Your Cheapest Ideas

[Pheanox]

Cheap idea: Yellow carpet. Only three colors prevents me from doing cool patterns.

Yeah I mentioned that earlier, but I think having a color wheel would be better then having a ton of different set colors, so you can pick the color yourself.  (Everyone has their own favorite colors)

[SpaceEatingTrex]

Yeah I mentioned that earlier, but I think having a color wheel would be better then having a ton of different set colors, so you can pick the color yourself.  (Everyone has their own favorite colors)

Any kind of user interface requires some testing, but I think it would be worthwhile to develop a generic color selection interface that could be used for carpet, clothing, etc. Rather than a color wheel I would prefer to see a small number of preset options plus an RGB value input. 80% of players would probably be fine choosing from a dozen presets or such, while the RGB value input lets the other players use any color they like. A color wheel would work too though - it all depends on what is going to be most effective for the most players.

How about I switch it over to Wd (watt days)? Just because smaller numbers are nicer and an "hour" is a bit ambiguous in this game anyway.

Thanks everyone; some of these ideas are quite good (especially the ones that address specific issues in the game as it stands).

This seems like a decision of realism vs. user-friendliness, in which case I think you should always choose the latter. I definitely think measuring the power in days is a good idea. For batteries, since you already display the amount of stored energy and the capacity, wouldn't it be easy would it be to display a "% charged" value as well? That would save the player some math.

[Tynan]

There won't be a color wheel because passing parameters like colors to a material means running a new draw call, which could push up the draw call count and destroy performance in cases with a good number of varying colors.

Anyway - back on topic! More cheap ideas, I love 'em!

[salt1219]

@Tynan how about a short list of restrictions such as the draw call, that way we can make better suggestions

here's a quick one.   make a new selection type, its like a mining area but it marks the area as a blasting area, mining in a blasting area would use up metal equal to the number of caps required to blow it up.

[Tynan]

@Tynan how about a short list of restrictions such as the draw call, that way we can make better suggestions

Well, drawcall stuff is pretty technical; there's no need to go that deep. A cheap idea is just a really simple variation or re-use of existing systems. Ideally something I could write in a handful of hours. That's all I'm after.

[Finjinimo]

- "No Go Zone": Allows you to forbid areas of the map so that colonists won't go there.

- Can you add equipment / items that you use the weapon slot? I'm thinking basic things like Hoe, Pick, Hammer to give a bonus to farming, mining, construction.

- Corpse Skeletons: I see corpses have a "dead since day03" or whatever tag. Perhaps after a little while the corpse art asset can be swapped for a skeleton.

- Random Skeletons: I like the idea of finding random skeletons already on the map when we arrive. Who were they, how did they get there, how did they die, can we avoid their fate...

[Pheanox]

There won't be a color wheel because passing parameters like colors to a material means running a new draw call, which could push up the draw call count and destroy performance in cases with a good number of varying colors.

Anyway - back on topic! More cheap ideas, I love 'em!

Well I'll hope that purple is added in to the color option of carpets then!  Didn't realize it would be that involved.

[Conti027]

Modular turrets.

Instead of a whole bunch of different turrets you put down a turret base and have different shooting mechanisms that go on the turret base.

Once again I'm not sure if this is too complex but you have to research the different shooting mechanisms.
Your start off with a extremely basic slow shooting mechanism.

More turret mechanisms could be..
Laser
Flame Thrower
Machinegun
Mortar
Cannon
Shock
Shield
Railgun
etc.

I think I might be missing the whole idea of Cheap ideas. hahaha
but I'm hoping my ideas are still pretty cheap.

[miah999]

Molecular Recycler - Just use a recolored Paste Dispenser for the art, Colonists can bring it stuff like weapons, corpses or dead animals. It spits out either metal or food, which ever is appropriate. It would need a series of check boxes like a Dump so you can chose what you want to recycle.

I thought of this because I had 30+ guns lying on the ground, 26 in equipment racks, and all my colonists were armed. And it had been two cycles since a ship that could buy them had been by, and the last one only had enough money for 4 pistols. And I wasn't in the mood to waste a ton of metal on 15 more equipment racks. And that's not to mention the 10+ dead animals, and the 50+ dead raiders.

[salt1219]

How about some Easter eggs from the four prototypes.

They could be super rare random events or cheat code activated. 
- a lost college student wants to join your colony or frizbee golf team, what ever he's up for anything.
- government agents arrive and attack
- zombies attack
- ( not sure what to do with the starship builder)

The beauty of these is zombies and such should still be in your code somewhere

[SpaceEatingTrex]

There won't be a color wheel because passing parameters like colors to a material means running a new draw call, which could push up the draw call count and destroy performance in cases with a good number of varying colors.

A color system might be too costly to worry about in this thread. However, I think it would be good to see in the future. I don't know how the objects in the game are implemented, but here was my understanding of how something like this would work:

• Start with a generic carpet object
• Have a user interface that allowed the player to choose a color
• Pass that color to the carpet constructor to instantiate a new instance of the carpet object, loaded into the slots of the yellow/blue/etc. carpets now.

That way seems like after the colored carpet is created it would function identically to the current carpets. Or am I not understanding the implementation?

Anyway, back to cheap ideas:

Trade Interface - The click and drag functionality of the trade screen is unique, but anything that takes time for numbers to increase seems like it would run into scalability problems with large values. I think the most effective solution here would be to let the player input the values via keyboard, but that would require constraints and some testing. What about having "Trade Half" and "Trade Max" buttons? Similarly, People and Weapons could have a "Buy All" button.

It seems like those should be easy to implement, and they could save players some time and effort.

[Hypolite]

That way seems like after the colored carpet is created it would function identically to the current carpets. Or am I not understanding the implementation?

The current system is
1. Load associated image from sprite
2. Display

Your system would be
1. Load a texture image from sprite
2. Color it according to the stored color
3. Display

It may not seem much more, but if you have a 100x100 surface covered in carpet, the first way would be:

1. Load the 3 carpet images from sprite
2. Display 10 000 times any of those images

= 10 003 operations, 3 images in memory

With color selectable carpet, it becomes:

1. Load the texture image from sprite
2. Load 10 000 selected colors (even if it's the same for each)
3. Paint 10 000 times the texture (could be improved with a cache system, increasing complexity)
4. Display 10 000 times the painted image

= 30 001 operations, 10 000 image memory needed, optimization work needed, etc...

[CaptainShootALot]

Statues!

Immortalize your favourite colonists by placing a gray/stone-ish version of them on a plaque.

[Blitz]

I have another 2 that should be quick and easy.

The first one comes from me having a wall against the edge of the map that had a comm center in front of it. I could not repair the wall in the middle block behind the comm. My suggestion: increase the repair distance to 2.

The second suggestion is basically the same, but relates to fire. I had lightning strike the center of one of my solar panels. I could not put the fire out in the middle of the panel. Suggestion: increase the firefighting range to 2.

[salt1219]

Fire produces light, that should be good for your power 
Yes I agree 1 extra range would be awesome and would solve some of the building/pathing issues