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croxis

Alpha Tester
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Everything posted by croxis

  1. One real life limitation is that at that depth the material is so plastic that it will close up behind you as your drill through due to the heat.
  2. Maybe not stars, but gas giants are another things to factor modeling, but that doesn't need to be voxel based either.
  3. Or ships and stations in gas giants
  4. The other issue is player choice -- if there is only one--several "correct" builds that the min/maxers figure out, what is the point?
  5. Right, steam would only be a storefront to increase sales, unless they make use of steamworks for netcode for some reason.
  6. I'm noticing that more and more people on these forums have awesome graphics in their signatures, that happen to be quite large. In fact they are often larger than most posts! My mind is getting addled in my old age, and what I'm interested in (the words you say [type?]) is getting lost in the visual clutter. I love to see your advertisements for your empires, corporations, and hippy communes. Would you mind just making them a bit shorter? Now pardon me as I yell at some kids to get off my lawn with their stupid snapagram-book phones.
  7. Food/hunger works for a couple of purposes: it creates a form of player progression by as the player begins to automate part of food production to free up time for other activities, arguably it is a negative reward because the player is removing a punishment. It is also resource planning, plan an expedition outside of the infrastructure poorly and you die. The problem this isn't a survival game, the progression does not fit thematically. For a game about design and construction food will just turn into poop -- it isn't particularly exciting. Sure a player can design and build systems for food production, but it would be much more fun to design and build systems for hoverboard and ship construction. For resource planning we already can have that with fuel, energy, and ammo. Plan those things poorly and you are just as dead. In other threads I've argued that agriculture can be used to solve the newbie ark resource problem -- simple construction materials can be made from literal renewable materials -- plastics from algae for example. So FARMING can still be an important thing, both on ground and in space, but for more fun mechanics instead of poop production.
  8. One of the things I enjoy about Paradox's Stellaris is that each race picks one of three types of FTL, each with their own pros and cons and vertical progression. The vibe I seem to get is that even after FTL is developed it is still a big deal to use and most activity will take place in systems, instead of in between. One solution with the choke point is that a gate is needed to enter, but the exit point is partially random. The other option is that the only way to avoid choke points is to use the slower warp drive. for FTL. So the player choice is use the gate for fast travel but risk being jumped by a gatecamp, or a slower warp drive but more control over yoru encounters. I can see the viable strategy for risky movement is send in a scout (human or ai?) via a warp drive to check out the other side of the gate, then go through he gate when the all clear is given.
  9. Make the basic construction materials from renewable resources, for example an algae farm (with extra production steps) eventually produces plastic -- no need for magic ore respawining. Another option is NPC buy orders for non-renewable resources that can be fulfilled by the players, and said npcs will sell them (with markup!) on the ark
  10. I recall somewhere that they are planning for a standard "magic" currency like every other game, because in the end Dual universe is just a game.
  11. The problem with OP's worries is that it can be applied to any monetary system. Statistically most f2p games fail. F2P games fail if enough people don't spend enough money. F2P have players leave and don't come back even if the thing they didn't like is no longer an issue. Here is some fun tidbits from Robocraft, a f2p voxel arena/match type of game. A few months ago they totally changed the economy of the game. Before you earned in game money by playing matches and spent that money to buy any blocks/weapons/etc that the player could afford. Robocraft switched to a crate based system; players get random parts from the matches they play. They also slowed down the progression speed significantly (use to be about 3 hours of play to afford a high end part, now 10 hours to get a high end part, and it might not even be the one you want). The result of this is that double the playerbase is now spending real cash on the game: from 3% to 6% I'm going to trust that Novaquark did their business homework when they determined the best way to operate their business.
  12. MMOs are also social experiences -- (futile) attempts to make communication more realistic can really hamper the success of the game. There are in game reasons to have "ship to ship" communication. For example, ships and probes sharing sensor data. Will this be "magically" done regardless of distance? Will communication range be a factor? Will there be no magic checkbox and sensor sharing has to be a protocol written by the in game programmers (this would lead to some interesting emergent gameplay). Ninja edit: Let me put it this way -- one of the advantages of limiting range of in game comms is that it would help keep people closer together and the population density higher, giving a better illusion of a bustling metropolis. However I feel the same effect could still be had if being in antenna range to civilization had in-game purpose -- such as sensor sharing, telemetry, access to the in game market, and so on, so venturing out into the wilderness has some effect.
  13. If you want to fiddle with lua modding in actual games here is a quick list from the top of my head: Civilization 5 World of Warcraft Freeciv (free) Homeworld 2 Orbiter (free) Battle for Wesnoth (free) Dota 2 (free) Factorio There is also love2D, which is a game engine written in lua if you want to dive in and recreate some simple games like tetris or asteroids.
  14. 1) I just pulled a hovecar as a ramdom example -- whatever personal transport is appropriate for the given world-tech level (do we start with bikes? can they be hover bikes?) can (and should) one new player be able to do it on their own within a couple hours of gameplay. 3) Thats why I suggested a plant (farms! renewable) based construction polymer (refining!). It is low grade so it is useless for spaceships, but you can build your first house or simple vehicle out of it.
  15. Never underestimate the speed of player progression (wow players hitting level cap within 24 hours of a new expansion, etc) Reverse engineering could be another component of this. I could buy Super-Dutrilithim scooter wheels from the market, and instead of using them I'll take them apart and try and learn how to make them myself (be it an eve like skill, blue print, or player knowledge). Wikis are also a thing, so trying to hide mechanics behind obfuscation wont work well either. I like Thoger's train of thought. Make infrastructure the limiting factor -- so much so that the first breakthrough into the next big tech level (such as space flight) can't be be done solo or by just one player organization, but by many many groups and individuals. Politics will naturally slow down progression to a better future
  16. Self-run dedicated servers And in game ice cream crafting. I want to open markets on des(s)ert worlds
  17. I would be much more interested in mumble integration, or a web api like eve, where I can create channels and access control based on the permissions I give my corp/nation/nonprofit and the relationship status with outside individuals and groups.
  18. This could work with some handwaving. An antiproton reaction chamber is lined with "gamma ray solar panels" to convert the photons into electricity. Electricity is then used to power some sort of high thrust electric drive as well as other ship systems.
  19. croxis

    Energy

    One thing to remember with solar power is the inverse square law -- the amount of light you get falls very fast with distance. Jupiter is about 1/8th the distance between the sun and pluto and the amount of mid 2000s solar tech needed to power Juno is massive. It could lend itself to an in universe tech level. At launch we are planet bound. After a few months we're in orbit (or the orbit area) and solar power is still the most accessible for most people. This limits exploration/exploitation/colonization to the inner system as most people don't have the tech or infrastructure for powering their ships for the outer system. Eventually the outer system is conquered, and then the stars! Don't forget about heat management too!
  20. If anything would prevent a console port it would be the ram limitations, although it isn't as bad this generation as it was ps3/360 (the reason why Skyrim had loading screens was because ps3/360 only had about 256 Megs of ram for games). Voxels are expensive memory-wise.
  21. I'm sure everyone agrees that actual botting, using external programs to macro and control the mouse, to do thinks afk is bad, awful, and terrible things involving rusty dull razors and vinegar should be done to those people. Should it be allowable via the ingame api is a different question (and I wouldn't call it "botting" as botting is cheating using out of game tools as is a loaded term. Automation is probably a better term to use for the ingame scripting). Because there is an API that can control in game objects it will be a constant battle against ingenious players to prevent automated mining, and that battle will have unintended consequences. I'm practically a socialist so I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm with the others in that the market will take care of most of these issues, but I have some lingering questions: 1) How much of the production chain is one player able to reasonably handle? If I want to build a hover car to zoom around in am I "expected"/able to mine, refine, and construct it all on my own within a couple of sessions? Or is the resource system so vast that I can only participate in a small part of it and have to buy from a dealer? The former would cripple the market, the latter would block a lot of players from building something form voxels. 2) How fun is the act of mining itself? Is it like Eve where it is shooting lasers at rocks and is boring as heck (although a good bonding experience for corps, but player bonds should be made over stories, not boredom) or is it more like space engineers where there are ore voxels to be collected? Not as bad as eve but still not that fun. A game is a series of interesting choices. For mining it is the scouting, deciding what to mine and where to mine it. That is the interesting gameplay. 3) The new player experience. New players need a hook, a sense of agency. There needs to be a low risk-low reward entry into resource gathering that is renewable around the starting zones (construction grade plastic using organics from hydroponic farms for their first house?). 4) Is the production chain discreet based (need all the materials before construction starts), or flow based (x resources consumed every second, not enough resources the construction time increases)? Now that I typed it all out I think low-volume resource gathering should be automated, if not for new players then within a couple hours of gameplay. Pick a resource, scout for it, design (or buy) a system to harvest it, and defend it is all very interesting gameplay. While the resource is being collected the player can continue to do interesting things while the miner mines. High volume gathering, I wouldn't ban automation out right, but it would be much more challenging and a lot more involved to keep the systems running smoothly. A lot more hands on work with player(s).
  22. I will say that as much as I love B5, Pilot+Moya is/are the most endearing characters to me. So are biological ships just something built from peitri dishes, or are they their own living entities with a mind, desires, and fears? What if the ship can communicate with the Internet and discover all the cat pictures on Spacebook?!
  23. croxis

    Mac Support?

    I follow the Banished dev blog, and he (I assume he) has been having the most headaches with supporting macs, linux was easier for him. The issue is that Macs are very behind in the version of OpenGl they support and that, at least for him, it was easier to get linux graphics at the performance he wanted. The issue with linux support is that there are a bazillion distros and a bazillion default versions of the libraries. This is where steam on linux comes in handy as they have a more stable and stationary target for linux dev.
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