True. Though other game elements from those stage, often more important than a loading screen story, can very well get this time too for the devteam/devforce to know what to do once these stages are reached.
Since harmonyjpetersen appeared to be explicitly wanting to:
put it to the community to see if it agrees with my design thoughts before diving into them
I would love to link above post to them, but it seems they’re not actually on this community forum, unless it’s under a different name than in the developer forum.
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I think it’s good, especially as before this point there was no solid plan regarding the strategy stages.
To my awareness that dev forum post is rather young, so the chances are it wasn’t published here yet.
Very few developers frequent these forums, with the majority of the developers not even having accounts here. So that’s the most likely case.
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Though thankfully there are some users willing to post about what’s been going on in the dev forum in this forum. Like Rathalos for example.
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I like reading the posts relevant to world generation as well as the society stages, though I won’t have too much to say about society until the world generation is finished. The idea of society stage still seems quite in flux, and I am mainly interested on the implementation of it, so hopefully we can figure out a more solid plan so that it has actionable tasks to works on once 1.0 is out.
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So following 1.0 (as in right after the release), will the “barebones” macroscopic+ prototypes get more content?
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I don’t think the main focus will shift, but I think we will try to get a more solid plan for the further stages at 1.0 release so that we could accommodate additional volunteers who are attracted by Thrive wanting to work on the later stages. If we can’t do it by 1.0 release because of time constraints and focusing on polishing microbe, then we could dedicate some time for planning after the release is done. Figuring out the 3D creature editor is a priority, as we want to get a solid idea for that so that any potential volunteers would be able to know exactly what they need to do.
So, hopefully 1.0 attracts others to begin more work on the later stages.
I am already working on the world generator, which is mainly focused on macroscopic+, but that is still unknown how long it will take to actually get into the game. I am still hopeful that it can get into a prototype stage(s) by 1.0 release. If that is the case, then I at least would be primarily working on the prototypes while the main team would be focusing on the multicellular stage.
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I recall in the past there were some plans for making galaxy generator be already complete by microbe’s development finish because “you could see the sky when you got to late multicellular”…
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Coincidentally, that is what I was thinking on yesterday. I don’t know if I will get to it anytime soon, but I have a rough plan for galaxy generation. I don’t think the generation part is the difficult part actually (at least for a rough galaxy generation compared to world generation), but rendering the galaxy could be difficult.
It seems the usual way, like what space engine uses, does raymarching. Which is what the expensive modern cloud rendering uses, so there is some overlap with future cloud rendering.
Like this: Shader - Shadertoy BETA
I might just make a simple galaxy generator, but then just render it as a 2D galaxy map initially. Or maybe a simple isometric version.
Anyway around it, it should be relatively simple to make a cubemap skybox from the galaxy that can be used in the earlier stages. Though we still don’t have a solid plan for organism vision figured out yet, so I am not sure if most creatures will be able to actually see that much unless they have well developed eyes. It might take until aware stage for eyes to become good enough to see that level of detail if we do it that way?
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Given the recent split between multicellular and macroscopic, the sky/galaxy generator won’t be needed until the completion of multicellular development now.
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Exactly, that’s why I first mentioned that it was planned for the late multicellular substage before it became macroscopic…
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If we decide to go with a fallen empire to be where the ascension gate technology is obtained from, we could hint, through the loading screens, that they intentionally advanced some species (not the players species though). That could be a good explanation.
This is just my opinion, and I’ve said it before, but I absolutely don’t like the idea of ancient precursors/fallen empires in Thrive, I think that in this game there is no room for any prescribed lore.
Although I don’t mind if by fallen empires you mean interstellar civilisations that have ‘declined’ during your Space Stage playthrough and it’s possible that the player’s civilisation itself could collapse/decline under certain circumstances.
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I assume “degenerating” would cause some splinter civs to emerge from yours, correct?
Unless somebody really likes the idea and decides to make a mod for lore.
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But no matter what, any sort of lore will be optional/non-important to the events inside the game.
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That was one of my replies involving how to handle explaining multiple other intelligent species reaching the same level as the player. I also pointed out some more natural ways it could occur as well.
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Yeah, wasn’t it discussed that supernovas might’ve used to gatekeep species from attaining sapience until they just stopped in the times recent to the player species creating a civ?
I’m unsure of that, but supernovas, if close enough to a habitable planet are believed to kill off any life due to the intense gamma radiation they produce. It would be better to use solar flares, but the possibility of a solar flare sending a ton of civilizations back until they are all ready at the same time is highly unlikely. Not to mention that the worst solar flare we have experience as humans was the Carrington Event in 1859 which caused widespread issues for telegraphs. However if a strong enough solar flare hit out planet satellites could be fried, power grids fried and all of our most modern technologies could stop functioning.
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Yes but again, the chances that the flares all slow down at the same time across a large galaxy are close to 0.