allows the user to select the materials that a structure, surface, or FP is made of. FPs will be modified through spore-like handles.
Here's some ideas of my own:
FPs can be edited further through "deep editing" where their exact attributes can be modified numerically, through sliders, etc. to fine tune their shape, structure, and behavior to the player's desire.In the FP tab, as well as the other two tabs, there are symmetry options just like those in the OE, so radial, bilateral, and asymmetric settings can be switched between. However, in the FP tab, there are more options. FPs can be "symmetrified" so that two of the same FP will have all of the exact same attributes, and if the attributes of one are changed, the attributes of all are changed. If the player wishes to stop symmetrification, they can remove one or all the FPs from the symmetry group.
If that doesn't get you excited, see the top of this thread.
That's not everything that's been happening, but I thought it would be appropriate for you all to know what's going on. Please, if you have any questions, ask them here, and if you know any programmers, send them our way.
Mine and the team's best regards to all our fans,
~sciocont, Revolutionary Games Team Lead
-A more in-depth look at planet-making can be found on this brilliant website.
Wonderful, it is great to see that this game continues to make progress, and my disappointment that this project had died has now been proved wrong. It is also nice to see all the work going into this to make it as realistic and extensive as possible, and I doubt one could get bored of playing this because of all the different ways they can evolve their species.
Good luck, and I wish you guys all the best as you continue to make this brilliant project a reality.
Thanks for the support!
I am really glad to see that the game is still making progress. The only thing that I am concerned about is the graphics and how my computer will be able to handle them. Well at any rate, I am glad to see you guys are making progress and I can't wait to play it!
Without elaborating too much, guiding a Coral's growth might work for building materials, as well as genetically modifying corals to use different materials to build. And if an engineered organisms, like Coral, build themselves out of a less than beneficial material, natural selection isn't a problem as long as it's being cultivated properly.
Genetic engineering requires nanotechnology, which requires metallurgy way down the line. It's a catch 22. Even if you selectively breed them, corals are rocks- their forms are made out of calcium carbonate, known to geologists as limestone. It doesn't conduct electricity or make fires, so it doesn't solve the problem. Points for creativity though.
What I'm saying is feel free to use some of your own creativity in how you set up wildlife. I'm sure some people will want to have terrestrial limitations applied at every turn, but others might be hoping for some alien environments.
I'd imagine a race would need to be "technologically amphibious" before proceeding to space, anyhow. Fluid is considerably heavier than gas, and that species would be susceptible to 'the bends' in lower pressure environments.
For surface expansion, I'd imagine it would be achievable at its base stage early on. They could build a tube under-water, perhaps out of masoned and sealed limestone or what have you, and then push it up and out over the shoreline. This race would want to use pumps and maybe water mills to keep artificially constructed water ways aerated enough to breathe.
They could also have access to industrial plastics as soon as refining oil is a viable option. So an aquatic race isn't necessarily at a disadvantage in tech, it's just a different approach. I'll touch on relevance in a later post.
Fire is a prerequisite to oil refining. It doesn't matter how creative you get, and you're getting very creative- this just isn't going to happen, It's extremely impractical to the point of absurdity. We want the game to be fun, but we also want it to be realistic.
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No matter how much time, but I will wait for the Spore which I always wanted.
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How have I only just found out about this game. This looks to be the game that Spore was meant to be. Amazing work guys, I wish you the best of luck.
I have a question and maybe an answer
First, can I be god? lol.... (I know you said scientific theories, but science cant prove he doesnt exist or does)
"We've assured you that you can play as an underwater organism in Thrive"
"And believe me when I say that we've explored every angle"
^^^About the fire thing^^^
What about under water caves with a volcano in the cave? Also, us humans have managed to breath underwater right?(I mean using air bottle,etc.) Using the system aquarium works (Doesnt even have to use electricity, just a manual thing that you turn to make the water have some air in it and thats all,even if you wanted electricity just use those electric fish), they could basicly make something to go outside the water (Using dead bodies/wood/rocks,etc they have everything they could need to make it, to move they could use a wheel systems, with rocks and stuff they have under water, that is if they cant walk of course)
Btw, cannot imagine Ive never seen this game/mod before, its going to be awesome +1 player here
Also using underwater pressure with compressed gas (of course in a sort of controlled environnement), they could make fire (pressure makes the temperature go up right?)
Everyone planning to argue with this guy on whether science can prove God or not, get off the computer right now.
I don't want a flame war to erupt on such a glorious game.
You're right on a few points-
Pressure does correlate with temperature, due to the ideal gas law, PV=nRT, where P is Pressure and T is temperature-if you increase one and hold all others constant, the other will increase as well- however, fire requires an oxygen-filled environment, since combustion is a very specific RedOx reaction.
-The heat given off by volcanoes is too low to melt chunks of (non-noble) metals, and if you encounter one underwater that is hot enough, the water immediately around it is going to be just as hot, so your organism will die if it gets too close.
-If your species develops technology that allows them to stay on land for extended periods of time, that's what we call being "technologically amphibious"- which I did mention in the above post.
-It's much, much easier to breathe air underwater than breathe in water in air, and there are a few reasons for this.
--Either way, you need oxygen, which is much more common in air than in water, since liquids don't absorb gases well, there's something on the order of less than 20% of the oxygen in a comparable volume of air than can be found in water at room temperature. this means that you'd have to carry at least five times the volume of water you'd need for a gilled organism than you would need for a lunged organism, and that's not even considering the compression of a regular scuba tank, which is usually around 300 atm.
--As gases become more soluble in colder liquids, to achieve maximum solubility you'd have to cool the liquid to a very low temperature, preferably below the freezing point (you can do this using solid solutes, it's called freezing point depression) but this would be dangerous for your creature as it would sap out their body heat.
-So for "land scuba gear", (and I've done all of the math on this, I'm not estimating-It's all at STP if you want to check it.) for an organism with comparable metabolism to a human, you'd need for them to bring along 11,190 liters of water for every one liter of air a SCUBA diver would need.
goddam, I love all the math you're doing on this. The best of luck to you man. I really hope to see the brilliance I never got w/ Spore shine through this.
Thanks.
You only really need enough water to fill the "gill capacity" and keep the creature in question hydrated.
The primary function of the water in the breathing process of any aquatic organism is to "cut" the air so as not to drive the organism's respiratory system into shock. This means, they just need enough water to absorb the proper amount of air before introducing it to their system. Gills are optimized to filter breathable air from water, the water is then discarded.
Water isn't bonded to carbon as oxygen is when we expel it from our bodies, so it's still viable after having passed a creature's respiration cycle, it just needs to be filtered and replenished. Both of these tasks are easily accomplished, filtration occurs naturally with little more than common dirt and aerating the water is accomplished whenever bubbles are present. There's no need to carry a fresh supply of compressed water everywhere they go, if anything they'd be carrying around an air supply to keep their water breathable.
The aforementioned plastic can of course then be used to create a "fishbowl helmet" as well as other components necessary for a pressure suit.
Water doesn't bond to carbon- Oxygen in the water does. It's true that the oxygen in water is easy to replenish, so long as you have enough surface area exposed, but for a large organism, you'll still need a huge amount of water compared to its size- think of a goldfish in a goldfish bowl. You'd need to carry around a lot of water just to make the system viable, an amount that is large and prohibitive enough to stop you from going very far in the first place. You wouldn't be able to carry a supply of compressed water because liquids don't compress. You're quite creative, and valiantly trying to resurrect this, but it's so improbable that any of this could work that it's not worth our time to specifically program it into the game.
Well, whatever, I just thought a little more diversity would help achieve your guys' tag line up there.
The larger portion of the game, at least if you plan on having species able to explore space, is going to essentially be based on science fiction, to my knowledge we haven't managed to even conceive of efficient space travel due to resource limitations.
Scientific accuracy is great in the real world, where using it properly yields informative results every time, but in developing videogames you wanna set a threshold for suspense of disbelief as well. If Frank Herbert was worried about insulting his readers' intelligence, he would have stopped writing Dune when he got to the part about a cinnamon-like drug that makes its users prescient and near immortal, especially if he had already thought up the part about how it's made.
I'm not trying to defend aquatic races specifically, I'm making sure you really want to go against your apparent design goal. I could always type up a slippery slope speech about the dangers of conceding to strict logic alone in creative works, but those are only good for a quick chortle.
Besides, I'm having fun bouncing these ideas back and forth. Who said they would be average human sized? I'm sure we're only this big because it has benefited us through our history as a species. Furthermore, how could we have gone this long without mentioning blowholes? In thinking about concessions for gills, I forgot there were mammalian sea creatures.
I only brought up the size for the sake of comparison- oxygen intake is going to scale with size, making them human sized and having a human-like metabolism just made the maths easier. In fact, since gills are much less efficient at taking in oxygen than lungs, the odds are even more extreme than I presented them. I mentioned that the only barrier preventing air breathing animals from going on to land was movement, and that can easily be solved. Not having advanced aquatic civilizations makes the game a lot easier for us to think about
yeh your right its like the Zindi in Star-Trek the aquatics ships are 50x the size to accommodate all the water to make it survivable its 1 thing startrek did get right lol
but try to remember its a game not a documentary you can have any type of life and does the life have to form from Darwins idea no we can have it so an advanced race made them etc you have many possibility's at your hands to can make it easy in some sense and not all life in the sea has gills remember
@RevolutionaryGames: Just make a filtration system and a "fishbowl" helmet, so the oxygen gets filtered into the water...
Awesome this is still being worked on
Okay, thank you guys for developing this glorious game. Although I have one question. When do you guys think the alpha version of this game will be coming? I'm not one of those guys who are like "OMG OMG RELEASE NOW I WANNA PLAY PLZ" I was just wondering how far you guys have gotten ^_^
... I'm afraid we've agreed not to tell the fans about specific progress for a bit. You'll know more soon.
smokers aka underwater volcanos we send probs to them all the time and 1 thing that is good is that it can melt the probe because the water is heated to 1000*c + and there is that much pressure that it keeps the water liquid and still underwater life can survive in those temps
perhaps that is your key to the fire u need :)
Believe me, we've checked this. The highest recorded temperature for a black smoker is 464 °C, and the water around them is supercritical, meaning that it would be deadly to any organism that hasn't evolved to live there, which would be pretty much all complex multicellular life. that temperature isn't high enough to melt most metals that could be found in the ocean in the first place, as copper, your best bet for ocean metallurgy, melts at 1084.62 °C.
yeh the water is that temp eg my heat sink on my computers graphics card is about 31*C but the chip is about 46*C
i remember watching a documentary about them and there is life that has adapted with metal exoskeletons that they collect from the smokers as they do expel a considerable amount of different types of metals
thats the temps on earth whose to say a planet in your game has a really hot core with increased gravity and is completely covered in water and extreme cloud cover naturally
the super hot core would give it a really powerful magnetic field to stop its star if it has 1 from destroying its atmosphere
if you want to be that realistic about it that is
what im saying is does the smokers have to be 407*C its 1 thing ppl wont be to bothered about if they have a extra tangent of game-play to go down....
some extra things you could add also
robotic life you are created from a already advanced race and you be come self aware and do what you want help them or destroy them if you wana its upto u
start off as the flood hehe not halo ripoff but the fungi they based it off (Ophiocordyceps camponoti-balzani)
that second one you may have thought of but its real life-form don't worry tho it ante going to take over the universe only ants lol but how it does it is brilliant dont you think
also that flood idea u dont need tech to get into space i can think of many ways u can get into space with biology here are some fun and easy ways
bags of stored hydrogen eg the life-form can absorb water and i think you use electric current thru the water to make it split i may be wrong on that but i know there's a way it then collects the hydrogen gas in its sack and it floats off out into space
planetary cry (the fungi can create a large tower till it passes the lag range and turns into a tear drop and floats off into space can use gases etc to control its direction)
i got that one from FF8 where the monsters climb on top of each other to get pasted to nullification point between the moon and the planet and they fall towards the planets surface sure its deadly but what the hell its away to do it right fungi could use better methods eg like a coral reef just more structured with a aim
We have plenty of cool ideas in the works.
...... Who said that alien life forms would even be oxygen dependent?
Just a thought -
^ Agreed... who says they even have to be carbon based lifeforms?
Exactly.... They could have been ... Err.... Born? In water, and adapted for life in it, but still able to go onto land or whatnot.
We're basing everything on earth chemistry so that our compounds system doesn't have to simulate all of chemistry, which is a feat no software can accomplish at this moment.
God this game is going to be beautiful.
Make the country's (or citys or what ever) Have a millitayr force of some kind (I know im being akward with the whole OUT OF CONTEST QUESTIONS but still I have so much ideas and there are no special windows for these ideas :D)You could make us build our own weapons like curved swords and bows and things like that and bows dont need fire to be used!
You know... The robot ideas GOOD but you oculd make Cy-borgs too and theid be better than robots but... youd need robotics and nano-tehnology
B/ This game is gona bet he best thing that struck the world since...Computers I think :D
You know...You could make natural catastrophies like Huracanes and Eruptions and (Maybey) A METEOR HITS|but not like in spore more reaistick!!! iLIke everything goes black around the blast zone and some species get shreded from heat and some survive (NATURAL SELECTION BABY!!!)
Heres a contect question for the WATER GILLS idea from JEffman12
How did fishevolve on earth to be on land hmmmmmm?
They take some water into theire gills and go out CONTAINING the water in them see the solution?EVOLVE CAPACITY To STORE WATER!!!!!!
I think that that is a good idea
ANd you could make it so players (in organism mode) can make theire own nests
ckeck out all you wrote and put on before I put in some ideas on earlier posts "
_
question, do you plan to bring flying organisms into the mix
May I ask something Revolutionary Games
1.Can you add more galaxys then 1 (Copy the first but make tghem with less or more stars :D) And that the galaxys can Gravitationaly attract each other and when theire closes you could come to the other galaxy for a good 10.000 years (Run it in Universal Sandbox) ANd a nother thing: Why not make the god mode BE like Universal Sandbox but you can go to the surface and tell me what will the Graphiccs be like (Good of Bad or what ever in the middle)
2.The Organism mode: You could add us pictures of the editors :D
Like the crab picture
But for cells and space and other things and I heard if you had 1 SUPER planet and 1 smaller in the near orbit you could make that be a GRAVITY SHIELD from asteroids :D
3.How will the toolls look?
I agree with CrowBeyondtheWall, WIll there be flying organisms?
If ya need help with bioms send me a PM I have tons of them :D (Ideas)
Im having most of the posts now soo...I have much ideas :D
You could add that the race WHEN AWAKENED can group and domesticate animals so to get food or ride them for travel
The animals you ride could also be in HERDS or in SMALL GROUPS
Think about the moment when a spearman is on a horse and is charging to the enemys whisch is afrade of the power of the horse
You could also add SADLES for the riders and BARNS AND FARMS for food
Also you could make that plants have different shaped fruit and the herbivors can eat a specific tipe only or mulltiple tipes of fruit :D
You could add That the starting universe is 2 PROTONTS Colliding and the universe starts in a 0.0000000000000000000000000001 seconds :D
The other I said :D :D :D :D
Oh yeah!!
Make so that the PLAYER CHOOSES HOW MUCH MATTER IS IN THE UNIVERSE!!!!!!!
:D
You could add that the PLANET EDITOR is simillar to the game FROM DUST of DUST I forgot but with no ppl only with the enviroment.
Please make this for mac! Is it possible that this will happen?
If so, this looks like it will be the BEST GAME EVER.
PS: So are you going to be living in a 3d space like spore? Freely able to move around (assuming you have some form of locomotion)?