Return to “Dev Logs”

Post

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

#16
Yes. Love the outlook of living breathing colonies.

Just how important are the AI colonies? Do they have their own folders stored on my hard drive? Or is it just the player...RedDwarfMining/stuff/ships....

Once a colony hits a certain population will they become folder worthy?

If colony member age > 150; delete(member)
Colony Gorlock 123 would like to wish Happy Birthday! To the following: Wourmeth Yoplock (12) Gord Orlorth (56). And we'd like to congratulate Yep Somhorn 'el and Cabe Somhorn 'el on the birth of their son! Congrats!

If we left LT running for a month/years would settlements live and die?
Post

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

#17
Having thought about it further, as much as I like the idea of trailer parks in space growing organically with high granularity, I ultimately think that it would be better as a post release mod, I foresee major feature creep if we go down that path for 1.0.

I've thought up and researched a number of ways for making stations, and hope that all of them may one day contribute to the variety of what you can encounter in the LT multiverse, but for 1.0 I would limit stations to being either single-structure objects, or as segments of Superstations.

Superstations are a sort of modular super/metastructure divided into subsections with variable complexity, quantity, density and ownership that either subdivide a zone or follow along a line like beads on a string.
These segments are themselves divided into stations, each given a subzone or bead along the segment. And these stations can of course themselves have the same sort of modules as typical ships and stations, but will likely specialize in the various niches the Superstation demands organically or be grown from a single seed station into a predefined form as it slowly gathers the resources it needs to complete the structure.

Said structure of a superstation can range from a simple orbital ring to an enormous chain of segments following along lengths of warp lanes crossing a system between planets, jumpgates and spacer cities (space trains anyone? :train: ;) ).

Or they can have geometric complexity and incredible size, going from the aforementioned circle to complex 2D and 3D geometry like Islamic geometry, Mandalas, ringworlds or a message in the stars to almost planet sized Buckminster Fuller spheres, branching trees, or even Lindsey's amazing Stellated icocsohedrons and other warped procedural shapes as zone or outline :D .

I would imagine only the larger Superstations would be on the same economic level as a planet.
Image
Challenging your assumptions is good for your health, good for your business, and good for your future. Stay skeptical but never undervalue the importance of a new and unfamiliar perspective.
Imagination Fertilizer
Beauty may not save the world, but it's the only thing that can
Post

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

#18
I f*cking love this idea of granular growth of civilian colonies in space. Fires up my imagination so much. Add some cool procgen buildings, and you're literally getting a visual tour of a culture. Imagine a colony where people of two or more cultures settle. You could tell just by a look at the buildings what has happened there. Or imagine fresh new aggressive buildings built next to destroyed ones from a different culture. Invaders? Scavengers? Was there a battle? Or think of a space colony with one solitary building of a different cultural style hanging some distance away. A merchant maybe, or perhaps an outcast from her colony, come to settle at the edge of a different one? So much cool environmental storytelling potential. :D
Post

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

#19
Regarding the AI: is it going to be infallible (i.e. always making the right choice) or is it going to have a chance to make dumb mistakes (buying too high, selling too low, making the less optimal trade run, etc.) Will greed be an element? What other decisions could influence their economic behavior?

I understand you're in the early stages of designing it, but I'm curious what the roadmap looks like.

Speaking of roadmaps, do you have a roadmap for what remains to finish the game? It would be cool if you posted such a thing. :)
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
Post

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

#20
I always really liked the addition of mass traffic in X Rebirth. Seeing streams of small civilian craft moving between ports on large stations and between stations themselves made space feel alive and populated. When I build a station or two in an otherwise unpopulated zone/sector, I like to just stop and watch all the mass traffic going around.

I think having something like this, something to represent the "little people" and their growth, would be a great addition to LT!
Post

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

#21
Thank you, Josh. This was an excellent little update.

I'm sorry to hear certain real-life stuff has been difficult. I hope better days find you soon.

On the game feature front, my personal feeling is that -- barring context-switching costs -- it's actually pretty helpful to shift between tools and gameplay features. This lets you work on the behind-the-scenes stuff that has to happen, and lets you reward (and continue to motivate) yourself for finishing those necessary tasks by occasionally implementing a fun bit of gameplay.

My objection to the last dev log wasn't that there was some tool-development in it; it's that it seemed to be all tool-development! By now I'd hope that the balance of development was, maybe, at least 50% game content to 50% tool development. That's why I was surprised that game content wasn't mentioned at all -- it's both a completion-status question and a Josh-burnout-prevention question.

At any rate, I'm glad to hear you're giving yourself permission to do game content for a while.

On the subject of "cities" growing as tangible expressions of successful communities of people, I quite like that idea, and not just because it's very close to the organic process I imagine for how villages emerge in my "Living World" game idea. ;) (Note that in this game, not only is it possible for new villages to grow, it's also possible for them to fail, for various reasons, and to decay until nothing is left but a few buried artifacts.)

As Hyperion rightly points out, I'm not sure this idea doesn't count as scope creep that threatens getting v1.0 out the door. I'd be open to an argument that it simplifies development in some ways, though.

Assuming it were treated as a to-do, some quick notions:

  • Really, this is just another area in which to do fun procgen.
  • In the Traveller RPG, some mainworlds are set not on planets or moons but in asteroid belts.
  • The Sim City reference is interesting -- what if settlements grew within "field" volumes similar to RCI zones?

Anyway, glad to see a note from you. Thanks again for talking with us (especially after last time :D ).
Post

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

#22
The Vorg invasion fleet never arrived...It didn't need to.

They used our own Warp Nodes against us...Unleashing hundreds of primordial black holes onto them, they quickly gobbled oncoming vessels, asteroids and eventually the Warp Nodes themselves!

The system is in ruin.

We fear the black holes will ultimately devour the planets.

Have taken what we can....With luck.....should reach the nearest star system in a week or two......
Post

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

#25
Something was wrong….or should I say…...something was different! The captain said he had a surprise for us!

Traveling through HyperSpace had always meant losing our hair. Bald as a cue ball….(whatever the hell a cue ball was..). The Constantine was an ex-military vessel. The previous owners(Star Marines) thought it was a fringe benefit...a ‘free haircut’. So they never researched the fix…...But to us civilians…a bitter pill. Monsters and evil aliens are one thing, going bald is another!

Lutowski, who runs the ships stores, is about to lose his lucrative wig business.

Crew morale +10
Post

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

#26
JoshParnell wrote:
Fri Apr 06, 2018 2:26 pm
Concerning the last devlog: yeah, I got it :cry: That was pretty rough, forum, but I got the message. I haven't touched the thing in a while now.
Sorry if it has been harsh, but i understand that people are concerned - Especially after some dev said, LT 1.0 will release 2018. .. And it is already April :shifty:
JoshParnell wrote:
Fri Apr 06, 2018 2:26 pm
My focus right now is on the economy and AI. I'm working to get back to a small, functional economy where the AI is performing basic gameplay mechanics to create minimal-but-real market activity. This means: mining, navigation / pathing, trading. From there I will expand by porting more of the high-level AI, in particular, project management so that AI players will be able to choose between activities and dynamically react to economic conditions. Most of this stuff is just a matter of translating things that already exist (in C++, LTSL, or my brain) into Lua, so it's not very difficult. I've got the market mostly-working; the bulk of the remaining work is in AI porting.

Adam has burned through a lot of tasks this month, many of which have been on TODO lists for a long, long time.
:thumbup:
.. and perhaps also a dev-log update from adam? :shy:

JoshParnell wrote:
Fri Apr 06, 2018 2:26 pm
Recently I've been doing more thinking (about the game). Remember when I used to do that? Think? Yes, it was fun! Since this log is short and I (regrettably) don't have enough work to talk about, I'll just talk about an idea that has been on my mind this week, old-devlog-style.

A few days ago I started thinking about the birth of cities and how it must be quite an exciting process -- imagining a settlement starting with just a few shoddy abodes, watching it sprawl out over time into a bustling metropolis as wealth pours in. [...] When the superstructure is made from atoms that are 'tiny' compared to the whole -- the buildings that make up a city are tiny compared to the city itself, the cells that make up living beings are microscopic compared to the whole, etc. -- that's when the growth process [...] But another possible answer is: 'microstations.' Or, to strip the idea of all pomp: "why don't we just do in space what we do on the ground?" Think about how we can make the equivalent of a 'building' in space. Instead of having to have monolithic stations, what if we thought more in terms of 'ship-sized' modules?[...] It also makes space feel more 'alive' and 'welcoming' to me. Home can be anywhere now, it doesn't have to just be the handful of stations/colonies nearby. [...]
Great idea, with a lot of potential. I see it as others see: Perfect for LT 1.1+

A few additions:
- When a station is beeing attacked, will there be (lots of) escape-pods or will these civilians just die? Imho a solar system would feel really alive if hundrets of escape-pods flee to the next space station (including the traffic jam at the spacerails)
- If there are a lot of small stations (trailer-park) than people need to travel between those stations. Either like on spider web between the dots or with small pods. This would look great.
:D
Post

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

#27
Interesting read.

I'm sorry to hear about your less than stellar month Josh :( That's not fun. Hope things are getting better.

For the ecomony stuff: interesting... This reminds me of what you had in several of your dev videos from way back, where the miners went out and mined and sold, and you could see the market conditions change as items were sold or bought. Cool, glad this is being worked on/brought over.

You can talk about any tool you like Josh, let's not be dramatic. But after several months, a new tool semi-integrated is going to go over like a boulder.

I hope we do see some screenshots, but maybe as you say, it'd be better to wait until the next dev log.

microstations: F@@@ YA! This could be amazing.
Since you have me thinking about it, you could have the player:
1) Move a "housing" ship out to where they want it.
2) They execute "Permanance" which turns on a 10 minute timer
3) When this timer is done, the engines have been dismantled into "stabalizing engines" and can only ever orbit this asteroid.
The only way to "move" this ship now is to empty it and blow it up. Self destruct of course.

They could be heavily armored and shielded, perhaps somehow "drawing power" from their orbit (Science Fiction says NOOOO). But you'd still want to field a protection crew on or around the station. So if someone does attack, it's protected.


Ahhhh this idea could be really fun. Making them great drop off and rally points as well as great places to try to attack to get spoils...

Alright I have to stop. But this was an interesting dev log. They don't all have to be shiny!

Again Josh, I hope this month is better for you. Stay frosty.
Shoot ALL the things!
Post

Re: [Josh] Friday, April 6, 2018

#30
I really like the idea of organic growth, BUT I don't want it to be implemented in LT_1.0. There are just so many unknown variables and LT is already late.
One of my concerns:
Managing the growth of microstations would be micromanagement hell. You need tools, like allocating zones like in SimCity or Cities:Skylines. But this kind of expansion is fundamentally different from the X3-type build-station-with-truckload-of-money-choose-freighters-integrate-into-local-economy approach.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing of course.

I just want to point out that there is a possibility that microstations take away from other fun aspects of the game. Many cave hours are needed.
But I really like the idea. :)

Online Now

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 6 guests

cron