My thoughts on radiation in Thrive (mostly negative)

[hhyyrylainen]

I took the time to read and reply to this now that I’m back from vacation.

@Rathalos

The noted real-life examples don’t seem to do this, and as I mentioned before, I don’t think radiotrophy is intended to be an exclusive food source. In any case, this would be non-LAWK.

Yeah, real science is the blocker here.

@Rathalos

I am pretty sure this was done because being that close to the radiation source is supposed to kill you.

And yeah, I explicitly blocked this from happening because if you engulfed the rock your distance to it would be basically zero so due to the power law of radiation that would basically kill almost any cell no matter how much melanosomes you have. So that’s why I blocked it and the secondary reason is that the game systems actually would stop working so the radioactive rock would do absolutely nothing if engulf. And I didn’t implement any code for that due to the first reason so if it was made possible it would need updates to the radiation logic for it to keep working when engulfed.

@ImanProductions

I’m just saying there should be more accessibility settings (like turning off radiation for people with OCD). And people might just want an easier time in the game overall (turning off hazards and stuff like that).

Turning off hazards (including radiation) is not really in scope of changing the radiation gameplay, right? Because it is a hazard only when you aren’t doing radiation eating.

@Rathalos

But for radiotrophy, I still do not see the need. It has it’s niche in certain areas, and even if you can’t use it, it still acts as an environmental hazard. What we cannot do is completely ignore science just to make it more useful. That’s not what Thrive is.

Exactly. But at the same time we are making a game with a lot of volunteer effort going in, so I think it is important to allow people to add their favourite science “fun facts” into the game, even if people then go “well, what’s the point of this energy source when it isn’t super useful?”

@Rathalos

So it should directly just kill your cell if you ingest the radioactive chunk. Do you think this is worth the development time and effort to implement?

Totally agree here as to why I won’t spend time on implementing engulfing radioactive chunks.

But at the same time this would be like just a beginner trap which I think is bad game design to add in the first place, so in addition to taking significant development effort I think the design in the first place isn’t that good.

@Rathalos

and maintain

Good point because the number of combination of possible options causes way more testing scenarios.

@ImanProductions

• It’s just reusing chunk code, so not a lot of time is wasted.
• It can work like engulfed toxin resistance where the more Melanosomes the player has, the less dmg the player takes from engulfed chunks.

These would take significant development time, and even if not done by me they would take significant code review done unless done by a relatively experienced Thrive programmer.