Testing - Ideas, suggestions, bugs.

Started by Drabus, July 04, 2013, 07:54:56 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Drabus

Hey, so while bored at work for an extended time, I decided to have some fun

testing your (old) version of the game!
If you were to do biweekly builds, I could probably find a day to test it out per cycle... just a thought!

Playing 1920*1080 Full screen for this game.

Bug? - I had a colonist named Sergio... who seemed to be significantly faster than my others. Odd!
Bug - In a trade interface with multiple slaves/prisoners to buy/sell, with a scroll bar, I tried to scroll but it also scrolled the zoom.

Suggestion - There should be things to do while your colonists are idle! While still being marked as idle, maybe they could chat or do random activities to increase any skills?
Suggestion - Happiness - Perhaps delving more into the happiness system, I feel like these colonists shouldn't be working 100% of their life. They should be able to enjoy SOME qualities of life. I imagine if there are more pressing things, such as raids, threats to their life, that the happiness factor would stop mattering (or be smaller) but later on, I feel like it should matter!
You could have things that you build dedicated to happiness, combined with passive bonuses for carpets, plants, etc. These active happiness modifiers could also play a part in increasing skills, such as shooting ranges (increases shooting), sparring rings (increases hand to hand), sofa lounges (increases social if more than one person), etc.

Combined with a similar system, you could devote % of time to certain activities. If this moon had a 24-hour day (unlikely! randomize it!) then you could have "suggested" lengths (eg 8 hours sleep, 2 hours food, 4 hours free time, 10 hours work) and adjust it according to your wants and needs, with side effects to each. The free time could be itemized to practice whatever skill is lowest, highest, even, random, etc. Extra sleep, for example, could increase your ability to learn.

Suggestion - Corners of buildings, especially indoors, are very rigid. Could we have indoor corners be triangles (half the square) instead of a block of square? And allow certain items, such as air vents, to cover two corners instead of one big block?

Bug - Had some people of same name, so they shared a bed, and that didn't work out when they both wanted to sleep at same time.

Tynan

Well, thanks for taking another look! I'll try to get you builds more often. Should have one tomorrow, I think.

Idling - I think this is mostly a manifestation of the game being pretty lightweight. I should have some more low-priority stuff in there for them to do but it's just not in yet. Basic things like chilling in their room or a designated social common area should be their default behavior.

Happiness - Yes, you are correct. I definitely want to get more leisure/happiness oriented stuff in there, as long as it's interesting. An aforementioned meeting/rec room would be a decent start. You could put pinball machines in. Or, perhaps the more twisted colonists could get kicks from abusing prisoners as a form of recreation. Maybe you don't really want this weirdo on the colony, but he's really good with a gun...

I'm unlikely to randomize the moon's rotation period soon. Perhaps some day, as a special challenge. But that's the kind of thing that can throw off an entire design. Sometimes, I've found, it's better to reduce variation and thus increase consistency so you can tune the game to be consistently interesting. That said, it's certainly possible in the future, when everything else is more solid, to start playing with exotic orbital situations.

There is a similar suggested activity times system in Prison Architect. It works pretty well and I'm interested in doing something similar. Currently there really is no difference between night and day; it would be nice if the colonists tried to all sleep when it was night and all work when it was day and all relax in the evening.

I'm pretty sure those bugs are all fixed. Funny about the Sergio one, there weren't two colonists named Sergio, there was one colonist with two representations in the object listing, being displayed and updated twice. Spaced out...
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

Drabus

Build 132B Personal notes:
Sorry for the jumble, I can explain more in person if you like

Would like to see in more overview - Current task, equipment.
SOME sort of priority. Hauling, being lowest priority, has major issues. Goods are grown/mined and not hauled. Would like to see some personal priorities as an option, and/or hauling base priority increased above growth/mining (so that they mine, and then haul it back)

Year 2 Eclipse... 4-5 Jammed air pipes exploded. But they all happened at once, and I had to hit OK 4-5 times. Instead, would be nice to say how many exploded!

Overview - See what equipped, Sort by skill. Eg sort by shooting, so you can equip the best weapons on the people.
Assign orders from overview.

Selling goods - think it takes double? Always end up negative. Same with buying. Credits the "fake" credit to your total, then adds again when you get from the pile.
Default on grave - or a way to set all graves to X
Given up and gone into a daze - how do I cure him? Can't take him into custody or perform any actions. (Edit, figured out. I had to shoot him to incapacitate, then take into custody)
Super slow playing while colonists are "idle" but not actually, since they have things to do! Guessing it's figuring out what they should do.

Tynan

Overview expansion will happen... eventually.
Prioritization is a tough issue. On/off is simpler but as you've discovered it can be annoying. Especially with a small number of colonist so you can't have them do an exclusive job. The reason hauling is lowest priority is so that skilled miners don't leave the rock face to constantly haul stuff. You're supposed to pair a skilled miner with an unskilled laborer so they're each used to the fullest.

For ref: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=24022.0

This issue may ease when I get hauler bots in there. Hauling is pretty boring work so I want to make a robot that can help your colonists do it without actually being a person and pushing the person count too high (I want a small number of characters so you can get to know each one).

-Lots of exploding pipes. Weird. Hopefully this will be rarer when there are more incidents for the AI storyteller to throw at you.

-Selling goods below zero is a good bug catch. I've been trying to find the culprit on this for a while and this is the closest I've come to good repro steps.

-Grave management: To come, when the storage system is more mature.

-Dazed colonists: You should be able to arrest them with a soldier and throw them in prison. But yes they really should do something else eventually.

-Not sure what you meant by the last line.
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

Thoughts

One suggestion:  Put an 'about' command somewhere - and display the current game version, storyteller, etc.

There are times I swear I've picked the wrong storyteller and really wonder.