Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[sebcool]

Back for more questions!

First off, How would you handle steel making? Would it be detailed (multiple stages, flux stone), abstracted (just add iron and coke/charcoal) or completely bonkers (you mine steel ore).

How would you make alloys (brass, bronze, etc.)? Would the process be abstracted, so that the less important metals (like zinc) would be ignored, or would all metals, regardless of rarity or difficulty of extracting, be required.

And how would the making of components be simulated? Would they require a specific resource (e.g. you can only make gears with brass), or would they be interchangeable. And if they are, would there be a difference between, for example, a brass gear and a steel gear.
And what components would you make? Would you make every spring or every gear, or would it be abstracted so that metal is automatically crafted into the components.

I'm almost out of questions . Would there be special resources like aether or whale oil? What would they be used for and how would they be collected?

Mandatory wacky question : Would you be able to kidnap cultists and run Perfectly Safe experiments on them or liquefy and distil them to produce pure, liquid insanity which you could use as a Perfectly Safe power source?!!
(Please Say Yes, The Holy Fence Demands It!!!)

[Aklyon]

Would we be able to build a structure that harnesses Perfectly Safe artifacts to warp the problems out of the soil (which of course, also have a good possibility of causing faster ruination)?

[Urist McSpike]

Well, Jason did sow the dragon's teeth in Greek mythology, from which sprang warriors.  Or for Ray Harryhousen fans, in Jason & the Argonauts, skeleton warriors sprang forth.

So... planting artifacts must be a !Good Idea!   

[Pnx]

What will the newspapers look like?

[Aklyon]

What will the newspapers look like?

They won't look like fences, probably. Though if the publisher goes mad all bets are off.

[werty892]

What will the newspapers look like?

They won't look like fences, probably. Though if the publisher goes mad all bets are off.

SIIIIIIIIGED

[Gaslamp-Daniel]

Oh hi!

Yep, we're still looking at Feb/March for an alpha.  If that changes I'll let you guys know.  Man, January is going to be hell, but such is The Way.

Question answering time! =D

I honestly have no idea how many steps there will be in steel making yet.  I feel confident in telling you that steel will not come out of the ground.  I can't give you more information because what we decide regarding these processes is always somewhere between the simplest and the most realistic, but it's very hard to say what will be the most fun without iterating.

Current arguments on the Interchanging Metals Topic suggest that, for our alpha, you'll probably just be able to make any metal thing with any metal.  We'll then flesh out which metals make good muskets as we go through, as that's just data entry (but a lot of it).  A lot of this process is going to depend on how intuitive we can make a UI as well, as at a certain point the silly choices for materials just make things clunky.

There will be strange special resources.  Nicholas seems seriously invested in campaigning for "phlogiston", in spite of how awful that name is.  Special resources will likely need to be found by exploring with a naturalist, then collected with a work crew outfitted with whatever might be necessary for the job.

They'll probably blow up or drive your characters insane.

Regarding liquefying cultists:
https://twitter.com/GaslampGames/status/270674715318833152

Regarding harnessing artifacts... You can try it!  I'm not sure how the data structure will work for the effects of the artefacts yet, but there will be many things you can find, and each will probably have some useful quality and some Horrifying Cost.

Regarding the burying of artifacts ... no comment.

Regarding the newspaper: The Holy Fence hears your pleas!

We're actually still debating the form of "the newspaper".  I'm actually arguing against any sort of digest of "the news of the day".  I feel that this will motivate people to rely on some canned and probably horribly repetitive verbage for news, because we don't have a programmer working nonstop on a context free grammar AI agent.  I'm still jaded by the useless news ticker in Sim City.  Rest assured, though, the game will have lots of text, we'll make it as interesting as we can possibly afford, and we're generally considered not bad at that.

Regarding the simulation speculation: There are a couple reasons why we (and everyone else) approximate things in the setting.  The first is due to a design philosophy that's fairly pervasive, which we have at Gaslamp, which suggests that if you're given an opportunity to make the game more fun or more realistic, you make it more fun, and only ever increase realism if it feels like you're doing both at the same time.  Right now we're getting returns on both, but that doesn't last forever.

For the second reason, I'll use an example.  I wrote an erosion simulator for our terrain a few months ago, and it works the way that real erosion works.  Accounting for things like localized rainfall and temperature, it'll perform thermal and hydraulic erosion by actually lifting dirt up, washing or just moving it somewhere, and replacing.  You can get beautiful terrain this way.  It's also extremely finicky, with many variables that are fairly unstable.  It also takes my quad core dev machine about 5 minutes to chunk through a terrain properly, and that's just moving dirt.

We could optimize it a bit, but the truth is that our computers just aren't powerful enough for this stuff yet. 

[lordcooper]

No idea what phlogiston is, but I demand it be in the game.  I have that right.  Seriously though, it's awesome that you're taking the time to give us such detailed answers

[Frumple]

Phlogiston's kinda' like WH40k naptha, I think. It's something that burns. Think alchemic napalm, I guess.

[Aqizzar]

According to the theory of phlogiston, wouldn't naturally occurring phlogiston naturally occur everywhere?

We're actually still debating the form of "the newspaper".  I'm actually arguing against any sort of digest of "the news of the day".  I feel that this will motivate people to rely on some canned and probably horribly repetitive verbage for news, because we don't have a programmer working nonstop on a context free grammar AI agent.  I'm still jaded by the useless news ticker in Sim City.  Rest assured, though, the game will have lots of text, we'll make it as interesting as we can possibly afford, and we're generally considered not bad at that.

You guys probably don't need to be told this, but if you just make the occasional news article a commentary on how canned and repetitive the newspaper articles are, voilą it's ironically self-referential, and therefore hilarious.

[Viken]

What about newsclippings from the Empire Times detailing the activities that are part of goals you've completed or failed in-game.  Scripted, but funnily written.  That way you wouldn't need whole pages, and wouldn't really need to program that much. 

Status updates, on the other hand, would probably be more like in-game Memo's from the Mayors Office or whatnot. Haha.

[Pnx]

IIRC Phlogiston was an element believed to be solely responsible for making stuff burn. The more phlogiston you have in something the better it burns. I'd imagine in this context phlogiston would be a substance extracted from coal, charcoal, or ideally whales, and then refined in either an alchemists workshop for small scale stuff, or a factory for more large scale work. Once refined, the substance is then used for flame thrower style weapons, or maybe even used to power airships, or battlesuits, in a similar way to how we use gasoline today (although I imagine it'd involve more steam).

Also, I was mostly just wondering what the paper would look like so I could see how easy it would be to hijack it for my own purposes if and when I finally get my hands on the game.

[sebcool]

IIRC Phlogiston was an element believed to be solely responsible for making stuff burn. The more phlogiston you have in something the better it burns. I'd imagine in this context phlogiston would be a substance extracted from coal, charcoal, or ideally whales, and then refined in either an alchemists workshop for small scale stuff, or a factory for more large scale work. Once refined, the substance is then used for flame thrower style weapons, or maybe even used to power airships, or battlesuits, in a similar way to how we use gasoline today (although I imagine it'd involve more steam).

This... This so much! Gaslamp, do this! I'll buy this game twice if you do this!

Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory

[Fikes]

I honestly have no idea how many steps there will be in steel making yet.  I feel confident in telling you that steel will not come out of the ground.  I can't give you more information because what we decide regarding these processes is always somewhere between the simplest and the most realistic, but it's very hard to say what will be the most fun without iterating.

Current arguments on the Interchanging Metals Topic suggest that, for our alpha, you'll probably just be able to make any metal thing with any metal.  We'll then flesh out which metals make good muskets as we go through, as that's just data entry (but a lot of it).  A lot of this process is going to depend on how intuitive we can make a UI as well, as at a certain point the silly choices for materials just make things clunky.

I am begging you to please have a "use the best metal" button in the crafting screen. Even if it is complicated like "Use highest damage metal" and "use most durable metal." Bonus points if the production screen includes how much of each metal you have on hand.

It goes without saying but I am excited for this game.

[Gaslamp-Daniel]

I'm not against the idea of phlogiston (and yeah, you guys get the idea), I just hate that name.  It has character in all the wrong places =P

Regarding the UI suggestion for metals: that's a great idea.  If we continue in this direction, we'll seriously consider doing that.

For anyone who didn't notice in my earlier post, our weekly posts have moved to Wednesday because it's just easier.  Mondays are reserved for the rituals involving slathering our schedules in olive oil and having them wrestle in the pit.  It was hard on the blog computers.