Thank you for the write up. It's nice to ponder some design suggestions since I've mostly been concentrating on the technical side so far.

Some kind of "leader/follower" concept would give this idea more balance - some kind of medium-sized shape that's also largely influencial (in a mutually beneficial way), but not as prone to changing, itself. As more similar ones flock together, the bigger they all grow from being around one another, but "leader" figures are nearly immune from one-another's influence for awhile - you'd have to isolate* and "shrink" them as a result, before they could be reinfluenced.

*By "isolate," I mean have it close to alone, but still surrounded, well-within the opposing influences' range. This way, it would have to "shrink itself" just to move around. Being totally alone with space to grow will probably result in it naturally becoming "the colossal triangle."

This is something I've thought about before, although I hadn't fleshed it out as much as this. Basically, if an influential personality is left in isolation it is currently useless, having nothing to influence. It will seek out followers though. If an influential personality is in a culture (or "has followers") it will grow to a size determined by the number of followers it has, which will in turn allow it to "fit" more followers in to it's culture.
Also, cultures will be required to have a leader (no anarchies, I don't think a pure anarchy in the real world is possible anyway). If a leader dies or leaves the personality with the next most influence to be the new leader of that culture.

And while the players can shape/manipulate the "leader" figures, the fact will remain that many "follower" figures are nigh-uninfluencable (IE: you can't drag/move them directly, only consequently by moving their "leader" figure), until grown to a certain size. So the catch becomes that you have to "bond" followers to leaders to build (a few of) them into more leaders, and then get them rearranged and reinfluenced before they all stagnate into sameness. And followers' mobility will be considerably nerfed compared to leaders' potential, so when a leader moves, it's likely some will be left behind.

I love this idea. It adds a lot of interactivity to a design that is sorely lacking in the "player" aspect. Leaders will be clearly designated by some kind of marking or different color outline.

A universal range limit will force highly-populated followers to "fight one another" for available space within their leaders, and as leaders overgrow, it will push more of that space out. So the bigger and more influencial a leader gets, the more consequently dangerous it becomes to it's once-loyal followers; and to the followers altogether, since they'll be more strongly influenced as a result of it's bigger size. To effectively use a bigger range, it will have to develop more leaders that work together. (IE: create "multiple-culture communities," which in turn may be partially influenced in different directions in regards to other leadership figures in different vicinities.)

My idea for fighting in the game had been strictly intra-culture. But, your idea of "multiple-cultural communities" is cool. It's something I'll definitely think about.

If you want something -really- wicked, you can also add a breeding influence, too - ones well within the "culture" will produce more culture-specific breeds, where ones on the outsides will result in more cross-breeds (which when given space, can result in more leaders), but that's getting way ahead of this, maybe.

I've actually put a breeding mechanic in to the design already and it's actually pretty simple compared to the other interactions I have planned.

Three random personalities, looking better.


Not much to talk about for this update. I've mostly been doing some code organization and planning stuff. The personalities can now grow and shrink though. That's the main difference. Oh and their outlines are 0.5 units wider.

I got the code that randomizes personalities working somewhat. It took me two tries. The first try involved a loop but I quickly realized that it wouldn't work when the points of my random polygon were way too random resulting in some really crazy looking personalities(sorry I didn't take a screenshot of it). For my second try I'm entering random numbers line by line for each point so that I can confine each point to it's own little area and "massage" their randomness.

Well, it's going to need some more massaging because now they don't seem random enough.
Here are a few examples:

At least there is some nice variance in color.

They'll need a bit of work but they'll do for now. I think I could spend forever trying to get them to look right so I have to stop myself.

Time to move on to other things.

At least the floppy disk will always live on as the Save icon in virtually every application.

So true, I bet many young kids today scratch their heads wondering what the heck that little icon represents.

This happened to me when I was a programming tutor. The guy I was tutoring had never used a computer before and when I told him to "click on the disk to save" he hesitated for a few seconds. Then I thought about it for a moment and said "click that blue square".

Thank you!
I was thinking of having challenge based levels.
Two examples of these would be:

-Preserve x amount of cultures for x amount of time

-Make a culture that looks like x personality (a prototype). Then you're graded on how much your culture resembles the prototype.

Edit: I improved the vertex "skipping" problem by the way. Turns out GL_POLYGONS don't do concave. I turned the personalities into a series of connected GL_TRIANGLES and now the personalities have a lot more flexibility.

Got it. Thank you guys.
I guess i'll just have to look for another solution.
Thanks for the tip muku.

Then how am I able to have a concave part elsewhere in my polygon?

Am I wrong to think that the blue polygon (in the video) is somewhat concave on the bottom?

Here's a video of my game:




I'm have a problem with it though. Sometimes my GL_POLYGON will "skip" a vertex and just draw a straight line between the previous and next vertex. At the very beginning of the video if you look near the lowest vertex of the blue polygon you can see how the color blue is spilling outside of the polygon's outline. It usually happens when the vertex is "inside" the polygon. Where it should be a concave part of the polygon it just flattens it out, but only sometimes.
 
Question:
Has anyone else has had problems with openGL "skipping" vertices? If so, do you know what's causing it or how I can fix it?

[Question:]

Ok, so I made some good progress so far today. I wrote the code that normalizes the personalities to the average between them. Here is a video of it:



I'm have a problem with it though. Sometimes my GL_POLYGON will "skip" a vertex and just draw a straight line between the previous and next vertex. At the very beginning of the video if you look near the lowest vertex of the blue polygon you can see how the color blue is spilling outside of the polygon's outline.
 
Question:
Has anyone else has had problems with openGL "skipping" vertices? If so, do you know what's causing it or how I can fix it?

I'm going to post about this over in the help forum also.

New screenshot:


Those numbers on the side are for debugging. They represent the average between those three figures(personalities) you see. Red, green and blue are the color levels and the "p" ones are the points in the geometry of the figures. Each figure has 12 points but I just have them set up in the default constructor to be orange squares right now. Those numbers really are the average, honest!

I got a lot of work done on the culture class today. Those three personalities are part of one culture and they are moved(no, they don't move yet), drawn and have their average calculated by it now. Next thing i'll work on is having the personalities normalize to their average.

[Visual Studio 2008C++SDLOpenGL]

Hello, I have been trying for a while to decide whether or not to start a devlog for this game. I didn't want to start a devlog and then have the project fail. A lot of you probably know what I mean.

Well I finally decided that it would be better to get this out there than to sit on it for a long time trying to get it to a presentable level.

I'm working on a game that is about preserving cultures. There will be figures on the screen that differ randomly in shape, color, size and movement. They may also have a random design in their middle.

Here is a mockup I made a while ago.

Basically, your goal is to try to cultivate as many cultures as possible while keeping them from becoming stagnant. If they become stagnant the personalities contained within them begin to fight and eventually kill each other.

You can either let cultures create themselves as they move around the playing field or you can draw a temporary wall with your mouse around a bunch of personalities and make them gravitate towards each other. To stop cultures from stagnating you need to add new personalities to them.

A personality's size is directly related to the influence it has on other personalities. That huge yellow triangle, if it gets near other personalities, will quickly start to make them exactly like itself instead of letting them slowly change each other.

Below is what I have done so far.

Notice the smooth OpenGL rendering...  

Development tools:
Visual Studio 2008
C++
SDL
OpenGL

I was just working on getting the personalities setup nicely. Now I just have to finish the culture manager class. I'll post more then.

Yeah, bad thing it's finals week. Bye bye 4.0 GPA.
Just kidding.
Hopefully...

Someone please make a feature length Michael Jackson inspired Zelda musical... NOW!

NO!!! How can N lose to Minecraft?!!?! 

I have gotten days upon days of enjoyment out of all the N games. Minecraft on the other hand, while cool, I only played for about an hour or two.

SPOILER: I thought "chanqed" looked a little weird...

Nice one!

So you're a computer? Or are you a person on the satellite using a computer?
Either way this sounds like a lot of fun.

I'd be interested in testing if the offer still stands.

Nice! Downloading your big file. I also am surprised it's made in Game Maker.

Sorry Zenorf but that explosion what just a little too modest .
JK


Edit: Any innuendo in this post was unintentional. I have a knack for accidental innuendo...

Thanks!