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Lurkily

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Posts posted by Lurkily

  1. There was talk about a glue block or grapple block of some sort that this also might be useful for.

    I'm a firm believer though, that the magnet is so situational, and of such limited usefulness, that it should be a 'gravity' block instead and just stick to anything.

     

    EDIT: As for stabilizing magnets, lower their radius until they're almost entirely inside your ship.

  2. It's not that I'm opposed to the mechanic; I'm opposed to the arbitrary and artificial presentation.  Having weapon slots when you're permitted a free build from scratch is basically naked and undisguised 'this is how you play our game'.  Let's provide an organic way to deny them the resources to support three weapons - mounts, or make them buy each weapon individually, or whatever.  I feel like just a number on the build screen saying you've filled 2/3 weapon slots without a really good explanation isn't the way to pursue that progression.

  3. To be fair, 'complete revamp' were your own words.  It's easy to see how people might think you're asking for a more fundamental rebuild than that.

    Separating logic from inputs and outputs - which seems like the foundation of their concept at the moment - might be harder than rewriting them from scratch.  It might be possible to code in some auto-assignment of UID's for each input/output that's invisible to the player, and just use what we have now with a different system for assignment, but there's also the risk that the result might get messy.

    There are a number of suggestions for visualizing input and output connections already up; what if the input-output system remained as-is, but in the visualization of them, the player could drag and drop to copy a block's output to another block's input?  Does that touch the core of what you're looking for here?

  4. Creates a laser?  Reads a numerical value?  Clicking logic elements in game?  (Just the idea of trying is painful, given the camera movement linked to mouse movement.) 

    I'm not 100% sure you're posting for the right game.  I mean, there's stuff we can use here, but some of them seem fully inapplicable, and a great deal of them seem to be tuned for a different environment than Nimbatus provides.

  5. 5 hours ago, Marker Mage said:

    Why not post a reply to it with the naming/tagging idea?

     

    The man's not a moderator, nobody's obligated to do any extra work in being helpful.  I had intended to start merging tracker topics, and forgot to, in fact.  Let me do this now.

    EDIT: Interestingly, only two topics on beacons, though a couple more for things like laser targeting and lock-ons; directional sensor criteria.

  6. On 10/28/2018 at 5:49 AM, MrFaul said:

    I think a system where you upgrade you drone core with component slots would be much more interesting.

     

    I know I've commented on this already, but doesn't it seem arbitrary and artificial to provide an unrestricted environment to build from scratch, and then say 'but not the way you want to'? 

    I'm not against progression mechanics, but let's try to make it organic.  Make people purchase or find a 'mount' item that weapons need to be fitted into, or make people find/buy each individual weapon, so they have to actually get two lasers before they can mount two lasers.  

    I suppose lore could address this somewhat, and we have no campaign or backstory yet; perhaps you're constricted by regulation build parameters until you get promoted.  But I think it's really important, in a game that's trying to enable wild creativity, for the restrictions they enforce not to seem arbitrary.

  7. Multiple suggestions often end up dividing people's voting, though.  Hence why I'd prefer to merge things early.  So, yes, message me, or if you like, suggest in a feature thread that a topic should be merged with others.  Provide links if you like, but even just saying there's something to merge it with would help direct our efforts.

    It's really hard to know what concepts I should look for duplicates of, until you actually go and search for topics on exactly that idea.

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  8. On 10/28/2018 at 12:55 AM, unmog said:

    I dont see why it matters... they're just drones, I assume my ship has some sort of factory to build as many as I need. Hence the point of a drone, theyre not that important. Thus if you leave the drone there and its disabled or whatever who cares? Make a new one.

    3

    The core has some significance, though.  The drone can't operate without this one piece that doesn't do anything not done by logic pieces. (Actuate devices, receive signals wirelessly)  That gives me a thought.  If custom cores and core mods become a thing, perhaps you'd be required to repurchase those if you lose a core, and only the default core is free?

    It would provide an incentive to return that's lore-friendly, a penalty that is really just an inconvenience, and ensure that it's not a barrier to later gameplay.

  9. On 10/27/2018 at 6:54 PM, Ookami-sama said:

    I might try and craft walkers as a result. Of course I will fail, but it will be fun.

    1

    Word of advice.  Use thrusters to hold the feet down.  Rotate hinges in opposite directions, and you can keep a leg pointing down, even as you rotate a joint to move it up and down.

    With the new logic available, you can get much more complex movements than were available when I last tried.  Have fun!

  10. It's not that I think every game has to be for everybody; I think Nimbatus, specifically, is about enabling engineering madness, instead of making a player earn their way into unconventional design.  I may be entirely wrong about that, it's just the feeling I've gathered in the last year of handling it.

    I'm not too concerned about the grindfest personally.  I don't think the devs would go grindy, and costs can always be balanced for a better result.

  11. Sorry; when you described it as a 'complete revamp' I thought you were talking about a complete rewrite, and you seemed to be saying you'd favor doing away with the input/output system we have entirely, which would mean an entire rewrite of logic, and the editor UI, (UI being generally painful to mess with,) along with the creation of a new system.  I didn't think accomplishing your goals required all that.

    On a re-read, it looks like you might be talking about just re-writing the way the player uses the UI to assign those inputs, and how it represents them.  Sorry if I was confused.

    Honestly, I personally don't like big foundational overhauls in early access; foundational things are usually best more-or-less settled in closed alpha/beta.  But that's only my opinion, and I'm aware it isn't universal.

  12. Huh.  Conveyor belt . . . . . . magnetic? I once made a repulsor magnet relay to serve that purpose.  It was timing-dependent, though, so it couldn't be manufactured segment by segment. while preserving the timing.  How's yours work?  I'm more interested in this than the flat world, honestly.

    Edit: Actually, maybe you could, if you could place the next piece carefully enough that it put a hinge inside some blacks meant to trap that hinge, rather than having them connected by struts.

  13. 3 hours ago, ManTheMister said:

    Would the snake seek out suitable locations to lay an egg or would it lay one if it just happened to pass over a suitable location (based on Micah’s comment, suitable locations are fairly rare).

    I would have it seek out a suitable location so that, in case of problems, the player doesn't have to wait a long time for mission requirements to come available.  My assumption is that 'suitable' is a relatively level terrain edge; but for the purposes of maintaining an achievable win-condition, I think most people wouldn't mind if they were laid in open space.  :)

    That, and permitting them to hatch microsnakes if you didn't hunt them down would be cool - and under these circumstances, would no longer ruin win conditions.

  14. That bug is really just for borderline cases; one TNT wouldn't destroy a thruster even without that bug, and the solution to add more TNT than a weapon needs doesn't seem ideal to me.

    Do you parent the thruster to a destroyed part?  At least then the thruster is debris, destroyable by weapon fire.  I usually parent things to a decoupler or LED next to TNT.  Fragile stuff, to make sure things aren't active parts after destruction, contributing to lag.

    I think the heater is a good solution, actually, given that it spreads to nearby parts and is almost certain to destroy it all.

    EDIT: I checked, and both decouplers and LED's have 1000 HP - which stymies me, because the few times I need them to endure, they are always the first things to blow.  In any case, find a delicate thing. Distance sensor, maybe.  Though you should be able to parent directly to the TNT, with recent updates fixing some cleanup issues, I think.

  15. It's not really an 'on' switch.  It's a signal that signifies that the drone has been initiated, and which goes off only once.  I used it a while ago, on a drone from an older version.  You can probably do this with a few logic parts.  Let me think.

    1. Button: Core Active
    2. XOR: Core Active/Interrupt, Game on
    3. Switch: Game on, Interrupt

    So a signal signifies that the core is alive.  An XOR activates our 'game on' signal, because only ONE of two signals is activated. (Core Active)  A switch activates the "interrupt" signal with that input, and with BOTH active, the XOR stops our one-time-signal that the mission has started.

  16. 5 minutes ago, MrFaul said:

    It's really not, since you made already progress so it is expected that you already have a resource backlog.

     

    Part of the problem with anticipating a most common type of gameplay is that it usually fails to anticipate others.  My impression of Nimbatus (and I may be wrong) is that they're trying to provide, within the constraints of challenge/reward and progress/reward growth balances, the freedom to indulge the inner mad scientist. 

    I guess I feel like imposing build restrictions that are clearly and obviously "We as devs think you will have fun playing this way" injures what Nimbatus is trying to be.

  17. Just now, MrFaul said:

    See this is where you completely misunderstood the my concept, it was never my intention to block anything.
    This is just a means to require work in order to build bigger drones. As long you have enough resource to buy the next slot/part there is no limit.
    You keep those slots/parts forever you can only gain. This also doubles as a reward system for the work you put in.

    1

    No, I understand you.  I would just like the restrictions on what a player can build to be less arbitrary and artificial.  In many games this makes sense; but where you are building from nothing, it's arbitrary and restrictive, and the player's going to question it when it stops them from doing what they want to do.

    I'd much rather a player come in and say "I can only build this big, but look at this, I can do anything I want with this big.  Is there a limit to how big it can go?"  than to ask "I can only build this big, and I can't specialize because of the part-type limits.  Will the upgrade system ever permit me to build freely?"

     

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