Lurkily

So guys, I know you've all been busy, but we're a feisty lot with a fickle attention span. Might we get some more information on what the current implementations are looking like? Understanding that what we see today might be different than what you decide to work on tomorrow, it often gives us some insight to offer some ideas and feedback, and . . . and . . . and I wanna see. I wanna.

I'm not familiar with the Niche side, but if you can link me to a matching suggestion, I can merge them. It's best to have the same ideas in the same subjects, because the devs use these as a metric to judge how popular a concept is. Multiple topics generally split up the votes. A single subject that gets everyone's attention is more likely to be well-rated, and the content of the comment threads can elaborate on specific implementations.

My understanding is that currently, Steam servers permit one ranking per player, submitted by the local copy of the game. That means that all we really know about a drone's performance, on a global scale, is the rankings held by players that use that drone. I assume that the local copy of the game submits a ranking for JUST the specific drone they're currently using, not the player's overall success using drones in general. Players using your drones having a low ranking is a similar metric, though.

Sorry; I was operating under the assumption that you knew about tags. I'm glad MtM was here to see through to the actual problem.

If you really want clarification, private message me. Nobody here wants clarification on who was right and who was wrong, I'm sure. There's only one thing I'd like to say to the thread. I will always reply when tagged. If I don't know why it's tagged to me, I will ask for clarification. I don't think I was being unreasonable in wondering why you and I were tagged when it was not relevant you the discussion you and I were having. I'm going to stop posting here now. I'm too old to care about winning the thread.

They're live in the sense that the outcome is being decided as you see it being fought. It's a unique instance to your computer, though -- you're downloading another player's drone and the match is entirely on your PC -- so slow motion should be possible. How difficult it is, I think, may depend largely on the engine. I seem to recall PC speed impacting bouts, though, which should probably be addressed before this.

If you only need one at a time, things get easy. Have three on-off switches, with an output indicating that a certain drone should be active. Activating any switch should also cascade outputs that deactivate the other switches, so multiple drones don't become active. Then it's a matter of setting the drone A to respond to a tag such as "Drone A W" which is output when the "Drone A" on/off switch AND the "W" key are active.

Because you mentioned gore as a factor. We both are, really. I wouldn't have replied, except that it was specifically tagged for my attention. My apologies if I derailed things a bit. It strayed into an area I've researched in some depth, and I automatically went into sharing mode.

Ah; so this is removing a target restriction, not adding a feature that is specific to children. That makes more sense.

This one spoke to me a lot. The prompt was nothing but the image, but WLOP is very talented. You can see that she isn't surprised by her reflection. Almost like she is bored with seeing the wings, and is more interested in the interplay of ripples with the reflected wings. I just started writing, and everything just resulted. I could be happier with this one; there's room for more depth of setting, political intrigue, metaphysical exploration. But it's free now, so I'll respect what it is. No more editing. If I did return to this world, it'd have to be a new story. Image: Water by WLOP (DeviantArt) Wings of Burden I looked into the water with a sigh, feeling the chill of the water soaking into my shift. The water adhered the fabric to my skin revealingly, though the ripples on the water distorted my form. I crouched closer to look at my shape in the water. It was artistic, nature. This art was the highest and purest kind, born from the interaction of natural principles. Below my reflection fish swam, venturing closer with my stillness. And then there were the wings. The reflected wings were the mark of our royal family. There was no questioning who was and was not a Cealiusan. No hiding your bastards, and no denying your heritage. I looked through the water to the fish, and in the reflection, ‘my’ wings adjusted. I knew it was to shade the water to see the fish. I slapped the water and fish burst away in all directions, the disturbed water ruining the image of my wings. I rose, my good mood spoiled, and walked to the edge of the lake. The walls rose around me on all sides, windowless. They shut out the sun in my private garden, and as I peeled off the shift, the shade raised goosebumps all over my body. I went inside and grabbed a towel from the bathing chambers to dry myself. “You wouldn’t be so cold if you used the hot water in the bath.” I looked at Tyla, the young serving girl assigned to me. She was clumsy sometimes, but I forbade anybody from having her replaced. She was young, awkward, at times even impertinent. But she had a good, honest heart. It must have been her upbringing on her farm – you didn’t find things like that in girls raised to the court. I intended to nurture it. She had to armor her heart, but honesty and goodness could be armor, too. I just had to teach her to use it, before someone injured her too badly to try. “It’s a little square box with water in it. It’s boring.” I knew I was being unfair. The bath was probably a six or eight steps to a side, with beautiful artwork on the tile, and fountains at each corner, each one complex and artful. But none of it made a dent in the natural beauty of the rocky pool in my courtyard garden, regardless of how artificial and cultured the gardening was. “You’ll make yourself sick, one day.” “Tyla, I know you worry, but you won’t deny me my garden.” She came close, and I stood before the mirror, spreading my arms. My reflection spread her arms and folded her wings. Tyla dressed me, seeing to the complexities of a royal dress; buttons and ties and ribbons and stays. In the reflection, she also saw to fitting the wings through gaps in a dress, fastening the dress around the base of those wings. I fretted over what I saw again. It wasn’t just an illusion. Things changed in the mirror. Clothes changed, people’s actions changed. People would step out of the way of the wings when they did not move in life. It always closely matched life, though. It was as if the world in the mirror was another world, and every person had their own life, and only my mirror personality was any different from who they were here. I wondered if she saw herself, wingless, in the mirror. I wonder what she thought about it. Here, it was seen as a mark of divinity. She would have that mark on her back, but it would not exist in a mirror. Did she wonder if her right to rule was an illusion, as I did? If she were like me, she would have to. “There. You’re beautiful today, Leila.” I smiled. I knew she didn’t tell white lies. I looked at her in the mirror as she took the towel from around my hair, rubbing and drying it, then brushing it out. “Tyla . . . do you ever wonder why my family deserves the wings?” She shook her head fiercely. “No! I know you. Of course, you deserve them. I don’t know your family well, but you deserve them. Just that you question it, proves it.” I watched her as she brushed the tangles loose, surprised at her fervor. Then I smiled. She made too much sense for me to dismiss her words out of hand. Anybody else would have just vomited praise on my shoes until I dismissed them. I turned quickly, and hugged her close. “Don’t change. I need a friend like you. One day I’ll rule these people, and I’ll need you all the more. Be my rock, someone I can trust. I’ll protect you forever, Tyla.” She looked up at me, her eyes wide. I had long since given her leave to address me by name, but I hadn’t used the word ‘friend’ before. But to my surprise, there was hurt in her eyes. “Of course . . . Leila, of course. Nobody’s looked out for me like you have. How could you think I wouldn’t be there for you?” I caressed her hair, and sighed. “The court is a complicated place. There is little someone like me can count on. You are remarkable, that way. Don’t let this place change you, Tyla. I will protect you. Your honesty will keep you safe. Remember that, if things ever seem too complicated to do the right thing.” She pressed back against my chest and hugged me. “Okay.” Then she pressed back, and turned me back to the mirror, to face myself and my wings. “Now sit still! I have to finish your hair.” I smiled, watching her work over my shoulder, and relaxed. My mirror image dipped her wing so that she – I – could see. There was at least one small part of the future that I knew I could trust. It might be the only rock left in my future. But her purity was a potent thing. It would be enough.

In the course of checking up, I revisited my prion research for an old story. To circle back to an earlier point on the conversation, there's this chain: This goes back to prions - malformed proteins that do not perform their job correctly and can become infectious. They are typically in the brain. Mad Cow is a prion disease. It is NOT eliminated by cooking, acids, or a whole lot of sterilization procedures, hence why cooking a burger well-done would not protect you from Mad Cow, and eating it makes you sick, where stomach acid would kill many other diseases. Prions cause a number of diseases that affect the brain and are typically fatal. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is one of these. As mentioned above, they are typically in the brain, but can be muscle proteins, or hitch a ride in them, as well as being able to contaminate food sources through mishandling. In the end, they're in nervous system tissue, so anywhere that system extends carries that risk.

Not sure how that bears on how the specific dangers of eating humans.

I knew there was something I forgot. Prions. These cannot be eliminated by cooking. They are proteins that are malformed and misfolded, and thus can cause problems, including becoming infectious. They're typically found in the brain, but can hitch a ride in meat proteins as well.

It's not so much about whether or not it's a horror movie. To market to kids, you often have to go through parents, who have certain ideas about what kinds of concepts should be acceptable to children, and what sort of concepts children should be familiarized to. As for raw meat, the actual reason it's dangerous to humans is because every infectious agent present in human flesh is a pathogen that can thrive in human flesh, so food handling errors have an almost 100% chance to pass something infectious along. But we're also more dangerous to consume in general, to anything.

As a moderator, I keep an eye on site activity in a general sense across the entirety of the forum; Niche, Nimbatus, and General. I don't have the knowledge to merge topics or whatnot on the Niche side of the forum, but I do glance at what happens over here as well, and approve new users for posting, keep an eye out for disputes, etc etc. My question would be, is the ability to kill a young nicheling a direct option? I've noticed people saying you can direct them into lethal situations, which isn't quite the same thing, and the fact that you can banish members, and that there's nothing restricting it from being directed against children, isn't the same as having a 'kill baby' button. Keep in mind, I'm making no recommendations in any of my posts. I'm not claiming to know better, or that it's a good or bad idea, and I certainly didn't vote on this idea. Just suggesting that you consider whether it's in character with current content. If it is, and I'm mistaken, then, well, cheerio.

And I realize now that you were probably not asking about the details, but why anybody at any level would ever think it was acceptable to let it come to this, to which I agree.

Some services are still running. The people who are TSO's, as I used to be, are still working. They worked during the Christmas rush, the roughest travel season of the year, without knowing if they'd get paid on time. Now it's looking like they may not, and I know a lot of TSA officers live paycheck-to-paycheck. The reason - and I'll try to avoid including any party-line opinion here - is that a while ago, we had one big dispute about long-term funding. So instead of resolving the issue, we made one short-term resolution to get people paid and working again. Since then, instead of being able to agree on long-term funding going forward, we've been passing short-term resolutions, and every single time we have to come to some agreement on what that will look like. Anything that you intend to pay for via appropriations has to be included here. This is also why congressional and presidential salaries aren't furloughed - they aren't paid via appropriations. Right now the issue is that the president wants Congress to commit to paying for the wall along our southern border via appropriations. Given the questioned usefulness of it and high cost, along with the political hit they'd take, they don't want to give Trump that win. I think this was entirely intentional on the part of his opponents. Through some strategic goading, he's been coaxed to paint himself into a corner. He can't walk back his demands without losing face, and he can't stand his ground without losing face. The only way for him to win this exchange was if Congress were to cave quickly, but he took responsibility for the shutdown even before it happened, so the pressure is all on him, not on Congress.

Humans tend to be more dangerous to eat raw than other species, to my understanding, but . . . that might not be something you can market to a 12-year old.

I think I'd like to just take note that, though I don't recall seeing a ESRB rating, this game seems to be regarded as kid-friendly. A lot of people seem to be celebrating the idea of embracing the brutality of nature, but I feel like I need to reiterate that while that might make a good game, that game might not be Niche.

A lot of this you can do through the upgrades; accuracy and damage upgrades can provide you with a ralgun-like weapon, (though a strike-through upgrade would be needed to complete the set) for instance. I think the whole concept of Nimbatus is that rather than providing ready-made solutions to every need, the player is given very basic tools from which they can make just about anything they want. If you want stun bullets, you can add ice element to them, if you want to knock enemies around, you can use the impact force and zero-damage upgrades, if you want ICBM-style bullets, fix your weapons outwards, and use guided rockets. (Though guidance currently kind of sucks.) Weapons with electrical behavior are one thing that can't really be replicated with what's at hand. I suggested bringing back the 'spark' particles from the alpha demo to help with that, perhaps as a distinct weapon type with access to different upgrades with an electrical theme. In short, I think I would prefer to see more upgrades, so you can make these weapons be whatever you want them to be. The whole theme of the game is to use very simple parts to create very powerful and sometimes very complex behavior. (Though I agree that more diversity is needed in some basic parts, such as engines and shields.)

As a fed, I am affected by the US Government shutdown currently in effect. I took Friday off, and Monday/Tuesday were holidays. The shutdown has been in effect through the holiday, and the rest of the week. Payday for me is normally Monday, so my check is probably going to be late. Luckily, I have credit, resources, and people that can help me if I need to, but I know a lot of feds live paycheck to paycheck. Lean times are ahead for a lot of people if this drags out.

Sorry, didn't mean to rain on this; I'm all for it of course, provided there is more going on. We here have been kind of 'painting inside the lines' in a lot of our suggestions, but I suspect the devs might have some ideas they're keeping under wraps regarding the game's evolution that will also change the parameters of what makes sense.

I'm all for this, but I think more will be needed, too. I think more challenging missions, some bossfights (battles against player combat-arena bots ranked progressively higher), and more is needed. Every attempt to scale difficulty has to either end, (for instance, eventually you'll always fight the #1 ranked combat bot,) or be mathematical in its progression, but I think just scaling damage and HP as you go isn't enough to keep it interesting.

The complexity I mean is just that it wouldn't work out of the box. Cosmetic parts could work for damage just by existing, but not for heat or cold.

But as you seem to indicate, wouldn't this limit vary mission-to-mission? There might be a least restrictive mission, at the absolute limit of player progression, which might lead to the most massive ships being a certain mass, but even then you'd have a set of different drones that approach a varied set of limits, depending on the mission itself. That, and mass is a physics constraint, which makes more sense to me than 'command units' or 'credits'. (Of course, this is a realism concern, and realism concerns are not a realistic concern, if the alternative is more fun. ) In the end, any limit you set is going to also have an upper limit, so they'll all be at the same limit in one way or another. I'm honestly not sure whether limiting a player's progression should be done at all. I mean we need limits to implement progression at all, but should it have an endpoint to progression? Part of the charm is the ridiculous lengths we get to take things to. That's obviously something that the final game can't present at level one, but I feel like having an endpoint might not be the best idea. All of that will depend on what endgame content looks like, though. That will very heavily influence what kind of progression makes sense.