Bay 12 Games Forum

So you are stranded on a planet, preferably a moon. Your small shuttle crashed but you have the tools to fix it to veer back into space. Essentially, with what little oxygen you have left, the goal is to survive and get back into space.

This is currently a small mission in a project I am currently playing around with. But I have one problem; I lack the knowledge of space flight and the mechanics that goes into a space shuttle. I would like this space shuttle to be quite real, but only to an extent; I would not want to turn off many due to the complexity of getting the shuttle ready for flight. Of course, you would choose the occupation that best fits you. While the more experienced users would be mechanics and perhaps the newer users would focus on preserving the oxygen supply.

So, what are the essentials for a space shuttle? Of course, you have the generators, engines, and thrusters. But what more would you expect in a fun, semi-simple, game?

Wouldn't a clear indicator of something being a gas be, well, that it's behaves like a gas? (Well, there are corner cases of course, like for example gases that are supercritical at standard conditions, but those are pretty far "out there")

Hehe, that was a bad example I made.

Also, how far do you want to go with the random elements? Do people have absolutely no clue about what is what, or are you going to give them some indications as to what the valencies of different molecules are? Would people have some clue as to what the basic structure of some functional groups are? Do they have access to pure atoms, or do they need to find a way to isolate them? Do they know what is acid and what is alkaline?

I believe giving them some indication should be beneficial, you do not want them to feel clueless. They should have access to pure atoms and I'm pretty sure I can allow users to do test, such as an acid test.

I'm also going to look back into my books about atomic bond theory, organic and inorganic chemistry the coming few weeks, so hopefully I'll be able to give a few sensible formulas to calculate bond strength and reaction and activation energies. Once we have that, implementing some of the analysis methods becomes pretty easy, especially in the case of IR and UV-vis. Determining solid and liquid state properties is going to be difficult, so we'll probably need to sue some approximate rules for that. If we manage to find some usefull approximations, some wicked stuff becomes possible, such as lasers and semiconductors.

I really do appreciate you taking time out of your day to help make this project come alive. I cannot wait until we get something playable.

Looks good thus far.

A lot of SS13-inspired games tend to enter 'development hell'. Hopefully this will be an exception. I'm looking forward to a playable release, good luck!

Poltifar: That is a nice idea. Although, my idea would have had the setting on either an asteroid or on earth in a lab, it is nice to try something new. I’ll have the community vote on it:

Should the Setting be:
•   On an asteroid in space
•   In a lab on earth
•   Fantasy-like

As with the occupations you listed, they are great. I just have to come up with an idea that actually makes doing those jobs interesting.

Virex: Having a machine automatically analyze and spit out the results for you would make the analyzing occupation rather pointless and boring. I like your latter idea and I will certainly appreciate it if you help me out. I am also will go the ‘fake-element’ route, so perhaps you could help me out with some property ideas.

I have thought about this for a few hours and decided that a cooperation-route would be the most fun. Before I start making this world I need to get the basic concept down, hopefully I can acquire some input as well.

First of all, it will be fun creating compounds initially, but if there is no goal, what is the point of playing it?
Next, implementing every single compound, their reaction to each other, and so on will take forever. Should I go the 'fake-element' route? If so, I'd like to have the community create elements with me, provide me with their properties and reactions to each other. We can even base their name off of our aliases. Although, I may create their properties at run time just to encourage research of an element before use.

As mentioned previously, researching may be encouraged. Should I implement classes?
•   Researcher: This person would do research on the element. To find out how stable it is, its melting point, its boiling point, and so on. (What would researching be like?)
•   Scientist: This person would gather the researcher's notes and gather the elements they wish to mix.
•   Tester: The tester would gather the elements the scientist wants to be mixed and takes the dangerous task of actually mixing them. They rely a lot on the Researcher to keep them safe.

The game will most likely be round based. I will assume the game will be over once everyone dies, but it depends on what we come up with as the goal.

Cartmann used an example of having mines. My element system can be easily modified into a weapon building system as well. For example, I could have a pressure pad + two steel caps + some explosive material, to create a mine.

Hopefully we can come up with the basic concept fairly fast, that way I can build the world for us to play in.

Just a suggestion for features -

Temperature? e.g. Heating 2 elements (possibly with a catalyst) and causing a big bang?

Pressure? putting some elements under immense pressure and seeing what they leave behind?

And finally,

A mixture of the two? could make some nice booms (and compounds ) with this.

Yeah, I was about to add the properties of melting point and boiling point but I stopped because I am not sure if I should use real elements or fake. I do not exactly want players to head to Wikipedia, find a good combination, place it in a notepad, and then use it each time. Pressure points is also a nice idea.

Yup, you can make basic compounds such as water and baking soda to hydrochloric acid.

I hope you figure out what you want to do... I think that a game with this emphasis would benefit from a cowed/SS13 approach to gameplay.

Cowed = Leaving people to go about making their own labs and equipment and what-not, then perhaps selling their discoveries to the rest of the world's players.

SS13 = Assign each person a job and have their equipment (and possibly skill?) specialized for their job.
Also, only a few labs, encouraging cooperation.

Haha, it’s like you are reading my mind. I'm an avid SS13 fan and I tried Cowed/CowRP out several times. I personally like the Cowed-like idea you suggest. But as you said, fewer labs means cooperation. I think I would enjoy expanding the ideas you suggested.

EDIT: I am all for this "extreme programming" approach (get a suggestion, you implement it, wait for another suggestion etc etc.)

Of course that is if you are actually not doing that, and using our ideas, to inspire and lead you.

If you're doing the former, it's stressful and the idea's you'll get will make the game likely hard to expand, as you would be adding cool stuff without any framework.

Well, I would love to implement the communities ideas into this project. But, I will use my 'common sense', as well as others, to see if that idea will actually be beneficial to the game.

Thanks for the ideas!

G-Flex:
"Speaking as an outside observer to this exchange, I'm not sure where you get that. He was stating that your work hasn't been edited carefully, not that it was plagiarized."
Ah, thank you for clearing it up.

"To be fair, most of those techniques are in no way exclusive to science fiction. Also, even if you don't read many science fiction books, it would be hard to live and grow up in modern society without at least gaining a general sense of what the genre is like, if only through cultural osmosis."
Though in my opinion, I do have a grasp of what the genre is like. I have studied the genre for many years through other forms of media. The way I displayed my work probably says other-wise. As you said, some glitter is good, but I basically sprinkled it onto every sentence. Total_Meltdown gave me a link about stronger verbs and it actually was very helpful. I had an excess of 'ly' ending adverbs but I did not believe it was wrong. After reading the article provided, I am embarrassed that I even released my unfinished work. I am currently fixing the stories I have provided.

Once again, thanks for the criticism.

Meh, well thanks for the notice. I would have thought this community would be more interested in reading.

I guess I will join a science fiction writing forum.