Print

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

[Semmy]

I made this topic because of the fact that in multiple topics and in the kickstarter comment section people ask alot.
I will use this topic to add those questions and answers for all to read.
I hope it will save you alot of time searching and tynan having to answer multiple questions over and over.
Feel free to point me out to missing stuff do keep in mind though that its a work in progress (-:

Kickstarter

Question: Will there be stretchgoals?

Answer: No specific stretch goals. More money just means more art/sound/etc support from other people. I'll be developing the game in modules as planned. I won't do anything to threaten the basic schedule.

Question: When will the game be available?

Answer: The game works now. If you're in the influencer tier, you'll get access to the current pre-alpha as soon as the Kickstarter ends.
I've run several playtests and verified that real people can pick it up and enjoy it. It is, however, a bit light on content, and there are bugs. I'd like to squash this stuff as fast as possible.
I think we can have the first more stable and well-rounded public alpha (with audio and art contributions) out in January 2014.

Question: What is the prototype pack?

Answer: The prototype pack is four old versions of my prototypes that I saved away. They're somewhat buggy and unfinished, but really interesting historically. At least to me

Question: Can i donate through paypall?

Answer: Yes you can. Here is the link http://ludeon.com/blog/rimworld/

Question: Can I monetize videos of RimWorld?
 
Answer: Yes! Anyone can freely make videos of RimWorld and monetize them on YouTube or other sharing sites. Of course, to do so you’ll need a build of the game, since it’s not out yet. If you’re a YouTuber with a following, email me to get one.

Question: On wich platforms will Rimworld launch?

Answer: The game will launch on as many platforms as possible (steam, desura , gog). The focus will be on steam first since the game is #8 on the greenlight page (at the moment writing this). In the future ludeon will look at other platforms.


Creative rewards guidelines

RimWorld is a character-driven story game. Players will get to know a colonist or prisoner over the course of many hours of play. That's why for the good of all players, it's important that every character make sense and fit seamlessly into the world. This includes all characters added by backers at the Pirate tier and above.

To make sure nothing narrative-breaking gets in the game, we're going to moderate the names and character backgrounds you submit. Everything will be submitted through a Web form; if your content doesn't work you'll get an email explaining why and an opportunity to change it and try again.

To make this whole process as super-transparent and consistent as possible, I've written a series of documents to help everyone out:

*  Pirate and above backers should read the creative rewards guidelines. It covers what's considered acceptable to add into the game.
*  Mercenary and above backers should read the RimWorld universe quick primer. This is a short introduction to the setting of the game, so you can write your character backgrounds in a way that makes sense.
*  Those who are interested can read the longsleep revival briefing. This is a longer in-world fiction piece that I wrote months ago, largely for myself, to develop the universe.

[Semmy]

Gameplay

Question: Roughly how long a typical game is going to be? With the different storytellers and everything, replayability seems to be a selling point for this game and for the game to be highly replayable it shouldn't be too long, I think. But it also musn't be too short since both the story and the colony building needs time to develop. Pirates I think waa a game that was extraordinaly replayable, I believe in part because of a perfect length. Civilization is another good example (probably not a coincidence that both are Sid Meier games).

Answer: Game length currently tends between two and five hours, but it could potentially be much longer. If we put the endgame in (where you build a ship and escape the planet), players who choose to do so can pursue a specific goal. I'll probably work towards a 4-10 hour playtime to get to that goal. I think that's enough time for a story to develop and resolve itself. But we'll have to see - game design is uncertain.

Regarding play time - my basic estimate was for how long it would take to reach the "escape the planet" endgame if you were pushing for it. If you just want to build a bigger and bigger colony, I suspect you could do that for quite a while And we'll be supporting this playstyle fully. Also bear in mind that this is all speculation. The details of the endgame need to get hashed out in proper development and playtesting, so depending on how it goes and what people want, it could be longer or the concept could change entirely.

Question: How important combat is going to be in the game. The effort put into the tactics engine suggests that combat is going to be c-entral, but I am wondering whether you are planning on making it possible to deal with for example scavenges in a different way than fighting, for those who prefer a more peaceful but still challenging game? Or perhaps there will be a storyteller designed to provide a peaceful but otherwise challenging game?

Answer: As for combat, it's not the only focus of the game, but it is reasonably important. I'm not against the idea of creating a non-combat-but-still challenging AI Storyteller; that's something I hadn't thought of. Most of the challenging things that can happen to a colony right now are about fighting, but there are lots of ideas to be explored with weather, plague, theft, insanity, fire, and so on. We could do it.

Question: Will there be factions?¿

Answer: I'd love to do factions. Seems like an obvious choice in this universe. Especially when one can be preindustrial tribes, another can be midworld (e.g. near present-day Earth) refugees, a third can be spacers, and the last can be mysterious transcendent humanoids from an advanced race of posthuman machine gods.

Question: Will there be more storytellers?¿

Answer: Once we've got a solid core set of Storytellers it seems like it would be reasonably easy to make more. And I think a hardcore experience is valuable to a lot of people

Question: Will the game have achievements?.
There are many games that even use the achievements to unlock game modes and other features (for example, in Reus).

Answer: Very unlikely.
Here's the design rationale: The experience of RimWorld isn't really supposed to be about fighting and winning against the game. It's not a competition or skill-test, primarily. It's about story experience. Achievements get in the way of that by focusing people's attention on some arbitrary task. I'd rather people set their own goals and experience the story as it emerges.
That and they're not essential and I'm far overloaded as is.

Question: I've got a good question.  How will game-saving be handled?

Answer: Right now there 5 rotating autosaves that get updated every night in the game.

Question: Will there be different localization's of the game (spanish, french, german etc etc.)

Answer: Localization won't be till after the Alpha, most likely.
It's difficult in a game with as much generated text as RimWorld (where we assemble together numbers and words to make sentences). I haven't researched deeply enough to know more than that.

Question: Will there be z-levels (vertical mapping)?

Answer: All the coordinates are tracked in 3-vectors already (though only the two horizontal axes are used), so the potential for 3D is in the game.

I am afraid that there is basically no way a modder would ever be able to mod Z-axis into the game. It is a beast of a feature. Here's some basic issues you'd have to handle:
-Pathfinding
-Lighting spilling over Z-levels
-Save/load of a geometrically larger amount of stuff (e.g. 200x200 map = 40k squares, 200x200x10 = 400k squares!)
-Line of sight for shooting
-AI tactical analysis of shooting lines of sight etc
-Cover usefullness varying at vertical angles
-Interface for moving through Z-levels
-Rendering visible lower Z-levels while being on higher ones

I could go on and on... Anyway, there is tons to do in RimWorld, my general thought is that the best cost/benefit move is to leave Z-levels to Towns, DF, Gnomoria, Stonehearth, and all those other games and focus on what RimWorld is really uniquely about: AI Storyteller, tactical AI, and so on.

Question: Will we be able to mod the game?¿

Answer: Check my post on Ludeon.com. It's a feature module that people would have to ask for, but I want to do it and the game is set up for it pretty cleanly. http://ludeon.com/blog/2013/07/moddability/

Question: Will i be able to control time within the game? There seem to be alot of menu's to go through.

Answer: Time is fully controllable. Spacebar pauses and unpauses, and there is 1x, 3x, and 6x time. You can give orders and configure everything in pause mode.

Question: Will there be multiplayer?

Answer:It's an interesting idea, but at least six months away. Probably never, but as I say, still an interesting idea. It is technically possible.

If I did multiplayer I think it would be in a co-op context.
Making the game into a competitive RTS would really break a lot of the core concepts driving the design. Namely: it's not about winning, it's about the story.
A competitive context would break because the game isn't close to being balanced (what with all the random events and degenerate strategies). In this context competition becomes meaningless.

If we had several players working together, however (say, on the same colony, or in allied colonies close together), they could experience the AI Storyteller's stories together, maybe help each other in times of need, stuff like that. And we wouldn't have to balance the game for PvP.

Question: How big are the maps?

Answer: Currently it's 200x200 (40000 squares). I've tested 250x250 (~60000 squares) and it's okay. Beyond that some performance issues start to become really problematic.

Question: Can i rename my colonists?

Answer: Yes, you can always rename your starting colonists . Maybe others - that'd be a new feature.

Question: Where can i find my savegames?

Answer: - Windows C:\Users\Marc\AppData\LocalLow\Ludeon Studios

[Tynan]

Thanks for making this Semmy!

[nomadseifer]

I've got a good question.  How will game-saving be handled? 

[Semmy]

Thanks for making this Semmy!

No problem gives me something to do during the holidays. No testing so far and the wife and kid are off for the 3 weeks i got left. gotta keep myself busy now the fishing season is over.

If you see wrongfull stuff edit it or send me a pm.
Also for other stuff you want in there just poke me.
Im now just putting questions and answers together out of various posts your making.

[Hypolite]

I've got a good question.  How will game-saving be handled?

Right now there 5 rotating autosaves that get updated every night in the game.

[oasis789]

Re: game length, I think this question is misguided for a procedural type game and only makes sense in the context of RPGs or other script-heavy games. 

One of the best features of DF is that it has no ending. Yes there is an "endgame" (clowns) that few players ever reach, but generally players decide on their own endgame. Similarly with Terraria. FTL is the opposite with its rigidly predefined game duration (only so many moves). Don't Starve is kind of in between.

[Blackbird]

Re: game length, I think this question is misguided for a procedural type game and only makes sense in the context of RPGs or other script-heavy games. 

One of the best features of DF is that it has no ending. Yes, there is an "endgame" (clowns) that few players ever reach, but generally players decide on their own endgame. Similarly with Terraria. FTL is the opposite with its rigidly predefined game duration (only so many moves). Don't Starve is kind of in between.

I second this.  One of DF's greatest strengths is its lack of ending, and when it comes to storytelling, its stories are always unexpected.  This isn't a bad thing.  Have something to do when a player is at the top of the tech tree, of course, but don't force the player toward ending the game (or worse, kick the player out when he or she reaches this ending). 

Edit:  This was just posted to the Kickstarter comments, in reply to a question about z-levels: I understand the problem you're responding to (reaching the same endgame every time). I'm hoping to address that first with things like:
-Multiple biomes, possibly (it's a proposed module)
-An escape-by-ship endgame that you play towards against the AI Storyteller. It's more like a story with a beginning, a middle, and a climactic ending where you take off in the middle of a huge attack. It doesn't just drag on and peter out (of course this doesn't help players who choose to not escape, which I want to support)
-More story events of more variety. Ideally there are enough systems and events in the end that there are always new combinations and situations and challenges arriving.

[GC13]

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to have an end game available. It's certainly a bad idea to have something forcing you there, but depending on just how much entropy your colony is subject to it might be good for gameplay to have the option to bug out: grow as big as you can, then get out while the getting is good.

Even if colonies are fairly stable, it could be used in a similar way to Prison Architect's new prison sale feature: start a brand new colony with more resources and a particular amount (depending on the size of the ship you manage to launch) of your favorite colonists. Kind of a legitimate way to have a quicker, easier start.

[Kalesin]

He took post questions there.

Question: In Rimworld, in the future, there will be option to play a single game colonist, like a rpg, as the Adventurer Dwarf Fortress Mode?

[xTAMERx]

Question: is it possible to create own weapons? and are they use ammunition? so if you don*t have ammunition, ure not able to shoot?

[Jakadasnake]

Re: game length, I think this question is misguided for a procedural type game and only makes sense in the context of RPGs or other script-heavy games. 

One of the best features of DF is that it has no ending. Yes there is an "endgame" (clowns) that few players ever reach, but generally players decide on their own endgame. Similarly with Terraria. FTL is the opposite with its rigidly predefined game duration (only so many moves). Don't Starve is kind of in between.

If I could upvote this answer I would. Here's food for thought, though. Each of those games has a decidedly different approach to the endgame. But why not seriously consider the pros and cons of each? Personally, I think it'd be great to get into some sort of end-game type scenario that maybe ends the story for one group of settlers but enhances it for your next group. Or maybe there could be a decision point many hours into a game where you can hop to a nearby rimworld in search of some desirable object, but causing you to have to abandon your colony.

[LoneTophat]

You've said this universe is much like the western space opera (it's a real genre I swear!) Firefly. Does that mean no Faster-Than-Light drives or sentient aliens? I loved Firefly, but one of the biggest drawbacks for me was the fact that there were only humans, and it just took the diversity right out of space travel.

[Semmy]

Seperated the kickstarter and gameplay questions.

Feel free to shoot me if you have stuff that needs to be added.

[British]

Question: is it possible to create own weapons? and are they use ammunition? so if you don*t have ammunition, ure not able to shoot?

From the "212 build feedback" thread, with the help of the Search link (ain't that a sweety ? it deserves love and recognition for sure !):
"Ammo is a real idea; it's kind of weird it's missing. There's a lot of other stuff I want to address first, though. Ammo is lower priority because

-It wouldn't really become important very often
-When it was important, it would often obstruct players in an annoying way. I classify this system as a new way to obstruct players, not a new way to give them opportunities. Yes, interesting stories could emerge from ammo shortages, but I'm not sure it's worth the annoyances of dealing with the logistics behind it
-There are many other systems that rate higher in design benefit versus design cost, to my mind. Making the AI manage ammo well would be really hard; they payoff would be minimal.

If we did do ammo, the first version would be limited to artillery pieces (which aren't yet in the game, though they were there in a super early prototype last year, with FTL-style direct controls)"