I don't believe this had already been started so I'm officially starting it here. Would be great to get your thoughts and feedback about Topia so that we can plan future updates! Anything goes (obviously we have to choose what is doable) Thanks so much for checking it out! -Josh
A living area people doing work hunting maybe set a civilization date along with the other options maybe adding snow and rain other weather affects.
I'd prefer it to not have humans. I don't want an Age of Empires but more of a Spore. I have bought the game but haven't played much of it yet.
I didn't think of that. Yeah monsters like that and weird alien type buildings I guess we kinda want a real mobile spore less ea and more greatness.
My number one suggestion for an update is the ability to save our world/creation in its current state and resume where we left off.
It would be quite easy to save out the entire world state but, for complex reasons, a dump of the entire world state takes around ten times as much space as a recording of an hour of 'play'. This is an issue because we want to make Topia about sharing worlds. Obviously in it's current state it's a little useless with no fast forward but that's going in right now. I'm pretty sure it'll be able to fast wind at around 50x speed.
Thanks for the explanation, Glenn. I had a feeling there must be some technical reason why we can't save the current state and resume where we left off. The ability to fast forward would certainly help a lot. Glad to hear you are working on it. The world building tools are excellent, and I could easily see myself spending hours creating and tinkering with one world, but I'm reluctant to do so at present knowing that I would have to sit through the whole playback in real time before I can resume where I left off. Great work so far, and I look forward to the fast forward capabilities in an update. EDIT - Another thing Glenn, when you say it takes ten times more space to save the entire world state, how much space are you talking about? Is it unreasonably huge?
This is enough for me regarding savegames my suggestions for future updates are: - weather: rain, snow, wind, etc. Randomized if possible. - temperature: hot/cold regions, possibility to change temperature. I guess this is directly related to the aforementioned "weather" option. - fish: I think you said you're on it. - different water level: to be able to make waterfalls, mountain lakes, etc. - more animals and interaction between them? I haven't played much yet, so I don't know the interaction between animals that we have. I like the game idea as it is now: and open sandbox world creator. I don't know if my ideas are programmer-friendly or not, but those are the ideas I had thanks for your work. Even in its current state it's been well worth the 0.79
The entire world state is around 3mb compressed, not huge but way more than the 100kb that represents a 15 minute recording. The fully dumped level isn't unreasonably huge but right now we're not sure exactly what sharing mechanism we'll be using.
Why do you have to go through the playback before you can edit again? Is it not possible to scrap that?
The game has to run through the replay, it will be possible to fast forward through it or even have a 'start from where I was last time' button that fast winds for you. This is almost working here already and will be submitted very soon.
3MB is nothing in this day and age. I really feel that we need an option to resume in the world state where we left off. The more I play around with Topia (and it's great fun by the way) the more frustrating the playback thing becomes. The way I see it, with a creation/sim type game, most people will want to create, reshape, and see how the world evolves over time. (hours) It is going to get ridiculous if we have to play through the entire creation history of the planet each time we resume play.
Glenn, I just read your comment about having a 'start from where I was last time' button, after I posted. That sounds more like it.
I think I speak for most of us when I say, 3mb is nothing and I would really appreciate a save feature. Oh and forgot to say, I am really enjoying this game. I don't know what is so fun about building your own planets, but man I can't stop
It depends how the sharing works though, imagine being able to fly through a galaxy of them, they'd have to be smaller. Not saying that'll happen, just trying to keep options open...
If you were to go down the route of a galaxy of user created planets, couldn't you somehow display them as small snapshot/previews, and only when the user taps on one it would load up the full 3mb file? Also, if players were able to browse a galaxy full of user-created planets, surely they would need to be displayed in their current state to identify what they look like. There wouldn't be much point in browsing planets in their original form before they were actually designed/created.
It would probably have a smallish low-res version of the current state stored with each save and that's what you'd see.
This game is awesome, love the idea. I would like some better animal AI though.. they're a little stupid lol