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[BigD145]

"Higher than a few z-levels", man.

The first level roof is simple. It's when you have 3+ stories that the final roof is a bitch.

Leave a gap in the wall. Ramp on outside of wall. Wall on outside of wall. Done. Easy. Tear down in reverse order and finish the permanent wall.

[Citizen Daniel]

I admit, when I play DF, typically, I just try to dig deep enough for bad things to happen before my dwarves all kill each other because they're so upset with me.  They're ill-trained, badly equipped, and none of them have ever seen a waterfall until it's too late.

[Citizen Daniel]

Well, not entirely true, but I sort of have to wait till i'm really sick or have an abundance of free time to just drape myself in blankets, candy, and tea, and spend hours listening to lute music.  It's a rare luxury

[Citizen Daniel]

In our latest blog post, David reveals to the 1 guy who was shocked that we're secretly communists:

http://www.gaslampgames.com/2013/11/06/fixing-the-economy/

[Mephansteras]

Interesting stuff.

But as someone who made a mod to specifically expand on DF's ironworks and steel industry to make it more realistic I feel I must point out that Dwarf Fortress only simulates a small portion of what is required to go from iron to steel. And a fairly advanced version at that.

[Puzzlemaker]

Spent the day reading up on marxist labor theories of value.  I have no idea what effect this will have on our game.

And now we know!

[Karkov]

Interesting stuff.

But as someone who made a mod to specifically expand on DF's ironworks and steel industry to make it more realistic I feel I must point out that Dwarf Fortress only simulates a small portion of what is required to go from iron to steel. And a fairly advanced version at that.

Yeah, DF doesn't go over the entirety of the steel creation, but you have to admit that it's more advanced than about 80% of the other game's steel creation process.  I can think of a couple of games off the top of my head that have "Throw some iron and coal into a furnace," mechanics to make steel.

But I digress, the blog post was good.  Cool to see that the game's coming along, and that we'll be worrying about our stockpiles instead of our cash at the top of the screen.  Also, could we leave the mines as they are?  Mines that set people on fire just seem dwarfy.

[Mephansteras]

Also, could we leave the mines as they are?  Mines that set people on fire just seem dwarfy.

Now, now, you can't have ALL mines do that. Then they don't feel special anymore. But some mines...yes, some mines should set people on fire. You get better stories that way.

[Citizen Daniel]

Yeah, honestly DF's metallurgy isn't that complicated.  The economic model for DF is actually wonderfully shallow in terms of the number of processes that everything takes.  Generally though, there's so much choice in how to convert one thing into another that it's hard to understand the ramifications of the choices sometimes, but such is the benefit and cost of a rich simulation filled with options I think.  We'll run into it i'm sure. 

Really this is one giant case study in hubris, but then, that's the game's setting anyway, so it's all good.

[Mephansteras]

Yeah. And blast furnaces (which are what use Coal, Flux, and Iron to generate steel) are both efficient and appropriate for the steampunkish setting. So you can reasonably get away with simply requiring those 3 resources to make steel without needing to go into too many details.

It is also not unreasonable for most colonies to import steel rather than produce it on site. The typical Colonial model was for colonies to export raw materials and then import finished goods. Getting to the point where you're running your own steel mills and producing local goods made of steel should represent a pretty advanced colony. (And one that has suitable resources close by).

[Karkov]

You mention the suitable resources, and that actually piques my curiosity about embarking sites (in dwarven terms anyway).  I need to go read blog posts and stuff before I ask questions that might've already been answered.

[lordcooper]

I really like that method of judging value (within the context of a game, at least).

Is there a possibility of taking into account a few factors such as the amount of people capable of creating the product, their average skill level, availability/quality of tools/resources/power, the social class of those who produce said item (if some items are limited this way), the quantity of the item already in existence locally (say the value of each individual unit of pumpkin stew being X% lower when you're basically swimming in the stuff) etc etc?  It'd be kinda awesome to see something as being worth 5 hours and 29 minutes of time, even better if it's 5 hours and 29 minutes of Aristocrat time (equivalent to maybe 2-3 times that much 'commoner' time).  Hell, you could even intentionally fudge the numbers a bit by random, with the severity decreasing as and when you develop better methods of timekeeping.

Or am I being silly and trying to lead you down the path of madness?

I seem to remember you saying that the game is intended to be highly moddable.  Are you in a position where you'd feel semi-confident in hazarding a guess as to what aspects will and won't be open to tinkering?  I'm particularly interested in models/textures (not to suggest that yours aren't gorgeous, I'm just thinking about potential conversion mods with different themes), supply chains (raw materials through to the finished product) and their perceived value (maybe even the method of calculating values, it'd be awesome to have the option to play mods with entirely different economic systems), weaponry/combat animations, and the relationship/trait systems.

Sorry if I'm getting a little too far ahead of things here (and also for the excessive brackets), I've just become a little enamoured with the idea of a DF themed mod in Clockwork Empires.

Oh, one last question.  Do you intend for people to have their own property or is everything to be kept communally?

E: I lied.

From Something Awful

You specify a blueprint on the ground. You tag each wall with a "profile", which designates the building material and the profile of the roof. We then automatically extrude the building based on this. End result: you choose what the building looks like. (Then you stick decorations and gameplay elements on it, hook it to the Steam Pipes, etc.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhX79At0vng  <-- this is not our system, but this is somebody else's implementation of the same algorithm we use. Ours does texturing, which his does not. So, yeah. Basically, if you want all your buildings to be octagonal Gothic Cathedrals, we'll accomodate you. If you just want to plunk down square megaliths, we got you covered. Want all your urchins to live in large, faux-Japanese pagodas? Got you covered. It's *very* cool stuff, and I'm really excited to be using it.

Is this still the case?  Any idea if we're getting multiple internal storeys yet?

[Citizen Daniel]

The labor theory of value is really, basically, the first step.  It gives us the coarsest view of the cost of things.  We can then consider rarity of the materials involved, and then we can potentially consider the quality of the craftsmanship.  The concept of starting simply is something of a religion around here, because these systems can get out of hand so quickly.  We'll iterate on it as soon as it becomes obvious that it's the next step that will return the highest value, and i am very expectant that that'll happen at least once.

Modding is something we've been talking a lot about lately.  Specifically, one thing I'm really worried about is that we could send out a few copies for internal beta, then those guys start modding a living and unfinished code-base, and suddenly we have to support decisions that were bad ones or made accidentally.

This is a horrible nightmare of a trap that leads you to things like Microsoft's 30 year code bloat.  It's horrible.  I can't stress how bad this is.

To get away from this, at this point, our plan is to carefully consider and harden a small number of systems that the mod community can access, and only condone mods for those systems.  We will then slowly grow this list as we gain confidence in the robustness of the design of the other areas, and we will make this information public.  You could mod the other stuff if you really wanted to, but the chances that your mod would need to be patched as we patched the game would be quite high, and we want people who want do this to know what they're signing up for.

I can tell you that, technically speaking, the entire game state, outside of the actual terrain itself, lives in scripts.  In a perfect world where we have the time to harden every system, you will be able to add new commodities, new character behaviors, new models, new animations, everything but (probably) the terrain itself will be moddable.  You could make a zombie/alien/cow survival tower defense on the Clockwork Empires engine, and it wouldn't be all that hard.

The usual disclaimer.  EVERYTHING said here is subject to change.  Don't want to upset anyone if things change, but these are our intentions, not hard facts.

Edit: Oh, yeah, people will own things, but not very many things.

[Mephansteras]

Sounds like a good plan to me.


The subject of craftsmanship and cost reminds me of an old joke:

    A giant ship engine failed. The ship’s owners tried one expert after another, but none of them could figure but how to fix the engine.

    Then they brought in an old man who had been fixing ships since he was a young. He carried a large bag of tools with him, and when he arrived, he immediately went to work. He inspected the engine very carefully, top to bottom.

    Two of the ship’s owners were there, watching this man, hoping he would know what to do. After looking things over, the old man reached into his bag and pulled out a small hammer. He gently tapped something. Instantly, the engine lurched into life. He carefully put his hammer away. The engine was fixed!

    A week later, the owners received a bill from the old man for ten thousand dollars.

    "What?!" the owners exclaimed. "He hardly did anything!"

    So they wrote the old man a note saying, "Please send us an itemized bill."

    The man sent a bill that read:

    Tapping with a hammer………………….. $ 2.00
    Knowing where to tap…………………….. $ 9,998.00


It would make sense that someone with a rare skill that takes years to get to would be able to charge more for their time than someone who is much less skilled or performs a task that requires less skill for comparable results.

[Farmerbob]

From: http://www.gaslampgames.com/2013/11/06/fixing-the-economy/

"I could ramble about this for quite some time but I’ll wrap it up here — my task today is to figure out how to make mines let people mine instead of setting people on fire (which they’re, unfortunately/hilariously, still set to after we got the teaser trailer footage captured)."

This.  This proves that they understand.

I can't say for sure that I'm going to play CE for a very long time, but I'll certainly buy the game, and I know I will have huge fun with it for at least a few weeks.