Your not so cheap ideas.

Started by Ferigad, October 09, 2013, 12:41:37 AM

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Nasikabatrachus

#60
Building on the notion of two groups landing and fighting each other in the midst of the player's colony, I suggest an AI Director event (with a frequency of once or twice per colony) in which a traveler enters the map from one side and is shortly followed by raiders/pirates/bounty hunters attempting to kill or capture the traveler while the traveler attempts to escape through the opposite side of the map.

The decision of whether to intervene on the traveler's behalf presents an interesting choice to the player: either adopt an aggressive approach in order to gain a new colonist at the risk of losing one or more current colonists or let the opportunity pass by. This would also contribute to the Wild West feel of the game.

Pendryn

#61
Just tossing some thoughts out there. As I am not a programmer I have zero idea of whether any of these would be considered cheap as I have no reference for the length of time it would take to code them.

Perhaps when you initialize your colony, how about when your survivors arrive, some less fortunates arrive as well? Maybe have them be special items in the game that don't generate any unhappiness and decay after a day or so. Purely cosmetic.

How about some corpse decay? As the only way to prioritize corpses in manually, perhaps nature on this strange new world includes really go bacteria that'll break down corpses in, say, 5 days or so?

How about a Colony Leader? After a few days your current colonists elect one to be the leader, probably at random. That individual would give a temporary boost to, say, happiness, or perhaps a work efficiency boost. She is so inspiring. She wouldn't need a personal boost as she has a badge of office. If she dies, a new one would be elected among the survivors in a matter of days.

I believe I saw someone mention terraforming somewhere. Ain't a shabby idea.

How about natural caves? Basically per-generated mined out paths into rock sides, maybe with surprises awaiting an explorer? Just a though.

Blast Doors and other Hardened Structures couldn't hurt, right?

Maybe if larger maps are introduced, a Fog of War could be too, that way raiders could be lurking in the unknown and so it would be harder to determine the direction of an attack unless a scout was sent out. And on that note...

Raider Bases! Perhaps raiders could build their own mini bases? A few sandbags,  a turret or two. This would give them a point to strike from, and a point to retreat to to lick there wounds and plan a second strike?

Raider Reinforcements. Send those baddies in waves! True Carnage!

And of course more gear, Miner's Hats, Flashlights, whatever, just more.

And that's all. I'm spent. Enjoy it or ignore it.
Reticulating all the splines.

BlueLight

Hello. As someone that likes systems that allow me to creatively think of solutions to problems, i hope to give some cheap ideas. I must warn you, that when i'm thinking of ideas (even for my own projects) i normally can't formulate a clear grammatical sentence(s) of what i'm thinking of.

One that a few people have suggested is basically basically a switch. The way i see it, it should act like a wire in nearly all ways if it is active. If not active, then it wouldn't have most of the wire traits. if you have a mass wire termite infestation then they will not harm anything on the other side of a switch if the switch is inactive.
This seems like you could easily do it with a if else statement. Just check if a variable is true and then run the wire code, else run the !wire code.

I'd like traps; more exactly i want fire traps.
I was thinking of a trap when powered, would ignite a fire at it's location. This fire would only light things directly on it; or within a one block radius for 10 seconds. (We don't want this to be overpowered. This should prevent people from completely gaming the system. It's more of an obstacle than a instant win button). I was also thinking of making this a complete power drain, where having one of these devices on for 5 or 10 seconds will drain 1 battery completely dry. The AI will treat this device when active as a normal fire. When anything is lit by this device, it lights it up with a normal fire. It could also be used to light corpse on fire.

These ideas could be more complex depending on how you coded things. Having special circuits that require 2 inputs(power supplies) to power one output. Basically a "and gate". The complex thing, assuming that you're able to easily detect 2 input having above 0 power, is figuring out if you have enough power from both inputs for the devices on the output. I guess you could treat the and gate circuit as a normal wire if you have power from both inputs. I suggest this because it opens up basic problem solving that the player can do on their own and won't have to use a magic fixit building that does the work for them.

A pressure plate. It will supply a wire with 1 extra power if a person, corpse or rubble are on top of it.

Sorry if these aren't cheap but these ideas seem easy to implement in my pseudocode mind. Doesn't help that i normally make turn based projects that use a grid(Literally a grid... well the last one was a grid of arrayList) for the map.

Semmy

#63
This topic is for the ideas that take more time to create.
I will merge some posts out of the cheapest idea topic towards this topc.

Hang in there its alot of work.


Not so cheap ideas are ideas that for instance require a complete new system.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke

W1Z25


Nabobalis

All of the ideas that are on the kickstarter page!

Inventory screen for all characters and thus weapons and armour etc.

Kyle

Quote from: W1Z23 on November 04, 2013, 03:28:56 PM
co-op/multiplayer support

Wouldn't support co-op or multiplayer. Could be taken advantage of way too much to make it unfair for certain players.

W1Z25

im sure with enough coding it could happen

Produno

Quote from: Nabobalis on November 04, 2013, 03:36:26 PM
Inventory screen for all characters and thus weapons and armour etc.

This ^^ Adding more information on this screen aswell to really get us involved with our colonists.

Cassey

Perhaps some control on message levels?

My crew is trained to put out fires ASAP, all those "short circuit" notes get a bit overwhelming.

Maybe Informative and Action classifications at a minimum?

willow512

Tynan, in one of your earlier projects you had implemented oxygen. How about putting that back in? :) Because the idea is really awesome. Make rooms hold oxygen and lose oxygen when doors are opened, doubly so when those doors are unpowered. Give colonists a decreasing amount of oxygen when they pick up their suits. Ruptures in walls would be way more problematic.

Sky_walker

Yea, oxygen would be great. It'd force you to invest in ventilation system while building caves and make them less desirable than now (right now caves are basically be-all-end-all of protection).

It could also lead to some nice events - like air poisoning - where you'd use O2 tanks to protect your colonists. And thanks to this we could discourage people putting graves/dead animals in buildings (they'd poison the air).
Self-sustaining colony with hydroponic glasshouses.

GC13

Alright, if my second and third Cheapest Ideas posts are in here, then I think just about everything in the thread belongs here...

Greski09

I think I want gundams or giant mechs, huge projects that when finished give you superior edge over everything

Reaver41


PLEASE READ TYNAN ITS ACTUALLY A REALLY COOL IDEA...
USMC Troops they drop down in droppods at your place they work like raiders, except they will take over your base and you can control your workers and such normally and protect you however they will confiscate all weapons and such but they force yo uto work for them, then they will basicily control what your workers build as such taking over your place, (you can still control your workers and such and get them to move around and possibly steal weapons or such while guards arent looking the riot. and then they will make your workers build for example a building where the soldiers can sleep and live and such (workers cant enter due to a lock or such) and then your workers are opressed and such.