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Messages - Milo

#1
Outdated / Re: [A12] Project Dog - Community Dog project
September 04, 2015, 03:21:42 PM
Apologies. I believe I figured out how to pull request.
#2
Outdated / Re: [A12] Project Dog - Community Dog project
September 04, 2015, 02:11:02 PM
I submitted a pull request to include Corgis :D
I'm new to this, so let me know if there are any problems. Thanks for inspiring me to finally dive into modding. I love the mods you've made, Skullywag.



#3
Ideas / Re: Planner Tool
November 04, 2013, 05:07:07 PM
One thing I always wanted in Prison Architect was a real to-do list where I could write notes to myself and check them off as I complete them. Sometimes outlining walls isn't enough, and I'll forget what I was doing several hours ago, or days ago.
#4
Ideas / Re: Mine selection and destruction
October 29, 2013, 04:15:57 PM
I strongly disagree. The player should never be struggling against the user interface. I noticed in Ty's patch notes he mentioned that some electrical devices short circuit if exposed to the rain. If this caused the mines to explode randomly it would be a different issue, but user error caused by the interface is not fun game design. It's just frustrating.

Additionally, avoiding parts of what the interfaces allows you to do, i.e. avoid double clicking the mines, is also telling of poor interface design.

Maybe there could be two types of mines.

1. Motion Mine
Colonists lay it on the ground. It explodes when raiders get too close.
Blast size: smallish

2. TNT with plunger
Lay the mine, then lay the plunger within a confined radius of the mine itself (say, 40 tiles). The colonists build the two, then run wire from the plunger to the TNT. When the player wants to detonate the TNT, command a colonist to activate the plunger, then watch the fuse burn along the ground to the TNT, followed by a big BOOM!
Blast size: huge

With motion mines having a smaller blast radius their effectiveness would shine in choke points and hallways, but not so much in more open areas. The TNT could be used for mining, but also as defense against a raid. Building a plunger would give players a physical object to see and detonate (probably red and near your sandbags), and the burden of building the two objects connected with wire would increase cost and reduce mine deployment speed, and the spammy way it's being used now
 
#5
Ideas / Re: Essentials Thread
October 25, 2013, 11:05:03 PM
Quote from: aerojet029 on October 25, 2013, 09:03:30 PM
endgame objectives
                 something to strive for
                         - permanently establishing a colony (for the good of the colony) vs escape (every colonist for themselves)
                                     each of these could have interesting game play styles and a game should be balanced so that a game can continue
                                     potentially indefinitely (using the adaptive AI story teller)

I was thinking that a Swiss Family Robinson scenario would be cool for this. Warning: Swiss Family Robinson spoilers ahead :D. At the end of the movie the family is "rescued", but of course, they love their estranged life on the desert island, so they decide to stay, effectively "establishing a colony". The movie is set in stone, so it is what it is, but I can imagine that if they were rescued earlier on in the movie when they were fighting pirates the story would have an entirely different dynamic.

Maybe in RimWorld the endgame could be working towards communicating with the outside world galaxy. The colonists could build communication arrays made from hard-to-find resources and advanced research. If things are going poorly, this would be a fun goalâ€"try to survive until rescue. Alternatively, you could establish communication and instead decide you wanted to stay on the new world and build a colony. I think both would create interesting gameplay and narrative.
#6
Ideas / Re: Detailed Character Ideas
October 25, 2013, 08:39:48 PM
Quote from: AspenShadow on October 25, 2013, 08:45:09 AM
Personally a very small change I'd love to see in the game is a toggle between Male and Female symbols. You can randomize a character until they have nice stats but now your Jenny is more of a Jeff and he's got the trait Pregnant, genders don't really have much meaning besides naming and character investment at the moment but when relationships come into play they'll be far more important.

I've decided that I'm going to revisit the characters based on the feedback I've gotten so far. I think their individuality should be a little more subtle and up to the player's imagination, as per what @salt1219 mentioned. As far as the survivors you start off with, I get the feeling that something much more substantial and interesting than the current system is in the works.

In my opinion a system that would serve the storytelling really well is one that would force the player to choose from a small roster of survivors, say 8 or 9, while escaping the ruined ship. Each character should still be completely random, but they should all have meaningful strengths and debilitating weaknesses. The reason for this: RimWorld is a survivor story, not an expedition. In an expedition, you would choose a diverse team composed of skilled and well-adjusted individuals, and the fun would come from the pure act of creation, discovery, and so on. Prison Architect isn't the best example because your staff is completely neutral, but that's a game that runs along these lines. Managing their relationships and satisfaction isn't an issue (except for the prisoners themselves, obviously).

In a survivor story much of the excitement comes from the tension between characters, and their inadequacies at performing the task at hand, such as scavenging, working together, dealing with harsh or dangerous environments, and any other tribulations. I'm blanking on a good game example, but the movie "Flight of the Phoenix" and the show "Lost" come to mind. Oooh, or "Battle Royale", one of my favorites.

So back to what I was saying, the current system in Rimworld allows the player to, in an obtuse way, build a roster of survivors that fit the needs and their plans of the player. I believe this is counter-intuitive for a survivor sim because as a player I always want the best outcome, so why would I ever choose anything but the best survivors? I would keep hitting that randomize button until my survivors are just the way I want them, and then start my world. What I suggested, where the AI storyteller chooses a small lineup to choose from would force the player to make tough decisions about the strengths and weaknesses of the colony, and then the resulting experience would snowball from their.

I believe this would lead to vastly different and interesting playthroughs. Maybe Classic Kassandra chooses a lineup that gets along really well, but is prone to more mental breakdowns. This would result in maybe a more stable colony during the calm points, but increased difficulty during raids.

Thanks for the response :)
#7
Ideas / Re: Detailed Character Ideas
October 24, 2013, 07:46:46 PM
Quote from: salt1219 on October 24, 2013, 12:57:23 AM
@Milo I would be interested in seeing your characters in some fan art.
They seem well developed, maybe a short comic?

Well thanks. I'm just doing it at random for fun
#8
Ideas / Re: Detailed Character Ideas
October 23, 2013, 09:02:54 PM
Quote from: salt1219 on October 23, 2013, 08:40:05 PM
for me i think having just a few head details like hair, skin tone and such is enough.
the rest i kind of want to imagine for myself, maybe have a few basic colors to represent their clothes

I gave it a lot of thought, and the one thing I was concerned with was exactly this. Sorta like legos, the simplicity of the art/tools forces you to come up with your own narratives, which can be a big part of the fun
#9
Ideas / Detailed Character Ideas
October 23, 2013, 08:33:31 PM
Hey everyone, I'm new here but I thought it would be fun to contribute my own style for the characters. I'm getting super excited to finally play the alpha and I know there's going to be a lot of work to get it to beta. I remember reading that much of the art is place holder, and the devs were in talks with artists. Well, I'm no artist, but I couldn't wait to see the new assets, so I created some concepts in Illustrator and Photoshop.

I've been watching Blitzkriegsler's (http://www.youtube.com/user/Blitzkriegsler?feature=g-high-crv) letsplays on Youtube to get a feel for the game. I've noticed in many management sims players care a lot about their little colonists (or prisoners, or dwarfs, or whatever), but the art is rarely very detailed. This makes sense because much of the player interaction takes place from a birds eye view and it would be time consuming and costly to draw sinister little mustaches and other details for the player models. I think it would be cool to zoom in and see your little dudes wandering around, doing their business, and visually be able to distinguish them from each other. I feel that it would add  more to the connection between the player and the colonists. Anyway, here's some examples that I made:

Space Odyssey https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21837777/RimWorldCharacters/OdysseySuit.png
A very cunning hat https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21837777/RimWorldCharacters/CunningHat.png
A dignified getup https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21837777/RimWorldCharacters/Dignified.png
Give it to me straight, doc https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21837777/RimWorldCharacters/DocCoat.png
Hazmat https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21837777/RimWorldCharacters/Hazmat.png
Ribbed Merc Suit https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21837777/RimWorldCharacters/RibbedMercSuit.png
Slightly less safe https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21837777/RimWorldCharacters/RibbedMercSuitNoHelmet.png
The Walter https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21837777/RimWorldCharacters/TheWalter.png
Mr. Toughguy https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21837777/RimWorldCharacters/ToughGuy.png

I also think an even bigger benefit of differentiating the characters is communicating to the player what their job is or what they excel at, visually. I would imagine that there would be a ton of clothing that fits all jobs, or characters that are "jack-of-all-trades," but if you set one to be only a doctor, maybe this specialization would be indicated by his coat, and bonuses could come with it.

Anyway, I'm having lots of fun working on these, and feedback would be great! I made some barbed wire texture, and sand texture to go along with the character's style, but they look terrible. I'm much more of a user experience designer than a line artist or pixel artist. Next I think I'm going to make a interface reskin concept :)