Should we begin creating demos of other stages?

Gameplay
1

Ok, so what if we were to begin creating demos for some other stages of the game? While yes, there are already tons of ideas and concepts for the other stages, i feel that if we began creating demos for other stages we might progress faster because of several factors:

  • We can use the demos to become familiar with / perfect the code we need to create several aspects of the other stages, therefore we’l be able to progress faster when we finally move onto the other stages.

  • The general focus on other stages might help us completely finalize concepts for other stages therefore workflow interruption because of concept change might be greatly reduced.

While i am aware that we might not have enough programmers / time for the demos, i also think that making said demos could be a big enough benefit for us and the game. Feel free to correct me or state why you think it should not be done. I’m simply stating an idea that has the potential to help us in the future.

2

I’ve been planning to start working on some later stage prototypes directly in the thrive repo so that the game could be progressed from the cell stage. Of course there needs to be a huge warning that the later stages are very early prototypes only. And I’ll probably also add buttons to the “Extras” menu to jump to them directly.

The prototypes will be very rough as I want to get all of the core parts working (like walking, some sort of tech web etc.).

I’m currently still working on the engine switch so this will be after that.

2 Likes
3

On the one hand I think it would be best if we could finish the gameplay and graphics updates as soon as possible to make the Microbe Stage a fun and immersive experience on its own to stand out as an example of what the rest of the game will be like to people we want to outreach to. On the other hand though, everyone is free to work on whatever they want and there is a lot of potential to be had in developing the other stages as well. I think it should be up to the developer whether they want to work on the Microbe Stage or a future stage, and if enough people want to work on the same future stage they could collaborate their efforts on developing that stage in parallel to the Microbe Stage (though I think anything past a basic prototype/demo of the stage might be tricky before the earlier stages have been ironed out).

I think something like what @hhyyrylainen suggests is a good idea.