Sciocont is Overall Team Lead and US Of Alaska is Overall Team Co-Lead, they're the ones in charge. ADMIN is just an account which is used for administering the forum, not a person. But look on the bright side, at least Santa exists.

/offtopic

so admin was never a person?
wierd....Honestly I couldn't care less if he is or not.

Guys, I think you are missing the main point here! Roadkillguy has not been on since July 2nd! If hes really abandoned us, then weve lost our last and only coder! The guy was a genius, and its not that easy finding the likes of him!

Now, I used to be all for the voluntary work-when-I-feel-like-it schedule, but now I see why regular game developers dont do that. Progress is taking so long, people are LEAVING. Since we have no coders right now, no matter how many ideas we spurt out about god tools and realism and achievements and the such, it is IMPOSSIBLE TO IMPLEMENT THEM!

We need to rekindle that fire that we had back in 2010, the fire that had us posting every day, the fire that filled this place with activity. Ever wonder why the busiest session on this forum was TWO YEARS AGO?! Because we are going backwards, thats why! We are LOSING people!

We need to go around the web and get more Belgiuming programmers! There are programming forums everywhere! there are gaming forums everywhere! There are science forums everywhere! We need to go to these forums and draw people in to create a larger community!

Basically, we need to set deadlines! We need to have a microbe stage by the end of 2012! I dont care if you wanted to play Minecraft in the meantime! I dont care if you wanted to shop for clothes with your mom instead! We need to get Belgium done, and to do so, we need more coders! How do we get people to join our project? We need a Belgiuming game to show them thats how! THATS HOW WE ATTRACT CODERS!!!

We cannot let this project die, for all that is good and holy! Think of all the games that have attempted or done this before! NONE! Think of all the epic games that didnt cost a dime to make, and not a penny more to buy! NONE! Think of all the details they went into compared to us! NONE!

THERE IS A REASON WE ARE CALLED REVOLUTIONARY GAMES, SO LET US LIVE UP TO THAT NAME!!! MICROBE 2012!!!

This game is honestly screwed, unless we can get more coders. That, however, will be practically impossible, unless we all either learn to code, or somehow get a bunch of money to hire some decent programmers. The former will be a hell of a lot easier than the latter, especially with help from jaws2blood. The latter will be a LOT harder, even with the help of kickstarter- hold on. Various projects on kickstarter have raised over 5 million dollars, most of those video games or video game consoles. With the sheer enormity of thrive, and all the hype that's been built up over the years, we cold easily get a huge amount of money for this, money which we could use to hire programmers, pay for ads, etc. This would also use the aforementioned hype to our advantage, instead of it being a bane and driving us backwards.

I know this is die-hard indie, but it's at the very least worth a shot. We need to do this, or thrive is very likely to die.

I've meant to say this for a while, but if and when we get more supporters and more importantly, programmers, we need to focus specifically on the microbe stage, then work are way up.

Ahh, Roadkillguy, I was afraid you had left, Im glad you havent. First of, Id like to say I really appreciate you sticking around with us this long. I know you must have heard this a million times, but we are all in debt to your efforts. I plan on learning C++ when I return to my desktop computer, but unfortunately Im stuck with just a mobile device for a while.

roadkillguy wrote:

Give me one good reason why an experienced "coder" would want to dedicate his free time to a group of kids, begging for a game that encompasses the entire universe.

I made sure that when I went on the programmer forums, I specified that first we want to overcome the hurdle of creating a solid microbe stage. Then, once we release that, actual gameplay is WAAY more likely to draw people to this project than just concepts. We need a lot more coders, so that then we can discuss how to implement the ideas as we go along. It is important that we only produce one stage at a time; having playable segments of the game to demo for them is far more effective at bringing in new programmers. Microbe stage shouldnt be too much of a challenge, and if we make it well, then the programmers that we could hopefully attract from that would help a lot to conceptualize a practical multicellular stage. One stage at a time. We cant jump up the whole staircase at once, we need to take it one step at a time.

roadkillguy wrote:

If you're so avid about the game, write it. When you finally install *gulp* Visual Studio, you'll find that it's not trivial. You'll realize why indie games are so simple, and why they have such a clean, narrow focus. If you go "advertising" to any of these programming forums, they'll laugh in your face. This backwardsness is what my original post covers.

I would like to write it, yes, but as I mentioned above I need my desktop first. Also, we need multiple coders working cooperatively on this, so in the meantime im trying to reel in some of those. I have a link here of a request I posted for programmers on a programming forum, specifically in the request section. It hasnt gained much attention yet.

http://forum.codecall.net/topic/71030-thrive-an-epic-game-of-evolution/

roadkillguy wrote:

You could try Unity or something, but I feel like the codebase will be all over the place and really buggy.

As I am ignorant in both coding and game development software, I do not know what that is.

roadkillguy wrote:

You're all missing the point. Stop adding, and disregard the entire "Current Concept." Start over and write some code.

Although I do not think it is a bad thing to keep adding new ideas, I do think that right now we must focus our attentions on getting programmers, learning to program, and finishing the Microbe stage. However, I wouldnt want to start over at all. Its better to keep all our concepts, and not have to come up with them all over again, but once we get to working on that specific stage, we undergo the process of picking and choosing the value added to gameplay versus the effort required to program for each idea, and then pick and choose the final ones in the game. And remember, when we finish this game, all the cool ideas that we leave behind can be returned to. It makes for good updates and DLC's.

roadkillguy wrote:

Gee, and I wanted to end at 500.

500? What do you mean?

@Brennus: Ehh, im not so sure about trying to raise money for this game. I think thats something you need to take up to the team leads. I dont think this game is screwed, just asleep, we need to wake it back up, and give it the energy needed to reach its true potential.

@PTFace: That is exactly, bang, right on, bullseye, 100% what we need to do. You are completely correct and I absolutely agree with you!

A kickstarter, as Brennus said, is the best root to take. He was right when he said some projects earn millions but that some is maybe less than 200 projects, most unfortunately don;t reach the desired amount of funding. However even if they don;t produce a high amount, by setting a low goal as a target more people are likely to back the project

Deviant Art is actually great for advertising kickstarters. If people all see images, concept art and official art of a project with a link to the kickstarter they are more likely to back them as most people need visual content over the technical if they want to back up a project.

But most kickstarters have to offer something to the backer in return, usually special content, but this is generally a small price for the funding that large scale projects receive. For a kick starter you also need a video, it helps. Try in the video to explain, in basic terms, what they game is about, what players can do in the game, how this achieved (basic technical talk) and why the project needs the money, you can also advertise for programmers here.

But it's just a thought, but it's not bad to try it out. Sciocont will probably need to start up the Kickstarter on the website and then everyone else could contribute to the video, concept design and actual proper 'official'/professional looking artwork.

On an unrelated note, Roadkillguy, did you write the engine on a command line or linux or something, my compiler doesn't like your code. I also noticed you were going on straight up opengl. Should have used ogre3d imo. Also, any explanation on your classes in the headers?

PS: seriously roadkillguy? Unity3d? lul. They're better off with visual studio, ogre 3d, and SDL.

linux eh? i figured that it at least wasn't windows from the lack of #include <windows.h>. meh, roadkillguy's code is standard enough c++ where someone could come in and add stuff into it.

...Not that this is truly relevant, roadkillguy, but I've been following the tutorial pretty closely, and I think that others have been ding the same. Also, why is Unity3D so good? Are there any advantages it has over the other programs that were suggested?