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[Mictlantecuhtli]

Really we have Canada to thank for giving us tax credits for doing weird experimental stuff to make simulations run faster on newer architectures.

I find this oddly delightful.

[Aqizzar]

Just got characters in-game to recognize each other as made of meat.  Good day.

One can only imagine the many ways they'll begin to act on this knowledge.  One can only subsist on boiled cabbage for so long.

[Farmerbob]

No   There's honestly not a lot of motivation to chase those sorts of things to improve performance, not at this point in the project, and not unless you're obsessing over speeds the way that really competitive games do.  And those guys hoard their secrets these days. Nicholas and Micah spend a lot of time mangling the C++ compiler which is interesting though.  Really we have Canada to thank for giving us tax credits for doing weird experimental stuff to make simulations run faster on newer architectures.  Honestly, I'm somewhat convinced that you'll be seeing a lot of these methods in other games in the next 5-10 years.

Just got characters in-game to recognize each other as made of meat.  Good day.

Let me guess.  The next step is getting characters in-game to recognize that meat is a remedy for hunger?

[Citizen Daniel]

Oh that's already there.  Things just got weird. 

On the bright side, if you leave the simulation on for a while at the start of a game in an environment with no natural food sources, you still have one or two characters to perform tasks.  Makes debugging easier

[Mephansteras]

So when are the colonists going to get ethics that tell them that cannibalism is frowned upon in polite circles?

I assume just barbaric behavior will stay in the game, for use by cultists warped by eldritch abominations if nothing else.

[Citizen Daniel]

Eating human flesh currently drives them a bit mad.  We don't currently have any constables to try to stop them, but it's on the list

[10ebbor10]

Is it the act of eating human meat, or knowing that they ate human meat. Would be nice if it was the latter, as that could suddenly lead to mass insanity inducing food scandals.

[Citizen Daniel]

It's the memory of ingesting the meat.  I like the idea, but in the case where they're literally just hacking up their fallen comrades with axes and eating raw steaks, I think they'd know.

I mean, because it's the memory and not the act itself that drives them mad, we can actually do fun things with that later, but the system isn't quite finished enough that I want to spend a few days making a system where people eat meat pies without knowing, the cook won't tell anyone, but people who see the cook making the pies can tell people that they ate human meat.  I mean, we could do it, but it would be a little complicated to explain to the player what's happening.  Getting constables to keep the peace is a little higher on the list.

You're not the first person to suggest it though... maybe we need to do this.

[10ebbor10]

You could use the newspaper thingy to illustrate complicated event chains like this.

[Mephansteras]

You could use the newspaper thingy to illustrate complicated event chains like this.

Yeah, that'd make a heck of a headline!

[Citizen Daniel]

Yeah, I just kind of want people to have to dig a little bit to find out what's going on, but not so much that they won't ever find out.  Plus it would be weird if it showed up in the paper before they were caught, you know?

I'll figure something out.

[Descan]

Maybe have one of the constables run around screaming "MEAT PIES ARE MADE OUT PEOPLE! THEY'RE MADE OUT OF PEEEEOPLEEEE!"?

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, I just kind of want people to have to dig a little bit to find out what's going on, but not so much that they won't ever find out.  Plus it would be weird if it showed up in the paper before they were caught, you know?

I'll figure something out.

Not sure how much you're planning on using the Newspaper bit to convey things. But I had an interesting thought.

The Headline, of course, would be for major news of whatever sort. But you can then have small stub articles that highlight other things going on in the settlement that might be of interest. Booming areas, shortages, and the like.

So you could have a Headline talking about mysterious disappearances in town. Further down, there could be a little article about people lining up for the Inn's 'Famous Meat Pies'. Maybe alongside another article about a Beet Blight hitting local crops (or whatever else is going on).

Thus giving the player clues without needing to be overt about it.

[Citizen Daniel]

Yeah, that would be a way of making the paper interesting, for sure.  Truth be told, though, I'm actually not sold on the newspaper idea.  It has some really interesting benefits like being nicely period-appropriate and giving players a digest of information, but it's either going to be so effective that players will read the paper instead of watching the game, or ineffective enough that no one will read it.

One of the ideas that i DO think is interesting to try, that we came up with as a compromise, is having "reports" that are generated by specific professional offices that you can construct, where you have a phrenologist and a physician and so forth, and they go about besetting your colonists with "exams", and their reports could have useful information in them.  It has a nice bonus of breaking up the information into bits that the player specifically requests, and it makes reading these things more character focused, which is important to us.

We also had the idea that geological reports for mining could be compiled in the same way, showing 2d "paper" representations of progress in the mines and so forth.  Sadly, not a lot of work has been done on the mining simulation yet, as we've been focusing on getting the economics and combat in a good state lately.

[Descan]

And you could also throw in some red herrings. Talk about a cow disease outbreak or something, so when people who ate meat pies go crazy, you think "Oh, they got some sort of disease from infected meat!", but instead it's because the meat is made out of humans and you'd have to notice that not -everyone- who eats it goes crazy, it's only the meat-pie eaters and not other meat-product eaters, and it dies off as only the people who see it made go crazy.