I made a post highlighting Transcendence on /r/Games

General discussion about anything related to Transcendence.
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bzm3r
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http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/ ... e_nethack/

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pixelfck
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Good post!
Seeing it in parsed format now, maybe put a link around 'pages/trailer videos' in the second paragraph pointing to these videos?

also, it may be nice to add a double whiteline (or a horizontal ruler or put the names of the quotee on a new line?) between the quotes?


Cheers,
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ThePrivateer
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Excellent post! We're already getting a fair amount of interest/upvotes - seems like quite a lot of people on Reddit have played, or heard of, Transcendence previously. It's an indie cult classic to some extent - almost everyone seems to have played it at least once.

I'm on there as /u/singular1ty94 answering a few questions about it, just btw.

Great post, thanks bzm3r!
bzm3r
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@Pixelfck Updated as suggested, but possibly too late :(

@ThePrivateer Thanks for participating!
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The post on /r/Games (and subsequent posts on /r/lowendgaming and /r/roguelikes) have been very successful!

Lots of people are commenting on the /r/roguelikes post right now: http://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/comm ... ome_space/

This has brought in about a thousand people to the site in the last few days (which is probably about 3-4x normal traffic). And there's been an uptick in Greenlight votes and sales.

Thanks to bzm3r for organizing this!
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Song
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Nice to see it doing well. Describing the modding system as allowing DF-like levels of complexity was asking for trouble though: DF fans are hellish nitpickers, and while you probably can make Transcendence that complex, it will slow the game to a crawl.


How is Transcendence doing on Greenlight anyway?
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bzm3r
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Shrike wrote:Nice to see it doing well. Describing the modding system as allowing DF-like levels of complexity was asking for trouble though: DF fans are hellish nitpickers
Yeah, hence the edit with giant red text :/

Shrike wrote:...and while you probably can make Transcendence that complex, it will slow the game to a crawl.
I don't think so. A lot of DF's complexity comes out of calculations at the "world creation" stage, so that doesn't affect computational load during gameplay. Transcendence already does a lot of calculations during world creation, and I have seen some nice ideas by folks like John B. Watson on how those world creation calculations could be made transparent to the player by: 1) having the world creations follow plausible rules, if they don't already (they do in most cases -- e.g. see how George programs where stations, ore, etc. are located) and 2) make it transparent to players: that is, store the results of the calculation in an easy to access "World History" (in 2450 AD, Charon mercenaries from the Charon system overran St. Booboo, building several bases, by 2455 the Commonwealth responded by building a fortress in the region but hostilities have not yet ceased).

Now, one can also imagine a lot of complicating calculations (e.g. random events that only occur during gameplay) while the game is being played, but that's where we are *really* lucky in terms of being efficient. Transcendence (just like Dwarf Fortress) is built on top of a C++ engine, and C++ is *built* for doing lots of calculations very efficiently. Like, *super* efficiently -- parallel computations, advanced array optimizations, blah blah blah blah -- you name it, C++ has it. Here's another benefit Transcendence has: we don't have to do fluid mechanics calculations in real time (not too many fluids in space), or write complex path finding code ("space is 3D!", we can claim), etc. unlike in DF, which tries to model the world at a planetary level. So, yeah, we have a lot of room for adding complexity in other directions for gameplay/"spaceplay" purposes, whereas DF is forced to basically simulate a planet given its setting.

All of these "complications" can be made optional: the player can check/uncheck them in settings depending on which ones they care for/if they don't have a computer good enough to run *all* the complications. So...yeah. I totally think its doable, and totally worthwhile.
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Shrike wrote:How is Transcendence doing on Greenlight anyway?
It's hard to tell because the entire process is somewhat opaque.

Valve ranks the games seeking to Greenlight by the number of "yes" votes. In general, they look at the top 100 games with the most yes votes and start Greenlighting those. If you're not in the top 100, then they are unlikely to look at you. And even if you are in the top 100, they might pass you by for other reasons (perhaps because the ratio of yes/no votes is too low).

Since yes votes never expire, and since titles are constantly being removed from the top 100 because they have been Greenlit, titles steadily move up the ranks over time. Popular titles reach the top 100 in days; lesser titles linger for months or years.

We have around 800 yes votes, which puts us about 25% of the way to the top 100. That is, the #100 game currently has around 3200 votes. Once we get that many votes, we should be in the top 100 and Valve will start paying attention.

At our current rate, I think it will take two or three months to get in the top 100, which is about average for games. If we do any kind of advertising or promotions, we might get there a little faster.

Even when we get to the top 100 there is no guarantee that we'll be Greenlit. Valve makes the ultimate decision and they don't reveal their methods. Nevertheless, I think we have a good shot.
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Song
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Yes....Valve's handling of Greenlight is infamous, especially given how much commercial shovelware just gets thrown out onto Steam without going through it these days (not that greenlit games are immune to that either). Still, it's good exposure and good progress. Getting 25% of the way there this quickly is impressive, even though the bar is a lot lower than it was when Greenlight was launched.
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bzm3r wrote:http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/ ... e_nethack/

If you have a reddit account (free to make), give it an upvote! Leave a comment behind too, if you'd like to.
Kudos for You Sir
This post is how I got here :)

edit: oh actually that was a post in /r/roguelikes
bzm3r
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Duskhorizon wrote:
bzm3r wrote:http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/ ... e_nethack/

If you have a reddit account (free to make), give it an upvote! Leave a comment behind too, if you'd like to.
Kudos for You Sir
This post is how I got here :)

edit: oh actually that was a post in /r/roguelikes
Hey! Nice to see you here.
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