Manufacturing Discussion

[Nullbear]

Discuss junk about manufacturing and stuff, i guess.

To what extent should things be able to be customkized? How can it be balanced?
What i mean is, the ability to 'tweak' variables for assemblies slightly, Such as damage, or stun duration, for a stun baton.
Will it just break more often? Will those variables be reliant on the materials used? etc. etc. Will using higher quality materials just mean it has more "points" to spare, and you distribute the points throughout the variables?

Talk about this.

[Hate9]

I kind of like the points idea.

[maxinatorx]

Maybe we could customize color of some items.
Using any material should have some traits to them.
For example something metallic could get heated fairly quickly and would melt at much higher temperature while something made from chocolate would be brittle,edible and would melt at much lower temperature(room temperature?).
Now how would you present any of this? Would we have different states for the object? Would there be hp? Will you show the variant of damage through flair text in the examine box or will you have a different sprite for each of them? (having a different sprite for each of the states would be kind of insane unless we figure out a way to do that effectively).

[Nullbear]

max, i was considering using a statflag list, a list of flags that each object has, this would be say, if chocolate: edible.

different objects would have the object related variables. but all objects would have a damage stat. many of the objects would take most of their traits from their materials, but you would have a little ability to tweak them further.

as for different sprite images, yes. i was thinking of a possible 4 variants: 100%, 50%, 25%, and 10%. the broken would be a more widely useable "scrap". the device would stop beong functional aroumd 25-10%, scrap would be for complete destruction, like explosions, fires, acid, etc. (acid would more likely leave a chemical residue.)

[lorathor]

I don't think the damaged spriting takes that much time.
Like in this example we could add 3 extra overlay sprites to indicate the damage to the device, wall, floor, item or whatever. You just add a layer of decals to the sprite itself which will be added if the damaged-status is rising. With this you only need 3 extra sprites for every kind of object. In this example you would only need these 3 for every PDA-sprite available. The decal will have a opacity to cooperate with the item itself. The only downside with this method: You can't delete parts of the object to show some kind of it broken into pieces. On the other side you safe hell of alot time.

[pancakeflipper]

But in that note. We need to have legit item degradation in the game for example: You get a stage one worn pda and you toss it at a wall it should not be useable anymore. have the chat say "I cant use this, Its totaly broke!"

[lorathor]

Or you can handle it that way with the PDA-example:
Stage 0: Fully functional
Stage 1: Minor functions disabled / not working properly (some text isn't readable, can't access the crewlist)
Stage 2: Moderate functions disabled / not working properly (same as above + unable to reply messages)
Stage 3: Major functions disabled / not working properly (same as above + Department cartridge won't work anymore / lights damaged)
Stage 4: Total mess up / no functions working / scrap parts

With every harmfull action you do, the item will advance to a higher damage-status

[maxinatorx]

That can also be slightly randomized.
So if you hit something you would never exactly know what an actual malfunction is...

[Amelorate]

Or, it can choose a random component inside the PDA and either disable it completely or make it malfunction.

[lorathor]

Yeah, and you can transfer this to other items and objects. For example, the engine can get some major failures or the robotics research console or the bridge announcement console or whatever you like.

[Nullbear]

yeah. but with pda's in particular, i was planning on having stage 2 (or 50%) represent a well worn pda, but still completely functional. between 30 and 10% is where the malfunctions would escalate quickly. after ten percent its practically scrap, but you can bash it some more to break it into scrap pieces. randomized component damage is a must.

[Par]

When talking about materials and their properties:

If we are going to have objects do different things depending on their materials, then you're going to have a lot of variables. I don't think this would be hard to code, just very long.
This would mean that every single material would have dozens of properties, ranging from melting temperature to electrical conductivity to edibleness(?) to transparency. Then, have each object recall these variables.
For example, have the sprite of every single object check the [transparency] value of the material. If it is transparent, the sprite will be transparent. Likewise, if your character tries to eat an object, the code should check if the object has [edible] materials in it.

[Nullbear]

Material properties could be stored in a json file that the game will reference when needed. Each object wont have its own material variables, it will just reference to the material, this saves a lot.

Assemblies are really for the most part, Just a list of components, and how they're interconnected, and a sprite.

Components are the more complex bits with all the code, but they cant be mixed and matched as much, Some will be limited to one material property, some will have more, depending on the component.

Materials are a loose data object that isn't represented as an in-game object. (Aluminum sheets are components, with the aluminum material.)