New blog on Topia's progress here http://glenncorpes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/topia-update.html I have to admit it's kind of technical, read it if you are into that sort of detail otherwise wait for the new video which will feature sound as soon as I can work out how to actually capture it in decent stereo...
The latest build has baby animals instead of eggs, but it seems like the babies are as vicious as the adults!
Actually the baby carnivores don't attack until they are full grown but they do hang around with their parents while their growing so they kind of appear vicious
So the plan still remains the same? In the beginning you will release the Topia World Builder and after when you will finish the game you will release the Full Version witch includes the Topia World Builder?
No, current plan is that Topia world builder is the game. It'll start as a sandbox, possibly with one minigame (Pinos v Tikes) and we'll take it from there, adding more minigames, making the editor user friendly enough to enable, adding some sort of world sharing, adding more features to the sandbox via updates. Exactly where it goes from there will depend on feedback from users.
Don't know if you devs are fans of the documentary presented by Chris Packham: Secrets Of Our Living Planet BBC2
I've seen Chris Packham and am a fan of nature documentaries in general but Topia is inspired by nature very much at a macro level. The animal behaviour stuff is designed to be fairly simple as the game has to run several thousand of them at action game frame rates. It's more about the herds than the creatures themselves. One of the main reasons that Topia has been so delayed is that I feel i've barely scratched the surface with the animal AI stuff. With all of the other code tasks i've spent less than a month on actual animal 'AI' and yet we have herds interacting with each other, eating grass, searching for greener pastures while carnivores pick off weaker creatures, chase down and eat them. It's all about numbers and in a way more akin to the way an ant colony works. Ants don't really even have 'brains' as such but an ant colony clearly has intelligence. Similarly, it's fun to watch a lost Pino (the blue sheeplike creatures) get spotted by an exploring Tike (the fast red carnivores), alerting the Tikes to the presence of the happily grazing Pino herds and triggering an epic battle until the last Pino is devoured. The 'minigame' in the initial release will be an 'endless' game where the player has to nurture the Pinos until the Tikes eventually wipe them out.
Love the info! Sounds sort of population dynamics + ecology (greener pastures/predators), all macro level. Well Secrets of our living planet is mostly showcasing amazing ecological connections and crazy weird relationships that emerge.
Sounds crazy but we're pretty close to submission here. Tutorial and menu tweaks, then we'll be putting it up. Need to get a proper trailer going...
For real!? That's amazing news!! What a great day for iOS gaming today was!! (Bastion, Splice, Blast A Way, Walking Dead Ep.2 and next this!). Soooo excited to see what you have done - congrats!
A few shots of portrait orientation - which for some reason I prefer now on the iPad. Submission really really really soon now.
