mcsven wrote: *snip*

mcsven wrote:Much of this depends on how sophisticated blueprints are when it comes to materials. Josh hasn't mentioned anything about blueprints for quite some time, so I'm not really sure what his thinking is these days. When it comes to how quality of the input materials impact the final spec I can't say I ever remember him saying anything (prepares to be vaulted by Ice).

Still, a system that gives you options for creating legendary-level style items and much more regular bonuses for improved material quality could easily work. The ultimate point is that the legendary item is less about a magic spawn or pre-designed bit of kit that is hidden in the universe at creation. It's simply a reflection of the rarity of the materials that went into its construction, along with the level of the tech that spawned the blueprint.

An interesting extension question is: say I did build a gun out of an Unobtanium and Titanium alloy, combined with a Superduperium power-core... how does the game value it over, say, the same item made from Normalium Alloy and a Kindofpowerfulium power source? I think it would be nice if the game recognised not only the material cost involved in construction but also the rarity. This would have the effect of multiplying its $ value many times above the base price, almost providing a proxy "Legendary Item" tag.

JoshParnell wrote:I am thinking generally somewhere between 6 - 10 "core" ores, perhaps a few exotics as Gazz mentioned for advanced stuff.

JoshParnell wrote:

Flatfingers wrote:On a related note: given my comments earlier in this thread about player styles and how those might work in a game like Limit Theory, I am obviously pretty pleased with Josh's notes from today's (June 24, 2013) dev log that he's giving some thought to letting players work to generate new technologies as R&D specialists and/or new blueprints as manufacturing wizards. You made a game design geek's day, Josh! Obviously none of this is set in stone and anything is liable to change, but it's nice to hear about for now.

Oh, I don't think anyone said it would be just a blueprint + raw ore (wait, did I say that? If so, I didn't mean it...). There will definitely be intermediaries. Exactly how many stages of intermediaries is yet to be determined.

At the very minimum, you will need to go one step past raw materials.

And glad you're happy with this system! Personally I am just trying to find the "least arbitrary" system, as always, because this helps me to implement it. I just wish generating all of these things didn't involve so many arbitrary choices

Structure is so beautiful...specifics, meh

JoshParnell wrote:

Rabiator wrote:Definitely yes. But may I suggest starting from the properties of the finished object?

Well sure, I mean it goes both ways. If you build a ship, it would work like you said ~ the physical ship will determine volume, which, in conjunction with material, would come back to derive other properties of the ship (mass, health, etc). But I wouldn't really call that "starting from the properties of the finished object," it's really starting from a "shape" (which you design in the editor) + a material, then deriving the properties of the finished object.

But I think we all understand the point

DWMagus wrote:There is one caveat to all of this... I love the idea in general, but there is a tingling at the back of my mind.

If there is an 'optimum' composite, or material composition, then it is pointless to have everything derived, and you might as well have the numbers static.

I.E. Why would I want 30% titanium and 70% steel if the optimal composition is 100% titanium? Okay, so the obvious counter argument is "Because what if you don't have the supply?"

The answer to that, is that in early game, you won't have the supply. But as soon as you get past the early parts, supply isn't a problem (I'm assuming you [the player] has a positive influx of either cash or resources and this becomes achievable at some point). Thus, you're creating all these equations and capabilities for a small portion of the playtime of the game. How much time will you actually put in that makes something like an alloy worth it?

I think if we take it too specific and allow too much customization, it will be lost once a 'perfect' combination is found. Sure you could go and make all these other combinations with the same stuff, but why would you want to?

Hmm I see no problem here though, going off "real life" as a model - sure, sometimes there is a "best" material for the job. In in that case, we use it or try to use it as cost permits (carbon fiber for car bodies, for example (I think?? I'm not a car person so don't hold me to that one)). But there are also plenty of cases where there's not one clear winner ~ just a bunch of trade-offs to be made.

But anyway, that's beside the point - I did not intend this system for "more flexibility" or really anything gameplay-related. The key is that setting up more logical patterns behind items will allow them to be generated more easily (with less arbitrary choices / "magic constants"). So the fact that a player can come to a good understanding of "material sciences" in the game is really just a side-effect. The real point is to create more logical structure to minimize code

Also, I don't necessarily think it would be possible to create your own custom materials / composites...I haven't totally thought it through yet, but I see these kinds of things being derived procedurally from research, just like blueprints. I.e., in the same way that you can't "create" your own uberweapon, I imagine you also won't be able to create your own uberalloy

So yeah, this isn't a huge gameplay impact I don't think, just some more structure to the chaos of building a universe

JoshParnell wrote:Thursday, October 10, 2013

Summary

Finished implementing 'UDF' (universal data format) loading today, now with support for pointers (including polymorphism)! Must admit it's a pretty cool system that the engine uses in order to support the latter So now it seems that I'm in good shape to write whatever I want in this format! I tested it by loading a ship from a file. Very cool stuff

I put a lot more thought into technology today, and how exactly it interacts with the generation of an item. I came up with the idea that there are two fundamental types of technology. The first is an 'enabling' technology. The second is a 'modifier' technology. The former is what you would traditionally think of as 'unlocking' in a tech tree. An enabling technology either enables the research of another technology, or, if it's a leaf node, enables the creation of a particular type of blueprint.

But then there's the question of how you make something better once you've learned how to build it. And not just better as in 'oh, let's just research the enabling tech to a higher level' (borrrrinnng), but also different. I.e., I've learned how to create blueprints for corvettes, now how do I create a blueprint for a corvette that is specifically geared towards military / scouting / industrial / what-have-you capacities?

That's where 'modifier' technology comes in. It's also where the procedural part of the tech tree comes in.

The way I see it, since the classes of items in the game are fixed (i.e. you have ships, stations, thrusters, etc...and this list of fundamental types is not extensible because it's hard-coded), it makes sense that the corresponding enabling tech would be fixed. Ship construction is a given, and sub-fields of fighter construction, bomber construction, etc. are a given. Those things need to be present and they need to map directly to the fixed pieces of the game.

With modifier technologies, on the other hand, we have a lot more freedom to generate whatever the heck we want. I think that's where the procedural part of the tech tree (and the fun 'exploration' part of research) will come in

I'm not positive yet how modifier technologies are related to object types. I don't think it's one-to-one (it's perfectly reasonable to think that 'lightweight alloy tech X' could enable creation of many different kinds of lightweight equipment), but it's also not one-to-all (how would a technology that yields higher thruster power be relevant to a construction module?) I'm a bit confused about this one, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I can do some neat automatic things here using the reflection system! For example, retrieve a list of the fields of an item to see if a certain modifier is relevant to it.

I like the simplicity of this conceptual framework. It removes much of the complexity of generating an item type. It reduces the problem to specifying a basic / unmodified version of the item, and then specifying the way in which the properties thereof can be changed by modifier techs. Sounds fairly straightforward!

[ You can visit devtime.ltheory.com for more detailed information on today's work. ]

Just_Ice_Au wrote: *snip*

McDuff wrote:Whereas I'm hoping for a system with derived stats from materials, so that "bonuses from making it out of X as opposed to Y" are part of the game anyway. Or at least that different materials are better for different things - tougher, lighter, better insulators, better conductors, more explosive etc.

I normally don't suggest that any game copy something some other game did. But I have to say I've never seen a better design for crafting in any game than the one in SWG. Input materials really did affect the characteristics of the output object, making both crafting and resource hunting very enjoyable for some players.

I would not mind at all if resources in LT were similarly detailed so that their attributes affected the characteristics of the products created from them.

Hardenberg wrote:Wouldn't that be overlapping with the research system? Research already modifies the stats of a baseline item. Bolting another set of modifiers onto that seems a tad bit like overkill to me, not to mention that you get an item glut beyond what will already happen in the game. It's one thing to have 20 variations of laser based weaponry in the local cluster. It's sheer madness if you get another 20 variations per laser due to the materials used - it makes comparing things painful.

I'd say that you could use one approach or the other, but not both at the same time. And I think Josh has already invested deeply into the research mechanism.

Behemoth wrote:

Just_Ice_Au wrote: *snip*

Do you have eidetic memory or something?

Hardenberg wrote:

I normally don't suggest that any game copy something some other game did. But I have to say I've never seen a better design for crafting in any game than the one in SWG. Input materials really did affect the characteristics of the output object, making both crafting and resource hunting very enjoyable for some players.

I would not mind at all if resources in LT were similarly detailed so that their attributes affected the characteristics of the products created from them.

Wouldn't that be overlapping with the research system? Research already modifies the stats of a baseline item. Bolting another set of modifiers onto that seems a tad bit like overkill to me, not to mention that you get an item glut beyond what will already happen in the game.

Hardenberg wrote: Wouldn't that be overlapping with the research system? Research already modifies the stats of a baseline item. Bolting another set of modifiers onto that seems a tad bit like overkill to me, not to mention that you get an item glut beyond what will already happen in the game. It's one thing to have 20 variations of laser based weaponry in the local cluster. It's sheer madness if you get another 20 variations per laser due to the materials used - it makes comparing things painful.

N810 wrote:I think you should have to find legandary items,
they should be one of a kind and completly un-reproduceable masterpieces.