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Author Topic: Outer Colony  (Read 64465 times)

( Tchey )

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #30 on: August 22, 2017, 04:22:45 am »

I like to see how different players have different views, and all are right. Must be some hard choice for the devs each time they have to make a decision (in any game), haha...

As i still cannot connect to the forum, i will suggest some things here.

- When refining, add buttons to auto-select 100, 75, 50, 25%, not only a manual entry (like i have 230000 quartz, if i select 100% it will refine all, but if i click 50% it will auto pick only 115000 units).
- Add links from everything to the encyclopedia. So, if a look at my refining screen, a can alt-click on Quartz to open the encyclopedia and see what i will get from it. If i alt-click on any object ingame, same.
- Maybe i missed it, but I'd like to have an event log bigger than the very small and reduced one we have now. Maybe add a terminal-like window somewhere, movable like others, with full events showing in. Now, it seems i need to click the events noe by one to see what's actually going on ("Material Synthetized", but i don't know what, quality, who did it, where, etc).
« Last Edit: August 22, 2017, 04:26:24 am by ( Tchey ) »
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Asgarus

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #31 on: August 22, 2017, 05:50:11 am »

I like to see how different players have different views, and all are right. Must be some hard choice for the devs each time they have to make a decision (in any game), haha...

As i still cannot connect to the forum, i will suggest some things here.

- When refining, add buttons to auto-select 100, 75, 50, 25%, not only a manual entry (like i have 230000 quartz, if i select 100% it will refine all, but if i click 50% it will auto pick only 115000 units).
- Add links from everything to the encyclopedia. So, if a look at my refining screen, a can alt-click on Quartz to open the encyclopedia and see what i will get from it. If i alt-click on any object ingame, same.
- Maybe i missed it, but I'd like to have an event log bigger than the very small and reduced one we have now. Maybe add a terminal-like window somewhere, movable like others, with full events showing in. Now, it seems i need to click the events noe by one to see what's actually going on ("Material Synthetized", but i don't know what, quality, who did it, where, etc).

Yeah it definitely isn't easy to find a solution most people are satisfied with, no matter what the subject is. On the other side, it would be boring if everyone had the same preferences ;)

Additionally to the % buttons I would like to see more options for other menus, too. For example "build as many simple beds as possible".

A separated log window would definitely help, together with clicking to go to the position and maybe showing and linking the person causing the log.

It would also be nice to see the value of stuff you want to trade before you add it to the last (as well as being able to add more of something without having to remove it from the target list and add it with a new amount)

I'd also like to see certain important values when choosing things from the list to place in the world (like luxury for furniture, overall quality for machinery, etc.)

That's it for now. There are more things I'm sure, but I can't think of anything else right now.

All in all it is already a good game and fun to play in my opinion.
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The Scout

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #32 on: August 22, 2017, 08:28:04 am »

I'm not concerned about the graphics, there are so many gameplay features not fully implemented. Butchery isn't useful, leveling the terrain prevents you from growing plants on it and the quick buildings are weird. Trying to put a one story building with doors in my level area to prevent animals from eating my food turned into a three story building that was only accessible on the 2nd floor.
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Asgarus

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #33 on: August 22, 2017, 09:09:51 am »

You could have dug out 1 layer and put the foundation down there. Aside from that it makes sense. Floor, wall, roof, 3 layers.
It just doesn't have the floors in-between the normal layers like DF has.

I didn't try butchering or even hunting anything yet, but my farming plots tend to disappear after they got harvested instead of being replanted.

BTW, is there a way to increase the elevation? Like filling a hole with dirt for example?

And what I'm really curious about: Are all the animals running around randomly generated or pre-defined?
And how mod-friendly is the game? (I haven't checked yet, but the ability to mod a game always makes it better and live longer. Always.)


Edit: Also, I don't know if that's intended, but you can only download version _46 with the download link on the frontpage.
You can of course adjust the URL to _50 and get that version, but I think changing the actual link target would be the proper way. ;)
« Last Edit: August 22, 2017, 12:08:06 pm by Asgarus »
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dennislp3

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #34 on: August 22, 2017, 12:56:07 pm »

The animals are predefined as far as names and parts go. But the stats ("genetics") of the animals are random and of course in this game that is modeled through reproduction. So in theory in one game an animal could be a long living strong monstrosity and in another it could be a weak short lived creature after a few generations in certain areas. You could of course find a way to use eugenics within your area of influence if you really tried
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Asgarus

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #35 on: August 22, 2017, 01:26:44 pm »

The animals are predefined as far as names and parts go. But the stats ("genetics") of the animals are random and of course in this game that is modeled through reproduction. So in theory in one game an animal could be a long living strong monstrosity and in another it could be a weak short lived creature after a few generations in certain areas. You could of course find a way to use eugenics within your area of influence if you really tried

Sounds interesting. Completely random animals would be more fun, though :P
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VoyagerGames

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #36 on: August 22, 2017, 06:20:07 pm »

There have been so many awesome posts here, and I'm terribly sorry to be so slow in responding. I'll give you guys a quick update on where things are and where things are going, and then I'll respond to some specific questions and feedback.

Again, I'm sorry that I haven't posted a reply in a while, but some high-priority matters needed to be resolved here at Voyager Games. As a bit of background on the project, Outer Colony had been in full time development from February of 2015 through May of this year. Significant technical aspects of the game were just too complicated to build working part time. The engine, most of the human behavior modeling, the networking infrastructure, and some of the other parts of the system required my complete attention to build. While only the core of the game is finished at this point, it's up over a third of a million lines of code (and I think it's rather lean and well-architected at that). It's just hard to build out a system like this working on it a few hours in a stretch.

It probably would've taken me over a decade to design and implement all this if I had only worked on it part time, in the evenings and on weekends. So, I made the choice to work on Outer Colony full time. Of course, one doesn't receive any money for sitting in a room and programming around the clock, and that's basically how I spent the last two years of my life. If you live like a weird, cloistered hermit, rarely spending money on anything other than bare essentials, you can stretch your savings pretty far. Eventually, though, they're going to run out. That's what happened this summer, and a solution to that problem needed to be found.

I've spent the last month limping my 17 year old car up and down the eastern seaboard, trying to find the right opportunity for a software engineering consultant. After almost a dozen interviews, I finally managed to secure an offer that's just right. It's a very cool opportunity, and I'm stoked to do a great job for my new employer. The tie is going back on, and I'm headed back to the cubicle farm shortly, so the development of Outer Colony is about to shift gears into a part-time phase.

That's OK, though! Work is going to continue, because of what the project is for me. Madman198237 asked a great question on the last page: what sort of users am I trying to attract? Is Outer Colony being made for more of a mass market, or is it made for hardcore, Dwarf-Fortress type players?

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On some level, the answer is kinda' neither. When I first started development, it was all about experimenting with my ideas on comprehensive, low-fi simulation, human behavior modeling, and dynamic, plan-generating AI. It was about seeing what kinds of behaviors I could coax out of these little number-driven entities, perceiving worlds as vast collections of discrete states and pathing their ways through graphs of potential actions to achieve the things they wanted, and not just doing so in a context-agnostic way. So much dynamic AI gets screwed up by lack of common sense, by lack of context for making all their decisions, and much of the Outer Colony experiment is about building as comprehensive a human data model as possible and using it in a way that gives these humans the necessary context for making decisions.

The project was about seeing how well these ideas might actually work. Not just in some contrived, tiny, proof-of-concept prototype that exists only for academic purposes. Not just as white paper fodder to win a grant. But to build the thing out, as actual, working software as far as I can carry it. That's what the core of the project is really about.

On top of this baseline goal, I have two very good friends with whom I've played computer games for more than a decade. We hit a point in the late 2000's where there just wasn't anything we wanted to play anymore, and without getting too deep into my thoughts on the video game industry, we kinda' just started talking about the sort of game that we'd like to play. I started talking with them at length about the core ideas behind Outer Colony, and they added their own thoughts and ideas. "What if we had feature X?" "What if soldiers could do Y?" "You know what I loved from StarCraft? Can we make X?" In this way, as Outer Colony was being developed, we started expanding its core and adding subsystems for various types of gameplay.

Some of these subsystems are further along than others. Some are only implemented in superficial ways. The Scout is totally right: butchery completely sucks right now, and there's not nearly enough utility from farming livestock to justify the immense pain required to capture, breed, tame, and feed animals. The gameplay-type mechanics are wrong all over the place, and there's tons of testing and refining needed to get this stuff working properly in a fun way. But a great deal of the core programming needed to get these subsystems operational is in place.

Over the course of the last few months, as we've started to post more about the game online, we've started to get some new users outside myself and my personal friends. This is fascinating territory for the project to get into, and I'm kinda' humbled to think that there are people around the world who are downloading Outer Colony and giving it a shot. As you guys and others have shared your thoughts and feedback, this has started to drive development, too. Frankly, a lot of the ideas coming from external users are way better than what I think of on my own. I'm too close to the project, too used to playing the game, so I don't think of new feature requests or usability improvements the way that you guys do. Sometimes I'll read a post here or on the OC forums and think, "Jeez. Why didn't I make it work like that to begin with?"

So, this has been a bit circuitous, but I can now answer who the game is made for. It's made for myself, it's made for my friends, and it's made for you guys, the people who have freely donated their time to downloading the game, trying it out, and playing it! At the moment, I'm not really trying to attract specific users. It's not in a stage of development where it's ready for that, anyway, since it's so far from being properly completed. Maybe someday it'll be polished, smooth, and maybe even for sale as a real game. For now, though, I just want to keep fixing it, keep improving it, and maybe if things improve enough, you guys can have some fun with it!

Like I say, for me, Outer Colony is a bit like writing a book; it's expressing some of my ideas in software. Software can be a mode of expression, just like the written word, or a painting, or a sculpture. This might sound a little bit pompous, but it's sorta' how I view my work on the project.

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With that said, what's coming up for the project next? Over the course of the last month, there have been extensive internal conversations about the direction we should take things from here. A lot of people despise the visuals. I kinda' dig 'em. Maybe it's the SimEarth player in me. Maybe my liking the look is tied to a piece of nostalgia that isn't there for most people. Don't blame our pixel artist, though, because he made these sprites exactly the way I told him to! Haha, so the current appearance is absolutely not his fault, but rather, mine.

Still, after all this discussion, the conclusion we reached is that the game is going to look cooler if it's shown in three dimensions using isometric sprites. It will just fit better with the real, three dimensional nature of the world. It's going to make some tasks much easier. It's going to make understanding the world's structure easier. It's also going to make some things much harder, as rendering true three-space in isometrics creates some weird situations that we're currently considering and designing our way through. Still, we think the pros vastly outweigh the cons.

If we can get a more pleasing aesthetic in place, it should make the game much more visually stimulating. This ought to increase Outer Colony's fun factor naturally. Building something that looks really cool is just plain satisfying in a way that the current abstract, quasi-representational graphics can't facilitate. So we're going to do it! We've got to find a pixel artist with a very particular skill set to make it happen, as we really want the best of the best working on this. We're going to have to dump a truckload of cash into the effort, since there are literally thousands of sprites that have to be remade. But with money coming in once more from my day job and continuing to live in a somewhat spartan manner, I should be able to pay a contractor to produce a couple hundred sprites a month.

With a bit of luck, the graphics overhaul can be done in a 12-18 month timeframe. As an aside, do you guys know who built the Stonesense sprite sheets, because that is exactly what we need. If any of those guys would be up for some contracting work, I'd be excited beyond measure to employ them in this effort.

The good thing about the long timeframe for the graphics overhaul is that it'll give us a lot of time to keep playing, testing, and improving. We don't necessarily need the new visuals to fix things like the balance issues with butchery. We don't need new graphics to add mortar crews and snipers and more advanced infantry combat mechanics. The underlying world model / programming doesn't care at all how the rendering happens, so I can keep chugging away, adding features and improving the game while we gradually get the sprites we need to improve the game's aesthetic. This is the kind of work that'll fit well with my nights-and-weekends approach moving forward, as it doesn't require the longer release iterations and surgical focus as the hardcore, earlier work that was done on the project. That's kinda' cool that things will (hopefully) come together like this.

Hopefully, that gives an overview of where things are going from here. The downside is that I'm going to be brutally time-strapped moving forward, trying to facilitate continued development and the graphics overhaul in my free time, while working all week in an office. Since I'll have to prioritize my tasks and focus on only the most critical things, I'm not sure how much I'll be able to communicate in this thread, but I'm going to do my best to post once a month or so in here to keep everyone up to speed. I'm going to try to hand off some of the communication responsibility to one of my good friends, forum user Torvus on the OC boards. If he can help to post updates, that'll take one more thing off my plate and free me up for development tasks.

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I'll respond to a few of you guys' questions and feedback, but it's all rock solid. Huge thanks again to everybody who's put their time into testing things out. Out in the industry, whole teams of people are paid to test software in vast QA groups, and I'm always thrilled when people are willing to do this kind of work on Outer Colony for free. So seriously, thank you!

From: dennislp3
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TL;DR version: Visuals need upgraded, UI needs more intuition, hotkeys

Agreed, and most users similarly struggle to pinpoint exactly why the visuals don't work as well as they'd like. I think it's about building a coherent aesthetic / color scheme. It may owe in part to the piecemeal work chunks I gave to the project's pixel artist, but it's a mistake we'll aim not to repeat in the next iteration of development.

Hotkeys are also probably a borderline must, and the UI could use smoothing out almost across the board. There are lots of things that could be done with fewer clicks. The mouse-driven nature of almost all interaction was designed to make the game easier to learn, but it becomes cumbersome for advanced users. Your assessment is pretty much spot on across the board. We're going to go through each interface, one-by-one, to try to find ways to improve them and make issuing orders faster and more keyboard-centric for advanced users. I don't know when this will happen, exactly, but it's a long-term goal for sure.

Quote
5. Why can't I maximize the screen? Why would I want to play a game on a high resolution monitor if I am stuck in a windowed mode in a resolution far below my screens resolution? Maximizing the screen would make the game more enjoyable.
This owes to a peculiarity of the way the engine is built. The whole structure is constructed on top of JavaFX, and while there are ways to full-screen it, I haven't had a chance to explore it. This is the downside of building a custom engine. I have to handle every piece of functionality myself.

As for why larger resolutions aren't supported, I have two tiny monitors. I can't currently test with anything bigger than what I have myself. This is a sharp example of one of those things that separates the project from what it is now with a proper, actual game.

Your other points are also rock solid and I'm in the process of translating them into specific, actionable tickets in Mantis now.

From: Ekaton
Quote
Perhaps you could try to develop it along the similar lines that Toady has chosen for DF - F2P with donations by a loyal fanbase? I would certainly chip in.
Hey, thanks, man! That's extremely generous! I think everything is alright on the funding front for now, but I really appreciate such a nice suggestion. If you guys can keep providing feedback and suggestions as new releases are published, that's way more help than I could possibly ask for at this stage in the operation.

Also, your forum avatar is freakin' awesome.

From: ( Tchey )
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Don't go iso, it only makes the screen harder to read for 3D stuff like towers or pits.
Hahaha, I'm so sorry dude, but I think we're going to go with it! We're going to try to implement things in the smoothest, most intuitive way possible to deal with vertical structures like towers and pits. I've never actually tried Stonesense, but I've heard that it has elegantly solved many of these problems already. Perhaps I can get some ideas on how to do so from that.

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You need to change the tiles however, for something clearer and fancier at the same time (RimWorld is close to perfect, Prison Architect is great too, in that domain).
I know those titles are popular, but for me, the look of those games is one of the reasons I've never tried them. Everyone likes different things, I suppose, and I definitely don't want to take anything away from them! I know those games are both amazing, but I just can't imagine trying to employ that sort of style with Outer Colony.

Quote
Also i tried to register on your forum but my account is on hold since 2-3 days.
I'm terribly sorry about that. I get so many spambot registrations that I sometimes have difficulty telling real users apart from the fake ones. If anyone else has registered an account, but I've failed to activate it, I've probably mistakenly labeled you as a spam bot. Feel free to send me a DM here, and I will correct my mistake.

Also, giant thanks for the testing you've done so far, Tchey. Those Linux UI issues you've found are excellent bug reports.

From: The Scout
Quote
Butchery isn't useful, leveling the terrain prevents you from growing plants on it and the quick buildings are weird. Trying to put a one story building with doors in my level area to prevent animals from eating my food turned into a three story building that was only accessible on the 2nd floor.
Absolutely. The game's riddled with features that range from *needs improvement* all the way down to *barely functional*. We've got a long climb until we reach the top of the mountain. Every time a player uses the game in a slightly unexpected or untried way, a new bug may be unearthed. The more you guys find, the more I log, and (hopefully) the better the game eventually becomes. I appreciate all your posting here, man.

From: Asgarus
Quote
I didn't try butchering or even hunting anything yet, but my farming plots tend to disappear after they got harvested instead of being replanted.
Auto-replanting is something everyone craves. This function is supposed to be handled by one of your bureaucrats, the Minister of Agriculture, but we're considering removing that and just making it happen automatically.

Quote
BTW, is there a way to increase the elevation? Like filling a hole with dirt for example?
Right now, the only way to do it is via construction. You can build stone walls, for example, over an area to increase its elevation. Dirt kinda' semi-disappears following excavation, as another weird violation of underlying rules. It's an exception case I created, because NPCs spending so much time clearing mounds of dirt was killing productivity on the mining front. It's sorta' offensive that the dirt materials disappear magically, and it feels extremely game-y to me, but that's how it works, for now.

Quote
Edit: Also, I don't know if that's intended, but you can only download version _46 with the download link on the frontpage.
My bad. I need to fix this.

From: dennislp3 / Asgarus
Quote
And what I'm really curious about: Are all the animals running around randomly generated or pre-defined?

Ohhhhhhhhhh, man! We've talked internally at great length about potential ways to implement real speciation in Outer Colony. Dennislp3 is exactly right that populations change their properties over time as selective pressures are exerted on them. It's so peripheral to core gameplay that most people would never notice it, but we've conducted experiments that have yielded some very, very cool results here. Most of the time in actual game worlds, creature populations are too sparse and small to properly evolve, and this is an extreme bummer to me. We intentionally keep creature population densities low to limit their impact on processing resources, but when I've set up worlds without humans and lots of creatures, just to see what would happen, you can see stat changes across populations over many generations.

In a lot of our tests, though, if a predator and prey species occupy the same environment, the predator group winds up reproducing to a point where its numbers become too large. They then hunt the prey species to extinction and die off themselves. We need better mechanics for things like hiding to better equip small numbers of prey to survive the collapse of predator populations and to rebound thereafter.

I could play with creature / ecosystem dynamics ad infinitum, and there's so, so, so much cool stuff we could do with proper speciation and truly random creature generation. I had to put it off to the side, though, because it's so peripheral to core gameplay, and even if I implemented all the wildest ideas we've come up with, 99% of users would never even notice it. Maybe someday I'll tackle these features more thoroughly, just because it'd be immensely fun to do so.

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Sorry this reply is so long, and I'm sorry if I missed replying to anyone. Hopefully this all makes sense, and I hope I can keep improving OC moving forward!
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Madman198237

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #37 on: August 22, 2017, 06:34:31 pm »

If you're developing the game for YOURSELF, well, I've seen a couple of developers who decide to build the game they want to play. Honestly, I wish I could do it myself, because then I'd have a full three-dimensional first-person full-physics-simulation survival game where you start before history (As a human) and then move on, building things, interacting with the environment, and using actual physics. As in, if you strike two rocks together (Accidentally, perhaps?), the game doesn't know that it produces sparks and can start fires, but it DOES know that two objects with such-and-such masses, speeds, and compositions have just struck each other and they need to produce such-and-such a reaction, which can then result in a spark landing on some tinder starting a fire, used to fuel your forge so you can dodge a thousand years of development, heating a lump of iron in your simplistic, rock-based charcoal forge....etc.

All the way to SPACE, because I'm a mad astrophysicist at heart.
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VoyagerGames

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #38 on: August 22, 2017, 07:00:37 pm »


Honestly, I wish I could do it myself, because then I'd have a full three-dimensional first-person full-physics-simulation survival game where you start before history (As a human) and then move on, building things, interacting with the environment, and using actual physics. As in, if you strike two rocks together (Accidentally, perhaps?), the game doesn't know that it produces sparks and can start fires, but it DOES know that two objects with such-and-such masses, speeds, and compositions have just struck each other and they need to produce such-and-such a reaction, which can then result in a spark landing on some tinder starting a fire, used to fuel your forge so you can dodge a thousand years of development, heating a lump of iron in your simplistic, rock-based charcoal forge....etc.

All the way to SPACE, because I'm a mad astrophysicist at heart.

So, so, so much yes to this. That's the dream, right here. I'd like to imagine a step even further, past Newtonian physics and down to atomic / subatomic modeling. Someday in the distant future, somebody's going to have the computational resources and the other technical wherewithal to do it. Write such a fundamental model of our universe at the most basic level, and let all the mechanics of the simulation flow from that. On some level, this is how Dwarf Fortress works - letting so much gameplay organically flow from underlying simulation mechanics - and that's what makes it so radically different when compared to traditional games.

Such an advanced simulation in the future could basically be The 13th Floor - that's what everyone really wants to play, in their wildest dreams. I'm sure it'd take a Matrioshka Brain or some other incomprehensible computing structure to run such a system for a non-trivial volume of simulated reality, but just thinking about it makes me kinda' happy.

I've always thought that Dwarf Fortress is a step toward realizing that kind of computational simulation of a compelling world, and it's part of what draws me to the project. Like SimEarth did decades ago, Dwarf Fortress makes people think differently about what software can really be.

Quote
If you're developing the game for YOURSELF, well, I've seen a couple of developers who decide to build the game they want to play.

Haha, I suppose I didn't want to make it sound so conceited, like I'm developing it just for me. I mostly meant that I make the final decisions on what gets implemented and what doesn't, and that I don't worry *too* much about potential, future users. I think that really attractive isometrics, if done well, will make the game quite a bit more fun for me and most other current players. It's just a gut feeling I've got, so I'm going to go for it! I don't worry too much about possible future audiences, because that's more the arena of AAA studios that have access to focus groups and marketing firms. They can carefully craft products to maximize their appeal and profitability, and that's territory I don't want to get into with Outer Colony.

I guess that answer doesn't make perfect sense, but I mostly mean that decisions are made mostly from the perspective of what current users and I might think are cool, rather than having a focus on trying to attract a new audience.
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Madman198237

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #39 on: August 22, 2017, 07:28:00 pm »

It's not conceited, it's honest. You are a programmer, not a professional public speaker, so I don't care if you aren't quite perfectly understandable or whatnot. Your meaning came through just fine---You're building the game you want to play, and other people just so happen to like it as well.

We don't need quantum theory, though perhaps relativity during the end-game?
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dennislp3

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #40 on: August 23, 2017, 12:10:54 am »

Thanks a bunch for the long reply! I have been eagerly awaiting your response to see whats going on.

I have wanted to make my own game for a long time but I don't have the time or expertise (which takes time to build) to make that happen. Clearly I could MAKE time but I am trying to start a business so that is my focus.

So I have all the respect and admiration in the world for what you are doing. Keep up the great work and I look forward to seeing what comes from it in the future!

I will certainly be willing to support your efforts in the future, hopefully financially once my business gets somewhere. Until then I will throw all my constructive criticism and ideas your way.
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( Tchey )

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #41 on: August 23, 2017, 03:13:39 am »

It was a great reading, thanks for taking time to handle our questions.

Sad also to see you need to eat and have to take a "job", and it will slow down OC. Ruthless world for creativity. Money money money...

Anyway, i'm sure Outer Colony will shine, given time. If you keep doing it, we will keep playing it !
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Asgarus

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #42 on: August 23, 2017, 06:00:28 am »

Everybody's gotta eat ;)

I haven't checked out these bureaucrats yet. I guess the most logical way would be that your people just replant what they harvest (or not, depending on what you set the rules to).
Regarding the dirt: Maybe you could give the player a choice. Either instantly remove all dirt, that's how it is right now, or set a target quantity for how much dirt should be stored, and if that quantity has been reached, the excess will again be removed. Or maybe the possibility to set a certain percentage of how much of the mined dirt should be kept and the rest gets removed.

Regarding animals: I haven't noticed it before, but I love to know that animals evolve, even if I will probably not be aware of it due to the things you mentioned. To counter overpopulation and "natural genocide" (is that a thing? Oo) you could just adjust the birth rate of certain kinds of animals. Big animals would have a lower birthrate, smaller a higher. So the big predators, which most likely kill more than smaller ones, have a lower birthrate and thus add some balance. Of course there are more aspects to that and more ways to balance things out.

Well, there is no need to rush such things as random animals/plants and so on since they are not needed for the core gameplay, it's just something nice to have ;)
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Neonivek

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #43 on: August 23, 2017, 06:02:18 am »

Besides doing random without it being insignificant requires good thinking and planning.

In many ways it needs to not be random :P

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This sounds silly but this game's name isn't doing it any favors given how many "colony" games there are.
« Last Edit: August 23, 2017, 06:29:35 am by Neonivek »
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( Tchey )

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Re: Outer Colony
« Reply #44 on: August 23, 2017, 06:45:38 am »


This sounds silly but this game's name isn't doing it any favors given how many "colony" games there are.

I think the opposite, the name lets me know what is it about, and it's actually the first thing that made me look at it at the very first time i've read about the game.
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