Some very good points here I agree with, I don’t agree with everything of course but I’ll save this for future reference. My main point with making the prototypes has been to silence the people complaining that we still only have just one stage.
I posted my finished roadmap for microbe stage “completion” a couple of hours ago. I think that’s when we should say microbe stage is done and announce the focus officially moving to multicellular. That’s because as was discussed before we need to have the microbe stage be a polished experience, not try to rush it too soon.
People are free to help me with the prototypes, and some people have helped with the multicellular prototype already, though I kind of at least want to get the basic code structure and refactoring done needed for further stages as I think I have more insight into the overall code structure and what should be done with it. I can’t imagine how much code structure reviewing would be required if someone else started a brand new prototype stage now that isn’t connected to anything. I’ve been bogged down by small but big impact bugs and reviewing PRs for the past weeks, but now I’ll have about a month (I’ll need to save some time at the end to do last minute bug fixing) before the next release to work on macroscopic prototype more.
I know I’m in the minority here, but I’m much more interested in a finished Microbe Stage than anything else in the game. In fairness, a lot of that is because I’m doubtful anything else can ever be completed, but I also like the uniqueness of the Microbe Stage compared to other games and the balance it strikes between gameplay and realism. As I’ve said before, the big picture of the Microbe Stage is done - there are many holes to fill, but we know exactly what those are and can narrow in on them, as hyyrylainen has done here.
And I definitely agree with this. I’m concerned about the current frequency of suggestions for big mechanic overhauls when the current game is very solid and we have a definite route to completion.
I don’t have any thoughts on the particulars of the roadmap. Everything looks sensible to me.
My main concern is how we approach it without abandoning the volunteer nature of the project, which is very valuable to me (and I would assume many others). I’ve picked the list of features I’ve worked on for 0.5.9 and 0.5.10 through a combination of factors: what’s appropriate for my coding skill level, what sounds fun, and what I want to make sure isn’t missed on the road to a complete stage. I want some assurance that other people can do the same in future without feeling like they’re forced into picking from a set list. That sounds risky for a volunteer project.
Related: what happens if some features are completed out of sync? I’m still hoping to get the thermosynthesis revamp done for 0.5.10, yet you’ve listed that as part of 0.9.x. For one or two features it’s fine, but there comes a point where an entire version plan becomes redundant. If we get to 0.7.0 and find planet generation, radiotrophs and all the features you’ve listed for 0.8.x have already been completed, what do we do?
I interpret the roadmap less as an instruction manual telling us when to do stuff and more as a guide letting us know when to say enough is enough. Its purpose isn’t telling us when to do what (unless people want it to of course), but instead setting a clear cutoff point so that we don’t go down a rabbit hole of trying to improve a good mechanic, hence derailing us from completing a minimally viable cell stage. In other words, it gives us a clue of when to shift focus to another feature/version of Thrive so we don’t unnecessarily focus on a specific feature when there are other features to implement.
So for example, thermosynthesis being listed at .9 is saying “we’ll consider .9 done if thermosynthesis is done by then”. If it’s completed already by .9, then great news! It’s one less thing we have to work on.
Try not to get too focused on where everything is in the roadmap. It essentially is just meant to let us know when enough is enough, not necessarily when to do something.
I think that view only adds more reason for people to even doubt Thrive more than just a hardcore cell simulator instead of the grand life simulator it advertises. Yes, later stages might not ever be totally complete but by finishing all or most of the later stages prototypes, we can at least have a minimum justification to include the rest of the stages in the game’s overall concept, even if those prototypes stayed barebones and gathering dust for a long time.
Also roadmap looks solid. It sets a clear path of what to do than just being unfocused as some may say every release completion and planning the next one.
I don’t think we really need to change up how things work.
For the past few release planning cycles I’ve just let people say what they want to work on, with putting just a minimal amount of issues picked by me into the milestones. As a result the last releases have been mostly comprised of issues people just picked themselves.
With this roadmap I’d just fill in the milestones with stuff picked from the roadmap, and we’d be back to the older style where we planned to try to focus on some issues in a milestone, but they didn’t really get worked on any more than random issues. So I’ll just recycle the leftover issues to the next release over and over until they are done and we can call a roadmap stage complete. I don’t see this as limiting people’s freedom to work on what they want at all, it’ll mostly be a gentle nudge towards picking issues from the roadmap.
I’ll let features come in as people finish them like currently. As things get completed they’ll be removed from the roadmap (as long as people remember to do that, though when building the milestones, I’ll probably remember at that point that something got done). If some roadmap stage is completed entirely before we get there, we’ll just skip version numbers. After all the main point of the roadmap is to allow us to pick release numbers based on how close we are to finishing the microbe stage.
I don’t want to constantly approve adding stuff to the roadmap, but I think there’s 2 usability things we really need (and people gave me thumbs up on Discord so I’ll add these immediately):
Turns out that the second issue was already on the roadmap.