Priorities

[exfret]

Well, the sim actually travels through the time dimension, so it's not exactly a 'thin' slice... Depends on what you count as thin I guess.

About the herobrine updated peoples: Hopefully they aren't as elusive, malevolent, or white-eyed as herobrine either...

[exfret]

My priority:
Cross that out. My priorities:
1) Appeasing people
2) Getting it done
3) Having a burger (temporary)
The features I would like to see soonest would be:
***1) The ability to slow down my time so I can have time to play with the sim (probably out of scope, though (yet totally feasible))
**2) Getting updates working (though you're already working on that)
*3) Getting rid of all the bugginess of any sort in the sim (this is probably one of those things that you just fix as they come up, though)
4) Making it intuitive, flashy (check), and more newbie/user-friendly (some of the menu navigation seems a little strange to me).
5) Improving my comments to make them less general (they're relatively ambiguous )

6) Making an instruction guide with goals for you to achieve, basically, have 'objectives' that can be completed one at a time
(this is my first real specific feature, so I'm highlighting it and saying that this is the one I'm voting for)

7) Ability to fly rocket around (that would be really cool). The rocket could even be a person who goes planet-jumping, and you could even build levels, but now I'm getting out of scope
8) Multiplayer?
9) A way to instantly 'publish' a code and browse other's published codes within the GSim, plus quick save and load features
10) An insta-suggest feature (like insta-publish feature, except with suggestions, and maybe the ability to 'bump' a feature down once or up once or twice to show how much you want it)
11) Custom planet textures
12) Oh great, now this has just become a giant list of suggestions in the order I thought of them (and now my burger's getting cold). See what happens when you try to ask me to pick out one thing for you to add in? Anyways, you should probably discuss and add some of these things in/to the suggestions thread.
13) Easter eggs?
14) Black holes (and really heavy things) bend the light you're seeing, creating lensing effects where things appear to be in different locations than they actually are (I guess you'd have to include the option to change your field of view if you included this, though)
15) The ability to toggle black holes and to optionally have dense enough objects automatically turn into a block hole.
16) "Nudging" and "rocketing" for planets... You can read this post for that stuff: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=156&start=30#p1730

Still, I kept on going:

• Non-Euclidean Geometry
  3D graphics
  Compatibility with Celestia
  Custom programming language fractals
  Velociraptors
  Planet weather
  Star Wars
  Anything in my exfret overdrives
  Anything I can think of
  Everything I can think of
  Everything anyone can think of
  Everything Everyone can think of
  Every possible thing in the Universe
  That plus more
  That plus more
  That plus EVEN more
  THAT plus WAY more
  Beyond going beyond THA... Oops, overdrive again

So, sorry about diverging into a very long list of exfret overdriving... Hope some of this stuff gets added to the list (under "not sure if feasible" or "Out of scope," of course).

[testtubegames]

6) Making an instruction guide with goals for you to achieve, basically, have 'objectives' that can be completed one at a time

Haha, well, I suppose I knew what I was getting into when I asked you for *one* suggestion, exfret You do not disappoint!

I like a bunch of your suggestions of course, especially the one about the hamburger. (Maybe for a sequel, the game comes with ground beef included?) I'll focus on your top priority for now, though...

What type of objectives are you talking about? Game-like ones? (Keep two planets in orbit for 20 seconds... launch an asteroid through that hoop...) Or a hold-your-hand tutorial? (Pick up a planet by clicking the button. Now launch it by doing this. Whoops, too small, go to edit the planet in the edit screen.)

That second one is the kind that I have in mind myself. To prevent people from getting too confused when confronted by the (admittedly) complex simulation.

[exfret]

Kind of like an explanation, but not dumbed down. I just find it waaaaay easier not to get overwhelmed about something if I'm only given the chance to view one thing at a time. Now, as playtesters; we actually do have to view one new feature at a time, but a new person would be utterly overwhelmed. I want it to start off simpler, but with some menu options (probably on a menu on a different screen, cuz you're probably not gonna care about running your system while taking care of technical things, and the current side-menu seems like it would get too cluttered otherwise. Besides, you probably will only tell the sim the things you care about once, and when you do, you'll want all the options in the same place to compare. I don't change everything at once, only one thing at a time, so why do I need the option to change everything? (Related to this, different screens running at the same time would also be nice). With the experimentation and stuff, notes would be nice, too. I'd like to see more challenges to lead people to scientific inquiry, like "create a stable orbit with 1/r^3, or otherwise disprove this," possibly with hints. It's just hard to figure out what to do in something you have little experience doing, meaning you don't get much experience in it. This does contradict what I said earlier in this post, though I actually think a tutorial and a guide would be nice. Separate things, yet both useful. I'm hoping in my explanation you'll understand. It's just hard to describe because I'm describing a feeling of "what do I do?" and feelings are hard to describe. A tutorial would be nice, but not needed until it's near completion. What I want is a guide (this is my final answer). This guide would give the player things to discover, and possibly lead them to their paths if the problems it supplied had been solved. Hope this helps!

[testtubegames]

What I want is a guide (this is my final answer). This guide would give the player things to discover, and possibly lead them to their paths if the problems it supplied had been solved. Hope this helps!

Ah, alright. So I'm picturing a "what do I do" button somewhere... and it pops up with two or three suggestions. You pick one -- it provides a bit more information, and then you try to complete that challenge.

Most of the time, of course, it'll be fairly hard for me to tell whether they've actually completed a challenge. Some will be easy to check, like, "get two planets in a circular orbit around a star for 30s". Some may be more abstract and harder to verify: "What's special about r^1?" I do like the idea, though, since I'll often see people sit down, and not be exactly sure where and how to start.

-Brainstorming-
No Place Like Home: Make a Sun-Earth-Moon system
Retro-Active: Select Ptolemy mode to become an alien on a planet. What does the night sky look like?
Chaos: Launch two asteroids around a fixed star - try to get them on a close-a-path as possible. Now do it with two stars. Three stars?
Home on Lagrange: Get an object in each of the Lagrange points.
...

[NealCruco]

The first two priorities are in the newest version, right? So shouldn't you remove the "Coming in next upload" text in your first post? Or do you expect everyone to travel into the past before reading that?

[exfret]

The first two priorities are in the newest version, right? So shouldn't you remove the "Coming in next upload" text in your first post? Or do you expect everyone to travel into the past before reading that?

He'll work on the traveling into the past stuff once he gets relativity all sorted out.

[exfret]

A long message in which I probably don't explain things very well because I was sleepy and in a hurry to write it:

Ah, alright. So I'm picturing a "what do I do" button somewhere... and it pops up with two or three suggestions. You pick one -- it provides a bit more information, and then you try to complete that challenge.

There could also be a small "All options" button in the corner for those seeking to complete everything. This sounds about right, though.

Most of the time, of course, it'll be fairly hard for me to tell whether they've actually completed a challenge.

What you're thinking of seems more like achievements. I was thinking of having questions with answers that you try to find instead of just completing stuff. Like, for example, asking someone to figure out whether r^(-3) could have stable orbits. This could also lead to an entry thing on what 'stable orbits' might be. It would also have a 'hint' and 'I give up' button that lead you to a hint and a full explanation respectively. There could also be unsolved problems or problems without an explanation/reason, and to build a database of objectives and definitions, you could even have players be able to submit explanations, hints, definitions, and their own challenges, but now that's starting to cross the line of a reasonable amount. It would be nice to have a submitting feature ready to go for submitting your saves directly to a gallery without having to post them in the forum, though.

Some may be more abstract and harder to verify: "What's special about r^1?"

Well, you'd have to be more specific than that anyways. The problem with that is in the question, not the concept. Still, I can see things that would be hard to verify, but like I said before, verification would be more on the side of achievements, not objectives/challenges.

-Brainstorming-
No Place Like Home: Make a Sun-Earth-Moon system
Retro-Active: Select Ptolemy mode to become an alien on a planet. What does the night sky look like?
Chaos: Launch two asteroids around a fixed star - try to get them on a close-a-path as possible. Now do it with two stars. Three stars?
Home on Lagrange: Get an object in each of the Lagrange points.
...

Some of these seem more like achievements, like "Make a Sun-Earth-Moon system." The difference between achievements and objectives would be that objectives would require more thinking, especially creative thinking about how you'd solve a problem, while achievements would just be nice things to get every once and a while, and would require more trying to fling stuff the right way than thinking. Both might be nice, because you'll have people who wanna fling stuff and people who wanna think, but probably more on the side of thinking, because people who just wanna fling stuff can usually occupy themselves. Achievements could also be ways to get used to the simulator, like your Retro-Active achievement. In fact, I think I have four different things in mind:
Achievements- Random, misc. things that can give time-to-time satisfaction when gained. Helps to motivate people to just do something, which will probably give them an achievement.
Challenges- Problems to solve. Some might need checks, like lagrange points, since it might be hard for someone to know exactly whether or not what they made was a langrange point, but most would be answered by a player's investigation. This would be the most academic of the 4.
A Guide- Probably what I was getting at last post (I think I'm changing my mind a lot without knowing it). Also kind of what you're getting at. This could familiarize (opposed to a tutorial which introduces) people with various aspects of the sim. Guides could also build people up to work on challenges, as they would require more thinkings.
A Tutorial- Shows you what various things (maybe have a bunch of different tutorials for each thing in the sim)
I'm probably confused about which one I want, because I kind of want all of them, so since they're so similar, I just group them all together and throw them at you, saying I want a guide. If only there were a guide to what this guide should look like...

[testtubegames]

The first two priorities are in the newest version, right? So shouldn't you remove the "Coming in next upload" text in your first post? Or do you expect everyone to travel into the past before reading that?

Ha, perhaps. Don't want to get ahead of myself, though. Once things are up on the official Humble version, I'll check 'em off.

Achievements- Random, misc. things that can give time-to-time satisfaction when gained. Helps to motivate people to just do something, which will probably give them an achievement.
Challenges- Problems to solve. Some might need checks, like lagrange points, since it might be hard for someone to know exactly whether or not what they made was a langrange point, but most would be answered by a player's investigation. This would be the most academic of the 4.
A Guide- Probably what I was getting at last post (I think I'm changing my mind a lot without knowing it). Also kind of what you're getting at. This could familiarize (opposed to a tutorial which introduces) people with various aspects of the sim. Guides could also build people up to work on challenges, as they would require more thinkings.
A Tutorial- Shows you what various things (maybe have a bunch of different tutorials for each thing in the sim)

I like your idea of breaking things down into categories -- because there are really a lot of different types of stuff. Though some of them could be presented in a similar way.

Maybe there's that 'challenge' window that opens up with a list of suggestions of things for you to do. And there are a few to choose from at any given time (or you can 'refresh' and get different ones). At the beginning, most of them are 'tutorial' things -- which by completing them, add in new features to the game. (oooh, I like that). So you can't select and edit planets until you go through that tutorial, maybe. (an early one, of course). Or you can't play with general relativity until you do that tutorial. Or change the force law, or add in arrows and tweak the display, etc, etc. That way the options start pretty basic, but get more and more complex.

Then, occasionally, challenges get mixed in to the list. Put stuff in a lagrange point, find the closest orbit you can get to a black hole, etc.

So I'll probably start with the basic tutorial pieces... that's most important for new players, too. Then, as the system gets more mature, I can start adding in the challenges and the guide.

[exfret]

I actually really like that idea. I'm thinking you should, though, have a "Just give me the stuff I paid for (or not...) already" option for those who don't want to have to deal with a tutorial, and a "Wait, how do I do this again?" button for when they want to return back to the tutorial. I am thinking, though, that you should differentiate challenges from tutorials. They could still come up in the "Goals List," but you should still think of them as separate. It would also be nice to have an "All Goals" button so you can choose which goals people want to accomplish. No reason holding people back if they want to skip ahead. You could also, in this list, separate tutorials from objectives. I also think you should put a "?" by buttons for quickly figuring out what they do. This should be able to be disabled in settings in case it gets annoying (e.g.- accidentally clicking on it instead of the button). I just got an idea, and I'm just throwing it out there, but it could be out of scope, unfeasible, or all of the above: How about people get GPoints for completing various goals or just spending time with the simulator? I don't know how exactly these might be used, but, I mean, "GPoints" just sounds cool. I was thinking maybe you'd get a certain amount of votes for features based on your GPoint level so that people that play the sim more have more representation, but that seems like it might lead to some unfairness. Even so, I'm pushing for an accessible in-game thing, be it for suggestions or challenges. I think that would be really cool, sort of like focused in-game forums. The features thing seems like something that would be really useful for the GSim now. It wouldn't necessarily have to be in-game, but you could make it so we could submit suggestions vote up on them. That would make it much easier for you to decide what to add in next, and it would make a nice representation of where people stand. If you could do something like that, that would be great!