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Drop-dead July 14th.  We have properly addicting weeds, that's good enough.

0 (0%)

Socrates' Daimon should cross-link items within the documentation pages where reasonable.

0 (0%)

Socrates' Daimon should give us a withdrawal syndrome summary page.

0 (0%)

Socrates' Daimon should do both of the above.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 0

Voting closed: March 29, 2020, 08:29:40 pm

[zaimoni]

Repository at https://github.com/zaimoni/Cataclysm; no devblog or social media presence (yet).  Title will be updated once it's clear what trend development is following.

This is a fork of C:Whales (i.e., it is a full 7 10 years behind the other forks and has no intention of catching up).

Status
The latest release that plays like a (accidentally) bug-fixed C:Whales is 0.2.10 : https://github.com/zaimoni/Cataclysm/releases/tag/V0.2.10 .  Intentional changes between 0.2.9 and 0.2.10 are would have been summarized at https://github.com/zaimoni/Cataclysm/projects/14 ; anything that is labeled post-commit review is a user-visible change in behavior that is not unequivocally a bugfix.

Release-mode builds of both unstable, and Pryzbylski's Star, previews of the next version may be downloaded from the same URL as the latest stable release.

Trunk is open to both user-visible bugfixes and user-visible new/changed gameplay.  If I don't get guidance, both completing tile support, and ex nihilo modding support, will get priority.

This is built using the very latest "stable" release of Microsoft Visual C++ available at the time of build.  Missing 64-bit runtimes should be downloaded direct from Microsoft: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads .

[George_Chickens]

Awesome. I loved the Whales version and the freedom it had. Hopefully this catches on.

[King Zultan]

What kind of gameplay changes do you have in mind?

[Silleh Boy]

Are you planning to diverge wildly in your own direction, or remain closer to what you believe was Whales baseline for balance vs realism vs gameplay?

Is this going to have under the hood changes to the base engine to fix things such as the sprawling array of files that were created for your saves/world that were issues with Whales version?

If you're going to do mod support and the like, does this mean that for those that would like additional depth to the survival simulation, that a mod to add them to the loop would be possible, so that those that would prefer a closer to vanilla experience could leave them disabled?

Are suggestions or requests for features something you'd welcome if you're uncertain of your current direction, or if the community might believe they'd fit in with the direction you ultimately choose to go in?

[zaimoni]

Diverge: I expect it to happen "eventually".  Thus, emphasis on actually being able to fork this from any stable release.  The next two post-release planned changes and other definitely wanted changes are on the issue tracker; other technical items are buried in the source code.  Intentionally introducing additional gameplay complexity is blocked by, among other reasons, having to build a library of test games to verify that various gameplay styles and starts play fast enough.  Generally, if it's possible in a B-movie and doesn't break the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, I won't flinch at it (as opposed to its implementation).  And won't flinch at NPCs doing it either.

I find the current calendar exceptionally jarring, but a number of undecided sub-issues block this so it's not yet on the issue tracker.  (Introducing lunar eclipses driven by real astronomical tables appears to be an attention-to-detail task; substantial not-yet-change-planned infrastructure changes would be needed to introduce solar eclipses.)  Z evolution rate would have to remain unchanged; other balancing requirements would depend on the aforementioned test game library.

Mod support: Yes, that is the intention (and not just in the survival simulation depth).  Note that no further wire-in of the example tileset for the Windows/MSVC build is scheduled before 0.2.0 stable, and that no attempt whatsoever to migrate reference data from C++ to JSON has been committed as that was designated a post-0.2.0 feature.

Under the hood changes: In general, yes (a number are required simply to get the NPC AI to a maintainable state).  The file count within the save directory is not on my list at this time. (I have not experienced this as a "problem", and there are technical motives for it that will not go away even after absolute locations are both introduced under the hood [for pathfinding], and mapped to real-world latitude/longitude [which should impose a still-huge limit on the file count].)

[notquitethere]

I'm supportive of a more B-movie style Cataclysm with more emphasis on weird science (the mutations, android elements, unusual weapons etc.) and less on crafting soap etc.

[Robsoie]

Interesting project, a bugfixed Whales Cataclysm would be great !

The file count within the save directory is not on my list at this time. (I have not experienced this as a "problem", and there are technical motives for it that will not go away even after absolute locations are both introduced under the hood [for pathfinding], and mapped to real-world latitude/longitude [which should impose a still-huge limit on the file count].)

On some later versions Whales changed the save system so instead of saving dozen of thousands files , it saved only a few dozen (something that i really liked for my hard drive health )

So do you mean you're back at the game saving dozen of thousands files ?

[zaimoni]

No.  The fork was at the very last commit of C:Whales, so I inherited the file count reduction.  [The turn-0 file count is not yet stable: 12 main files, plus whatever next-most-recent files of suffix .bak make sense to retain.]

It still would be thousands of files to pre-generate the entire Earth. (Which would be merely impractical, at the point introducing solar eclipses would be technically viable).

[Robsoie]

Ah that's great to know, a guy reported playing for a long time before Whales changed the save system , and he had no less than litterally hundred of thousands of files in his save folder.

On a character run i did after exploring around and fighting in 2 cities, i only had half of hundred of files, that was a giant progress in comparison to what the game was doing before the change.

[zaimoni]

I also inherited any hard-coded god-mode modifications (the 0.1.2 release was triggered by re-enabling temperature effects; I only noticed the problem because I was verifying the call graphs as part of a const correctness buildout).

In particular, I'm suspicious about the player's faction relation defaults; if I had confirmation that they were a god-mode modification I could reset that part of https://github.com/zaimoni/Cataclysm/issues/8 to the prior values, but I'd need to know what those prior values are.  [The other points are post 0.2.0: they're a user-visible gameplay change.]

[Egan_BW]

Post to ptw to watch.

[Teneb]

It's real nice to see this.

[Flying Dice]

Very nice to have this pop up, I'll be following closely. Looking forward to seeing what you do in future, but I also want to get my teeth into the initial cleaned-up version.

[Blue_Dwarf]

Is this a CDDA offshoot, or a different game?

[Egan_BW]

It's a fork of the original Cataclysm, which CDDA is also a fork of.