I want now continue on a settlement concept. As I said in the first thread, I was originally thinking about production lines and settlement buildings but drifted off into the whole material stuff. But I went on with the concept to push it further. Not since but even before the outbreak of the new discussions in the Clonk Forum I thought it useful to have a whole concept with intertwining parts. The discussion in the old thread didn't bring any major counter-arguments against the concept (you may beg to differ at this point but I found none). Except for Peter who strongly opposed the incorporation of food because he thinks the supporting reasons too weak.
I will proceed with the food because it fits my basic thoughts on the production lines / settlement (see below). Nonetheless I think it is possible to leave that part out and outsource it into an own (food) pack.
From my summary in the last thread I think Maikel's cotton idea to be very good so don't take me wrong because it doesn't appear in my drafts.
Okay, let's start.
These were my first thoughts. Or say it's just a summary of what objects we had in CR and what we have in OC (I hope I mentioned everything, if not mea culpa). My conclusion is that we can organise the objects in certain categories. These were Chemicals, Weaponry, Construction and Vehicles in CR. Construction (ConKit, LineKit) is replaced or integrated in Tools in OC. I mentally added two more categories for OC: Food and Magic.
This leaves us with 5 basic production buildings for each cat. We may think of some buildings which combine production of cats to lessen the number. I didn't so. The only suitable building I thought of was the already existing tools workshop to produce weaponry as well. On another thought I didn't find that fitting.
Production lines:
This was my first approach. It's a non exhaustive enumeration of basic production lines. Nothing new there I think except for some minor changes. I will explain every line separately:
Wood:
Raw material is trees, big mushrooms (~ underground trees) and anything made purely from wood (which I counted as an easter egg in CR). The first two have to be chopped with the axe, then dragged to the sawmill. The sawmill produces wood. The "anything made purely from ..." part I will call recycling.
Metal:
Nothing new here. Catch some ore and put it together with some fuel into the foundry -> metal. I added a recycling possibility: everything purely made from metal (swords, shields, ...) can be used to produce metal as well.
Gold bars:
Carry a nugget (see AlteredARMOR in the first thread) to the foundry, add fuel, get a bar. Recycle anything purely made from gold bars (crowns, ...).
Dried moss:
The cheap fuel. Just harvest with the sickle, let it dry, use it.
Flour:
Find / crop some corn, use the sickle and you will get the seeds. Carry to the mill and you will have splendid meal.
These are the construction materials so far (except for dried moss...). Bring them to the production buildings and start making stuff.
Okay. This one. I will have to go into the details of my basic thoughts on settlement to explain this:
Basic thoughts:
This is a quote from the first thread:
> You need all materials from the Construction category for a basic settlement scenario. These are Rock, Wood and Metal
My basic settlement scenario contains these three materials otherwise it won't work for now. You will have to draw some ore, some rock and place some trees. That's it. Of course the player needs a way to mine. Unless the pickaxe gets implemented and we want the player to mine for hours.
Here's where my surrogate-idea kicks in. Or let's call it alternative ways. I think it's kinda boring to always add some sulphur and let the player produce flints (and like I've written on the first page, I don't like the refined flints). The first chemical product for mining already exists, the dynamite.
Other idea is just drop some mats and let the player decide which way he will take.
And what I mentioned above: food. I think we should just drop some materials and stuff and let the developers decide what to do but not a complete predefined pack.
Mining:
I imagined two other explosives (chemical products):
Gunpowder barrel
This is quicker than the dynamite (and maybe bigger explosion?). Just drop it and it will explode after some time.
Grenade:
This will work for mining and for combat. I thought it to be a replacement for the super flint and the Super-T-Flint (we may think of a way to turn on a delay.
These are two explosives which don't need sulphur:
Flour bomb:
Strength of a super flint / grenade. Based on dust explosions. Made from flour (the dust) and crystal (for the spark). It may first puff a cloud and then explode (little delay for the effect).
Little blast:
More or less a spell. This is critical because I bear Matthias's thoughts on magic in mind. Representation can be a red crystal or so. This is a slow moving (gravity affected) projectile with the strength of a flint. Needs one crystal (cheap!).
Production buildings:
As I said, 5 basic production buildings:
Tools workshop (tools), Smith/Weapon Smith/Armory (weaponry), Chemical lab (chemical products), Workshop (vehicles), bakery (food). I could not help to add another building for magic products. I called it Transmutation chamber but then remembered that we don't want any entrances. Well, then, I don't know. Transmutor, Transmutator or something.
Other surrogates:
I thought of other ways of replacing certain materials. Well, these ideas are obviously completly optional.
2x Coal in the foundry to burn some sulphur.
2x Mushroom in the transmutation things to create crystal (because mushrooms contain less magic power than crystals).
1 Flint into the chemical lab to create 1 sulphur and 1 coal. It's no longer possible to create flints in the chemical labs.
To conclude the thread, a flowchart of the production :)
> objects in certain categories. These were Chemicals, Weaponry, Construction and Vehicles
Is there a reason why you want to split up the objects into certain categories other than for determine which production building would be fitting for that? If not:
1. There are vehicles that I'd categorize more as weapons/mining tools than "vehicles". My suggestion is to be able to produce the lorry in the mining/tools workshop and the cannon/gatling in the weapons shelter/armory.
2. In the chat, I mentioned the idea to have another category "Inventions" which include the more advanced (,less balanced ;-) and perhaps a little bit wacky objects which don't classify as simple tools or weapons anymore. Examples: jar of winds, tele glove, grappler, balloon, boompack and probably more in future (if we go more into the steampunk/clockwork theme). These could be produced in an "inventor's workshop" or something.
Both are just ideas.
> Production line - wood
This could be a problem if the sawmill is to be constructed from wood. Where to get that wood from? From the sawmill. And how do you produce the sawmill? By getting wood. Hmm...
The solution would be that you get logs (like the current wood graphic) from simply chopping a tree -> chopping it to pieces with the axe. To construct a sawmill you just need those logs. A sawmill on the other hand produces timber which is a more advanced building material.
> Unless the pickaxe gets implemented
Already exists. It's actually already finished (model, animation, sounds, script).
> Gunpowder barrel
Already exists as ammo for cannon but also as what you said (only you need to somehow incite it)
> More or less a spell. This is critical because I bear Matthias's thoughts on magic in mind.
Oh yeah, just read his post again. ACK. Doubtable science, love that theme. The "little blast" idea on the other hand I find a little bit uninspired. If we search for alternative ways to make boom, I can think of a couple of err.. "inventions" which might do the job. Should I elaborate?
> As I said, 5 basic production buildings: [...] bakery (food)
There is not so much different food to produce from wheat. My suggestion is to make this building into a farmstead/mill in which all farming-related-resources as well as ... wildlife-related resources (resources gained from animals) can be processed. F.e. cotton/spider nets -> ropes, cloth; moss -> dried moss; wompfberries, nectar -> black wompfberryforest pie,...
> 1. There are vehicles that I'd categorize more as weapons/mining tools than "vehicles". My suggestion is to be able to produce the lorry in the mining/tools workshop and the cannon/gatling in the weapons shelter/armory.
Good idea. That way we can abandon the whole workshop.
> 2. In the chat, I mentioned the idea to have another category "Inventions"
Like that too.
> chopping it to pieces with the axe
Yes, it mentioned this idea in the first thread. But there were some counter-arguments here. Therefore I left this out.
> Already exists as ammo for cannon but also as what you said (only you need to somehow incite it)
Oh. Okay.
> Should I elaborate?
Absolutely.
> My suggestion is to make this building into a farmstead/mill in which all farming-related-resources as well as
Neat.
> Yes, it mentioned this idea in the first thread. But there were some counter-arguments here. Therefore I left this out.
Well I think this is a little bit different. Chopping the tree to pieces in order to build a sawmill out of it is kinda a necessity, otherwise you would have to have a sawmill already standing in every scenario - or at least the building material for it (which one has to save up for the sawmill). I never liked that property of the sawmill in Clonk Rage. Luckily there was always a base where you could buy some wood before you *really* had to build a sawmill. We don't have this luxus in OC. It's as if you needed metal to build a foundry. But yeah, you just need rocks (probably) and the rocks are around and if not, firestones will be. Trees are also around, but you can't build stuff (or a sawmill) directly out of trees. So you need a way at the start of the game to get the material needed for the most basic production buildings.
As the sawmill also needs power and perhaps metal to construct (and thus is something that is more advanced), timber could be the building material for the more advanced things, namingly everything that is not the basic (production) and structural buildings. When the player gained access to timber, he can also use the timber as a substitute for logs for the more basic stuff since it's easier and faster to just shove a tree into the sawmill than to chop it to pieces.
>> Should I elaborate?
> Absolutely.
Well, here are some ideas that float around on the top of my head currently regarding this. But before: I think the whole topic of explosives in clonk is so basic and fundamental to the clonk's gameplay that there should be no shortage of varieties of that. We have some varieties in tools and in "inventions" now, we need at least that many cool explosive stuff. To make this more interesting than different blast radius, the explosives need a different behaviour and perhaps method of application. Also, if it is about explosives the border between mining tool and weapon really gets blurry so it is really a good idea to put them into an own category (and own production building). So here are my ideas:
- Classical bomb. You know, that black one with the fuse - I think it fits quite nice into the theme. Should be almost as big as the boompack (and carried like it). Otherwise, the explosion is quite unspectacular, just something like Super to TeraFlint size.
- Bomb launcher. Pretty much like the grenade launcher from Hazard. It was just the most fun weapon in the whole pack IMO, I don't want to miss that gameplay value in OC, now that we have the cool mouse controls. You can shoot about three small versions of the bombs with it. The style of this weapon would be pretty much fall into the invention-corner with a quite steampunky design. Could also look like a hand-catapult ;-)
- Drillororor. (or something). You put it on a wall like the dynamite and instead of exploding, it drills itself into the ground and finally explodes. Don't know the actual use case for that, but still ;-)
- Boom. A smaller version of the boompack on which the Clonk doesn't try to ride on. So it's more or less a single-use explosive for e.g. reaching that little vein of gold at the top of that cave. Or as a weapon of course.
- Fireslime. Now this is quite an odd idea, I don't know if you (or I) like it; I got to that when thinking of alternative ways to blow up the landscape. Let's say there is some kind of plant/animal which is basically a red slime/thorny plant. Like the alien hive from Hazard, it will just bubble around in one place and not move around. Unlike the alien hive from hazard, it will not grow any worms out of itself or hatch little monsters all the time (on the other hand, you never know... ;-)). It naturally "grows" in the vicinity on or near the firestone material I talked about from which it seems to feed itself. And that explains the a little bit explosive nature of the slime. You can cut of some of these bubbles and plant them somewhere else. These bubbles will then grow by themselves and eventually form an own little plant. However, if there is no space for the bubbles to grow, the whole thing will explode in many small explosions around the plant. Even it's root which at that time may have grown into some (valuable) materials all explode. Yeah, very claustrophobic plant :-). So the only thing you need to do is cut pieces of this plant and plant them in little corners where you want the explosions, then just close it up with loam. And wait. The plant could also have other properties, like e.g. being able to absorb lava, purifying acid (into water) or growing firestones as "fruits". There could also be some explosives made out of this plant.
- Explosive juice. Looks like a molotow coctail, but it isn't. It's a large bottle of orange juice with a fuse. After you fused the bottle, you have two options. Either you just put it somewhere carefully and run away. Then it will just explode like a dynamite or something. Or, you throw it, it will shatter and it's contents will flow all over the floor. The fuse will then light this stuff and all the material pixels of that material will explode. (We'd need a new material for that probably? Something like oil only that it explodes instead of burns).
- "Sawed off engine" ;-). You know how a motor works right? This is a carry-able version of an engine and the explosions inside it are not used propel but led outside through a pipe which the Clonk is holding. So pretty much like a flamethrower but (also) with explosions ^^. Yes, it can't work in reality (or would it?).Needs something ridiculous as fuel, lava perhaps? "Explosive juice"? Or if we keep it, oil then.
- Explosive zapnest(!). You know what happens if you give zaps explosive juice to drink? Zaps (not the nest) become fucking flying bombs!
>otherwise you would have to have a sawmill already standing in every scenario
Or you use Peter's approach and you are able to buy certain materials or buildings if needed. Sure, I understand if not everyone likes everything about Peter's concept (as I do myself ;) ), but certain features work without the others, too
To elaborate, I'm not against making bootstrapping as easy as possible even without gold, but in my mind there's always the backup plan to find gold and then sell nuggets at your flag until you can afford to buy the building that you require.
If I understand it correctly, the bomb, bomb launcher, driller and boom are made from sulphur or a secondary product (like gunpowder)? Since we already have dynamite for mining purposes these objects are restrained to a niche existence (because they're harder and less flexible to use).
Only the last four objects are capable of replacing sulphur as the almighty boom source. And they base on a new plant (slime) oder the more or less undefined material "explosive juice".
I got two ideas regarding where to get that explosive juice from: Wompfberries + sulphur (you know, there is a kind of alcohol in nitroglycerin ;-)) and/or that kind of material into which the firestone material melts if incited.
>ince we already have dynamite for mining purposes these objects are restrained to a niche existence (because they're harder and less flexible to use).
If we find dynamite to be too strong and have too few disadvantages we can still decide to take it out of the game. I am not saying we should - I am saying we could :)
>Wood / Timber, Axe, Sawmill
We had this discussion somewhere already. My favoured solution is still that one:
The axe could produce a bit of wood by chopping down small trees and bushes - this should be easily enough to build a sawmill. The big trees, with a much bigger amount of wood gain would only work with a sawmill. The next though is this: This should work pretty well, if buildings will need more building materials (CR: Hut 5 woods, 1 Stone, OC: 15 Wood, 2 Stone or whatever) - since the clonk can easily carry more stuff no problems will occur. Peter opposed the idea though, I only forgot why he did it.
>Boom / Bomb Launcher
Ah very much like it, I already talked about the use of rockets agains air bases, and I'm still a big fan here, the Boom is pretty much the same thing :). Stuff it in the earth, rotate it into the desired direction and launch it. The accuracy of rockets could be very poor, and if we wish so we can create tons of different rocket types for different usages. (Exploration rocket: tears down Fog of war, Air defence rocket: very high flying, but weak rocket against airships, and so on). I like the Bomb launcher very much as well :)
1. This is a question of balancing, realism is optional. If a bamboo is about as useful as a bow, they should have the same price.
2. Note that Minecraft & co have inventories so large you can build entire cities from them. I think this is a plus for open-world games.
3. Huh, long shot. Not sure we can seriously say anything about that before we try it. But note that I only want to reduce transport complexity, not production complexity. If trees give less wood, you'd still have to push the same number of trees to your sawmill. And I'd rather have it derive its value from that rather than from the need to throw it around for half a decade.
4. You can't weaken buying as a concept - yes, maybe this will have us end up somewhat lower prices, but how is that a problem?
Such a design decision however would kill my beatiful axe idea as well, since it won't work this way: The sawmill just won't be able to compete with a 3:1 rate against the axe, a 10 to 1 rate would work fine. The same thing strikes me thinking on the pickaxe and stones.
And I don't like to do game design by the numbers. If the axe is too powerful we should change it in quality, not quantity. Maybe force you to have your Clonk standing around for a significant time, while the sawmill quickly (and in parallel) munges through whole forests? As long as we only have few Clonks that could be very significant already.
But I don't buy that we can't balance it until I see it. I mean, in CR, we never really got around to balancing at all. The only part I really remember is the wood hut vs. stone hut part. And that was obvious enough.
>Flour: Find / crop some corn, use the sickle and you will get the seeds. Carry to the mill and you will have splendid meal.
Let's say we have "cotton" that can be used to produce cloth. Why would we not use this "cotton" as the ressource for flour, too? Just as an alternative production line. That would save the player a lot of hassle for something as basic as food (since he would have to plant the crops anyway)
>Little blast: More or less a spell.
It could always be a Flare (item from the chemical lab) with the exact same visuals, behavior and ingredients just without being called "spell" ;).
Also that would save us a building @ "We may think of some buildings which combine production of cats to lessen the number"
>Dried moss: The cheap fuel. Just harvest with the sickle, let it dry, use it.
Can't we use the sword instead of the new item "sickle" there? That would save us an item (thus easier interface and more accessible gameplay) and it would make the sword (and it's production building) useful in settlement scenarios without enemies :)
I don't think we should introduce new items for every minor task when we can use existing ones, too! (just think of the sword as a huge knife, that is used for every cutting you could need in the game! :) )
I am all for using stuff we already have wherever it is appropriate, not more to criticise, though
> Why would we not use this "cotton" as the ressource for flour, too?
Well, yes. We can introduce such a mutant plant though I can hardly imagine the physical implementation. Woolly seeds? Or mill the cotton? And do you get both, cotton and corn or either or a mixture which can either be grinded (flour) or yarned (cloth)? The last one I'd imagine as the woolly seed...
> It could always be a Flare
Again I'm lost. What's a flare?
> Also that would save us a building
Well, I thought the transmutation building to be the production building for any kind of magic stuff. Or the processor to enrich certain objects with magic (because Matthias' idea was that certain objects get a magic side effect).
> Can't we use the sword instead of the new item "sickle" there?
Yes again. But again very uncommon and unfamiliar usage.
>Yes again. But again very uncommon and unfamiliar usage.
What about nothing then? Just interact with that mushroom/plant/flower/fruit to pick it.
>Well, yes. We can introduce such a mutant plant though I can hardly imagine the physical implementation.
Well, we are not limited by real live plants. Just invent another one and call it "wool-seeds" if you want to.
>or either or a mixture which can either be grinded (flour) or yarned (cloth)
That was the idea. You just harvest the "wool plant" and can produce either flour or cloth from the "wool plant"
>Again I'm lost. What's a flare?
Something like firework in this case. I think it basically is what Newton had in mind when he mentioned the "mini boompack"
( http://i605.photobucket.com/albums/tt138/espi57/Tir_PLF_1.jpg )
>Yes again. But again very uncommon and unfamiliar usage.
But why does that matter? I think the player will understand both equally fast if we tell him to use a sickle or a sword to harvest that plant.
And harvesting stuff with a sword has more style than doing that with a boring sickle, anyway!
The idea behind that was
1) You have one item less that needs similar materials (both sickle and sword would probably need the ~same and only look different)
2) You have one item type less to clutter the inventory of your buildings and chests
3) Since you have one item type less, the production menus are cleaner
4) If we thought of cool production lines for weapons - why not use them in pure settlement melees too? Otherwise the anvil (or wherever you produce a sword) will just be nice decoration for your construction menu
> We may think of some buildings which combine production of cats to lessen the number.
I would actually favor doing the opposite. You only have to build buildings once, they are smaller now, and probably cheaper and easier to build. Nothing speaks against having a few more of them.
For powerful stuff we might even consider having a building that allows access to only one product - say airship factory? That might save us from having to implement research for quite some time!
> Big mushroom / Dried moss
Hm, the whole vegetation stuff seems a bit vague to me right now. How about breaking it down by biome:
* Sky: Trees (-> wood, fuel?), bushes (-> wood? food? fuel?), grass/corn (cloth, food, fuel?)
* Tunnel: Mushrooms (-> magic, wood?), moss (-> fuel, cloth)
* Water: See weed (-> food, fuel, cloth?)
* Lava: Magma weed ( phat magic? ;) )
Still lots of question marks.
Right now I'm especially not a fan of moss. It seems very close to mushrooms (why not just use shrooms for fuel? Hey, it's magic!), needs a special tool (sickle) and a long-winded production process (drying), plus I can't picture how it would even look like in the first place. I suppose like grass, but underground?
How do you get wood from mushrooms? :x
Rather, for getting wood from caves it might be interesting to cut "large roots" that hang from the ceiling.
But will you, when you wrote up all that and considered the opinion of all the others, also coordinate the team to get this done or will this concept then just be a rough aid to orientation like the others?
So these concepts might do as a guideline for someone willing to pick up the task. I'll try do so asap but can't promise anything.
When I start working, I will guide the development like I did with the cable cars.
If you want to replay Zenshin, maybe to get some inspiration, you can still get GWE on the CC, although you may have to fix the activated object definitions for the scen.
Powered by mwForum 2.29.7 © 1999-2015 Markus Wichitill