I think (as is generally thought) that we should only increase the price for the game when Thrive explodes in popularity following some major milestone being completed (like a stage being “finished”), since the more effort in in a product the more it generally (should) cost.
Speaking of, would we eventually want to create higher patreon tiers or are the current ones enough already?
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We already have a 15€/month tier, and most patrons aren’t on that tier. So people could be giving us a lot more money if they were able and willing to do so.
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I suppose people could also buy multiple patreon subscriptions (as is apparently done by some of the more dedicated ones).
Would there be a push for more radical changes to the financing of Thrive if the money inflow just keeps shrinking in spite of 1.0.0?
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OK. Skip the demo build and present the free version directly on steam. Tie the purchase with some kind symbolic item like a in game list of supports that updates itself or other stuff like maybe a profile frame. Also make a very apparent donation link on the page. I guess in this scenario the purchase its self should not be valued that much so I suppose increasing it isn’t much of any option.
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Isn’t this already a thing for some types of patreonites?
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I think that would actually collapse the income due to how many people would no longer purchase Thrive.
If you mean the Steam page, that’s not allowed.
Also we have our Patreon and the ways to support us linked almost everywhere, still for multiple months in a row now the patron count has been going down.
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I think there’s only one scenario necessitating a free demo on Steam:
If we are already several Stages in and somehow already firmly decided to raise the price higher. Then we could add a free demo on Steam so that it can at least show up in the “Free Demos” section on Steam. At that point I would only put in a very basic block at for example a stage transition.
But I am pretty sure Thrive being forever freely available was a pretty firm promise made in the past, so I don’t want to break that.
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So the demo would just be the microbe stage?
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Should the Stream price be extended by 1 dollar every time a stage is complete, or would that be too much of a shock to potential customers?
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A suggestion based on World Wildlife Fund’s list:
For Visualization:
Your Earlier (pre grassland) version
and my suggestion
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Can anything lay above polar in this system or would this be never expected to happen?
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The worldgen is able to load in alternate biome mapping tables, so as long as a map of Average Temperature and Average Rainfall to Biome ID is provided, then we can test out multiple different variants.
If you wanted to continue your suggestions, I would be happy to test them in the worldgen.
My implementation is similar to the one described at this link: https://github.com/hexagram30/map/issues/23
It might be easiest to make a spreadsheet like this:
Except that instead of colors, you have the biome ids (You could provide colors in RGB hex for ease of visualization as a separate biome color map table)
Note that the annual precipitation axis is exponential. The 62.5 to 16000 mm precipitation range seems to be standard, same as the diagrams you created. You could also use the potential evapotranspiration ratio instead of the average temperature if you provide an equation to convert from precipitation and temperature to evapotranspiration ratio.
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Speaking of the worldgen, when is the new planet biome generator thing supposed to be added to the game proper? Certainly not with 1.0.0 at this point, but still within 1.X.Xs?
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By most definitions, Antartica is “barren”. The problem is, by most definitions, “barren” means a lack of Vascular plants. Anartica has more than 800 species of Non-Vascular plants, at least 250 species of Lichen (technically not a plant), 2 species of Vascular plants, and Penguins (amongst other things). Its “barren” because there is ONLY 2 species of Vascular plants, but it is still teeming with other types of life.
I am not very good at naming things, but I believe there should be a clear distinction between a completely lifeless barrens and a barrens teeming with “lower” life forms (but not qualifying to be grasslands, shrublands, or forests (or savannahs or woodlands)).
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Would the “true” barrens then be like the Himalayan mountaintops, or do such places not even exist on Earth?
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Most of the “lifeless” places on earth (for macroscopic life anyway) are either:
- Boiling Hot and/or Acidic (great for certain micro-organisms, but not for macroscopic ones)
- Anaerobic (No Oxygen) (again, great for certain micro-organisms, but not for macroscopic ones)
- Tar Pits (yet again, great for certain micro-organisms, but not for macroscopic ones)
- Hypersalinated (a few bacteria can handle some level of hypersalinity, but they are less numerous than the ones that thrive in other extreme environments, and there appear to be extremes beyond what even they can handle)
- Toxic (usually because of human waste) (a few microbes actual like some toxins)
- The Atacamba Desert (Southern Peru and Northern Chile) actually receives less precipitation than polar deserts, and certain parts are considered more inhospitable than anything listed above
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So it could be the sole true inhospitable place…
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On the surface, at least. The Core of the planet is also thought to be inhospitable, though we don’t have a way to check that yet.
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I mean it’s not like we’d be simulating it for life patches
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OMG, so many things, what do I thank you for first . . .
The International Union for Conservation of Nature Global Ecosystem Typology for 2020 actually lists “Large Seabird and Pinniped Colonies” as a Biome.
A function-based typology for Earth’s ecosystems
MT2.2Large seabird and pinniped colonies
This is one of the reasons my attempts to classify biomes got stuck. Another is I came up with “plausible” things that don’t seem to have names and am bad at naming things. For example, Earth has Flooded Forests and Flooded Grasslands separate from Swamps and Marshes. By many definitions, a Savannah seems to be something inbetween a Grassland and a Shrubland or Woodland (having to many Wood-y plants to qualify for a Grassland, but not enough to classify for either a Shrubland or a Woodland), and there are Flooded Savannahs, but, there does not seem to be a word for a Savannah wetland that more of an inbetween a Marsh and a Swamp than it is Flooded. Does that make sense?
Another was presence or absence of peat. Example:
- Peat Forest (not a wetlands)
- Peat Swamp
- Wood-y Fen
- Wood-y Bog
Also, trying to define the difference between a Fen and other peat wetlands.
Thank you.
Again, thank you.
Wow, I was working on a way to classify potential plants (before getting distracted by another project), trying to include plausible combinations of traits that didn’t occur on Earth (like a Thermophototrophic (Brown Photosynthesis) Tall Grass-like Gymnosperm), but your examples are beyond what I thought of. It seems my incomplete plant classification system needs more work than I thought.
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