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Lurkily

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Everything posted by Lurkily

  1. Fry it up first, then steam a tortilla, and toss it on a pan. Ingredients go on next; nicheling meat, cheese, whatever else you like; try salsa like pico de gallo and/or lettuce. Put another tortilla on top, let the melting cheese fuse the halves, then cut it into wedges like a pizza, and serve. Nicheling Tortilla. Sorry. I couldn't resist.
  2. I respond to writing prompts a lot. So I thought I might share here some of what I've produced. It's mostly very short fiction; less than a chapter of reading. The prompt that inspired this story was "A bank robber takes off his ski mask and hails a cab, stowing his pistol in his back pocket. Suddenly, lights begin to flash around him. 'Welcome to the Cash Cab!' " Believe in me I stepped out of the lights and music of the Cash Cab, four hundred dollars richer. The frigid rain spat down at me, and the wind tried to throw my hair into my face. Shame and self-loathing were furrowing my brow and tying a knot in my stomach. I felt like I was going to be physically sick. I had never been so ashamed of myself. I took out my phone to make a call and stopped for a second to look at the screen. My little girl looked back from the wallpaper, grinning brightly. She thought I was a hero. She loved her daddy. Four hundred dollars. I could make rent. I’d be able to pay for her pills. I might have a few bucks left over for groceries. The briefcase in my hand, though, held over six thousand dollars. Several solid months of financial freedom. Time enough to find opportunity. Maybe even a job. Maybe a future. After a minute of chasing those thoughts in circles, the phone’s screen winked out. That was what did it. Her adoring gaze, her shining admiration of her hero disappearing while I contemplated what I could spend it on. It wasn’t much, but the metaphor broke my spirit in a heartbeat. I left the briefcase near the door of the bank. A suspicious man left a suitcase by a public thoroughfare. He had some wires in his pocket, he was acting nervous, maybe it was a bomb. Lies. But I watched from across the street until they got their money back. I turned to walk to the bus stop . . . I was done with cabs tonight. I wrapped the gun into the ski mask, dropping them into a trash can. Then my phone rang. My daughter’s face was shining at me again, blinding in the darkness. I lifted the phone to my ear, feeling like my very soul dodged a bullet. “Hey, pumpkin. Yeah, I’m on my way. I got held up. Yeah, macaroni and cheese, I promise. Hey. I love you. I’ll be home soon.”
  3. Make the TNT the parent of the rest of the ship. Everything else is then debris, disabling logic, and as long as it's all adjacent, eventually fully destroyed, unless you have some fireproof parts. Scripting . . . do you mean logic use?
  4. I get what you're saying - but you can jump into a beat em up with button mashing. That is a short road to an uninstall with Nimbatus. We have a very steep learning curve compared to most commercial games, which are based on tried and true formulas players are familiar with. I think that we will need to gentle that curve for a wider appeal, or Nimbatus risks joining a big roster of imaginative, rewarding, but ultimately unsuccessful games. Furthermore, we're going to need progression mechanics. We'll need increasing challenges balanced against increasing capabilities and skills. It's the foundation of excitement, it's the key to getting players "in the zone," that balance that everyone strives for. And you just can't get it without some kind of progression. I don't think Nimbatus is a skill - based game, but a knowledge based game. Knowledge can be shared, so we can't rely on skill or experience as a sole source of progression.
  5. I think having the option to apply fire with tnt should fulfill most self destruct needs. But I think all parts, TNT included, need to get an upgrade workshop. I think this is really important to Nimbatus. It's a lot of work, but I think it will really pay off. More damage, more or less range, all of that can go in there. Regarding hp, I think when part HP gets a balancing pass, some of the ridiculous HP amounts will go down.
  6. Well, everything is attached to they core, but I see what you mean. I'd like to keep the design constraints of chassis shape separate from special attributes or abilities, so that an inappropriate ability doesn't mean you can't use the appropriate chassis.
  7. I'm not talking about individual expectations, but generalized expectations. An individual's expectations usually aren't useful in trying to court wider demographics. My opinion of tractor beams is that magnets are functional as they are, but that if they're needed, I'd like to see them worked into the resource vacuum.
  8. You're just happy that I'm supporting your ideas. I know your game, rogue.
  9. One workaround might be to put a wireless part past a splitter, actuating a child switch to activate the subdrone, but someone told me the signal won't cross the wireless part to its parent or cousin parts.
  10. That requires that detachment also actuates motion away for your drone, while ideally your subdrone should be capable of that itself. Another circumstance local logic solves, though. I highly favor localizing logic.
  11. You do have a better point about destruction. I would want for parts to be easy to find, though - perhaps pick between several every single mission. As I said, the intention is to rewardingly expand their capabilities from simple builds, not hold them back. Basic parts should be easy to collect without a focused effort. I'm not too hot on the subject of specific part unlocks; it just seemed like a way for the player to further choose how they're rewarded, and have strategic choices to make.
  12. True, but that doesn't have much effect on what gamers expect out of a laser. I mean, gamers generally expect shotguns to be short range weapons, when they can be more akin to a midrange rifle just by loading a slug instead of shot.
  13. Yes. I would hope for a way to do a "trial run," but your attempt at the prize would always have an element of risk. Ideally, though, I would hope there would be no such thing as an upgrade you could completely miss - you would just have to pick it up elsewhere.
  14. Or for making it look like a star destroyer.
  15. Nothing really. The mission goes away, the planet becomes just another planetary mission afterward. I agree with much of what you say, but I feel like risk has to exist somewhere within Nimbatus. I also feel that that risk should not set you back. You should have the opportunity to gain, but I don't feel like you should be actively punished, beyond not being rewarded for the win conditions.
  16. Currently, arming a cruise missile so it is armed after decoupling. Assume you might have more than one in flight, and crosstalk means they have to be isolated from criteria that could signal that they're free. Local logic would be a better solve for that, though.
  17. Luckily with most balance adjustments in the future, upgrade balancing can get caught up in that sweep.
  18. Wait . . . what? . . . huh . . . that is weird.
  19. Usually also a fan of light, not a laser beam. Don't get me wrong, I'm okay with tractor beams, but I don't think they should be in lasers.
  20. I like center and edge detection, especially via altimeter (or range, as it may or may not become, with more criteria). Waypoints have the potential to be badly designed or become a mandatory sensor consideration if you want to win, so perhaps that wasn't my best idea. What about a "rabbit"? Dog races ran a rabbit along the track so they would chase it, right? Maybe run a directional target along the center line, always staying ahead of you.
  21. What if you want to design in a certain shapes, but can't use the appropriate chassis because the effects aren't appropriate? That might be more appropriate to some of the custom drone core ideas.
  22. Customization is detailed in part one of this series of posts. Requiring simple parts to unlock doesn't have to be hard, a few missions should be enough to expand basic capability like that. That way the player quickly sees their basic capability expand, and they are quickly rewarded for testing the waters. It's not really so arbitrary to require players to find parts to use them. You can only use what you actually have. That's not "we only want you to have three," that's "if you want it, go get it". As for factories, we are talking about part unlocks. And being horrifically overpowered, I expect factories will see some changes and be one of the last things you unlock. I am not, however married to the idea of individual part limits.
  23. I think we did, but the forum wanted to sort comments by votes up and down.
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