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Notrium Final Mix - New Version out. 0.31

Endymion 12 years ago

How destructible? As long as I won't accidentally cut a tree too easily it sounds fine.

TNN17 12 years ago

Alright, I'll add it to my to do list for 0.32.

Trees take a good number of hits before toppling from most weapons (around six Blade hits or so). If you start throwing around plasma or fire projectiles in a forest however, expect reality to ensue quite quickly.

Update: Solve one problem, find another. Unfortunately it looks like one of my items had a mis-entered combinations entry. This means that using the "B" key to break any item will cause a CTD.

Upupdate:
Fixed, it actually only took two hours in the end. Fabric was apparently combining with the Knife to their mutual annihilation. The offending combination was removed, and I even managed to fix four other bugs in the code I found while I was looking.

Hives are complete, though their vespid inhabitants aren't yet included. When spawners are complete for them, they should show up exclusively under trees. Depending how ambitious I'm feeling, destroying the attached tree could cause instant death in any associated hives.

Edited 12 years ago

TNN17 12 years ago

Update: Redid the poison mechanic. Now, when exposed to a toxic agent (such as being stung by the newly implemented bees), the player has a bar for that. Symptoms start small, increase over time, and then, some time after the poison has been metabolised (frequently awhile after, depending on the severity) diminish until the last traces are eliminated from the body.

By way of an example, chugging some 4HM will progress to a maximum of -5 Health/second at 20 seconds (along with severe side effects).

At fifty seconds the poison bar is finally empty, and recovery begins. At 65 seconds, health loss decreases to 4 health / second, 3 h/s at 67 seconds, 2 h/s at 69 seconds, and secondary symptoms stop around 70 seconds after first consuming it. At 75 seconds total, if you're not actually dead yet, then the last poisoning symptoms will cease, and you'll start to recover lost health and carrying capacity.

This also fixes a bug with the four herb mix where it was incorrectly failing to lethally poison the inbiber.

Poisoning, and poison symptoms, can both be alleviated by medikits and certain other ingested medicines.

Further updates: Bees are implemented, Hives are implemented, and drop hilariously large swarms of bees when attacked.

As soon as I can stop bees from numbering in their thousands and stinging you to death within 2.97 seconds of getting into melee range, I can move onto getting item spawning going.

Narvius 12 years ago

This sounds awesome.

TNN17 12 years ago

Thanks! Glad to see there's at least one more masochist out there.

Update: Fire now has a larger area of damage and causes damage more rapidly. This means, ultimately, that it will spread to ether and trees more easily, and mean the player needs to be more careful keeping their distance.

Bees are done.

They will sting, poison, and omgwtfswarm in copious amounts. All injuries done to them are reduced to 1 damage - you aren't hurting the swarm as a whole, you're hurting individualmembers as you swing/fire into their mass. Some weapons get multiple hits, and as such function better, but trying to take a hive on with your fists, there's a pretty good chance you'll die horribly unless you move outside the radius of their hive.

Since they fly, they don't collide with creatures, so ranged weapons will only work if they haven't got you yet, otherwise they'll be too close. They also aren't slowed down by water or barricades.
They're faster than you too.

On the plus side, swarms, as insectoids, are hostile towards the vast majority of lifeforms, making for a good distraction.

Now to try and reverse engineer item spawning.

Minor update: I've pretty much mapped out the individual components for start-spawn, periodic-spawn, and trash-spawn. Still gotta tie in the periodic spawn to take into account Habitat markers and work that way, but the foundation is laid.

Less Minor Update: The Plant Seed is complete (at least with the currently implemented terrain types).
As is the Nest Seed. Now, whenever the Nest Seed passes by a tree, it will spawn a hive. In the event it doesn't pass near a tree before a 1/10000 chance happens (around ten seconds, on average), then the seed will instead drop a nest. If there aren't any trees on the map, then there's a 1/500 chance of the seed spawning a nest, otherwise the seed will self-terminate.
Two more item seeds, then a creature seed, then the 4-5 control items for managing everything and the new system should be in place.

Update: Wreck Seed is done, and Trash Seed is done. Since next version all trees will be actual creatures (which have much more robust internal scripting), they will be responsible for dropping branches, or sometimes leaves, which will be how such materials will be sourced, rather than by random seeding.

Control items for the initial spawn up next. After that two creature spawners based on Habitat markers - one for Minor enemy spawns, one for Major enemy spawns, and finally the season-controlled area manager, which will be responsible for handling enemy spawning and generation of plants/pebbles and other natural materials during the game.

The Area Manager will be pretty simple: It will drop either an enemy seed (which will spawn immediately, just as happens now), or it will drop a Genesis seed, which will handle the time-based spawning the same as the current item seed, rather than having each spawner carry its own version of the code.

Just as currently, Genesis seeds will reduce the number of possible enemy spawns that can occur, until eventually enemy presence in the area has been neutralised for the rest of the day (however long remains until the oldest seed is spawned).

When it spawns, the seed can drop plants (Spring/Summer only), Mushrooms (Any time of year - also a chance of dropping as a "plant"), Pebbles (pebbles should spawn in bodies of water or stone), trees (Spring only), Nests, or Hives (Spring/Summer/Autumn). There's also a chance it won't drop anything, which is the most likely occurrence in the Winter.

If/when Marines are implemented, along with the previously discussed method of activating them, then genesis seeds will periodically drop trash items from Marine patrols active in the area. I'm planning for these to eventually extend as far as a burned out campsite that can be searched for the same types of detritus you might find at the beginning of the game.

I'm open to any suggestions for other naturally renewable resources. Thanks! Glad to see there's at least one more masochist out there. Update: Fire now has a larger area of damage and causes damage more rapidly. This means, ultimately, that it will spread to ether and trees more easily, and mean the player needs to be more careful keeping their distance. Bees are done. They will sting, poison, and omgwtfswarm in copious amounts. All injuries done to them are reduced to 1 damage - you aren't hurting the swarm as a whole, you're hurting individualmembers as you swing/fire into their mass. Some weapons get multiple hits, and as such function better, but trying to take a hive on with your fists, there's a pretty good chance you'll die horribly unless you move outside the radius of their hive. Since they fly, they don't collide with creatures, so ranged weapons will only work if they haven't got you yet, otherwise they'll be too close. They also aren't slowed down by water or barricades. They're faster than you too. On the plus side, swarms, as insectoids, are hostile towards the vast majority of lifeforms, making for a good distraction. Now to try and reverse engineer item spawning. Minor update: I've pretty much mapped out the individual components for start-spawn, periodic-spawn, and trash-spawn. Still gotta tie in the periodic spawn to take into account Habitat markers and work that way, but the foundation is laid. Less Minor Update: The Plant Seed is complete (at least with the currently implemented terrain types). As is the Nest Seed. Now, whenever the Nest Seed passes by a tree, it will spawn a hive. In the event it doesn't pass near a tree before a 1/10000 chance happens (around ten seconds, on average), then the seed will instead drop a nest. If there aren't any trees on the map, then there's a 1/500 chance of the seed spawning a nest, otherwise the seed will self-terminate. Two more item seeds, then a creature seed, then the 4-5 control items for managing everything and the new system should be in place. Update: Wreck Seed is done, and Trash Seed is done. Since next version all trees will be actual creatures (which have much more robust internal scripting), they will be responsible for dropping branches, or sometimes leaves, which will be how such materials will be sourced, rather than by random seeding. Control items for the initial spawn up next. After that two creature spawners based on Habitat markers - one for Minor enemy spawns, one for Major enemy spawns, and finally the season-controlled area manager, which will be responsible for handling enemy spawning and generation of plants/pebbles and other natural materials during the game. The Area Manager will be pretty simple: It will drop either an enemy seed (which will spawn immediately, just as happens now), or it will drop a Genesis seed, which will handle the time-based spawning the same as the current item seed, rather than having each spawner carry its own version of the code. Just as currently, Genesis seeds will reduce the number of possible enemy spawns that can occur, until eventually enemy presence in the area has been neutralised for the rest of the day (however long remains until the oldest seed is spawned). When it spawns, the seed can drop plants (Spring/Summer only), Mushrooms (Any time of year - also a chance of dropping as a "plant"), Pebbles (pebbles should spawn in bodies of water or stone), trees (Spring only), Nests, or Hives (Spring/Summer/Autumn). There's also a chance it won't drop anything, which is the most likely occurrence in the Winter. If/when Marines are implemented, along with the previously discussed method of activating them, then genesis seeds will periodically drop trash items from Marine patrols active in the area. I'm planning for these to eventually extend as far as a burned out campsite that can be searched for the same types of detritus you might find at the beginning of the game. I'm open to any suggestions for other naturally renewable resources.
Edited 12 years ago

TNN17 12 years ago

Good news everyone!

Spawning is finally complete. The game has been disentangled from the original item and creature spawning methods. I'm pleased to say that items are dynamically spawning, beginning spawns are working, aliens are being spawned based on habitat markers, all the previous spawners and markers are now disabled and obsolete, and most of the worst bugs are resolved. Except for bees. The bees are still terrible.

At a later point, if people like the whole "Seasonal shift" in the amount of aliens that show up then with some simple copy/pasting and one habitat marker per race, per season. Since I doubt anyone at present will be playing for the full five seasons, this seems unnecessary at the moment.

If anyone wants, I can put up a temporary update with the new system in place for testing on Filefactory or somewhere while I get to work on Swamplands and the like. I'll warn you that it's pretty hard at the moment, since I've removed most of the buffers in the lake to keep the spawn down to four or five aliens.

Now I'm taking a well earned break to watch me some zombie shows for the rest of the evening.
Edited 12 years ago

Endymion 12 years ago

I want the update!

TNN17 12 years ago

Sure thing, here ya go, put it up on my lunch break:

http://www.filefactory.com/file/c4c80eb/n/FM3a.rar

I also tweaked the plant seed to drop trees during the spring, but it's untested, so you might be seeing some pretty dense forests dropping.

Filefactory, so grab it while it's still around. Lemme know if you run into any problems or have suggestions to improve it.

Anyway, back to work for me.

Endymion 12 years ago

It seems that while standing in fire does hurt you it barely affects your temperature, if I'm going to take damage from staggering over a fire because of hypothermia it'd better at least warm me more than just idly chilling near it.

Bees are fun, but I couldn't punch the hive to death in peace by distracting the the swarms with aliens(it just spawned even more bees)

Do nests do anything interesting? They seem to basically work like wrecks that also spawn enemies which sounds a bit boring, at least for alien nests if they were for some other creature they might be fine.
I think just going too close to one should make the parent(s) leave the nest to drive you off, also leaving the nests be should increase the number of aliens eventually in some way(if it already doesn't also if different aliens had their own nests then you could just kill the nests of aliens you don't like to control the populations better than just randomly killing everything). Didn't aliens eat corpses if they are low on health? Maybe a parent could leave to gather corpses and then spawn a new alien once back at the nest with enough food or if that's too complex the nests could just increase the general spawn rate of aliens.
Edited 12 years ago

TNN17 12 years ago

Good point, Fire now increases temperature by 1 for every point of health it reduces.

Bee Hives do have a limit on the number of swarms they can produce - Four in a limitted amount of time. If a hive completely empties of bees, it will take ten seconds for it to refresh enough to spawn a new swarm. I could tweak this to take longer if you like.

Nests are indeed supposed to function like "natural wrecks" at present, with a chance of spawning a parent of any creature that inhabits the area.

Aliens do not currently eat corpses. Part of the problem is that each creature can have exactly one eat object. Whilst I plan on having a scavenger species to eat corpses in general, this will consist of a single species that will change constantly according to nearby corpses, something that will involve 10+ iterations of small, medium and dire or more. I could add corpses as an eat item for each alien, but the main question there would be which? Small or medium? Dire? What would eat dire corpses? Blah blah blah blah blah. It goes on forever.

Making a parent waypoint to food, then back to the nest is unfortunately beyond my abilities. You might be able to use Guard Firm type behaviour to make it come back, but as per the above, gathering food like that would be pretty awkward.

This said, to make them more interesting....

I could indeed make Nests like Hives, a creature in their own right, with a "race" that's a bar set on spawn, based on local Habitat markers. These nests have a chance to be "active", with a quantity of 1-2 parents. On death it would drop a plot object which can then be "collected" to spawn sticks, kindling, plant waste, or some combination thereof. If the nest was active before death, then it would have three 50/50 chances of dropping an egg.
Nests would be fragile, so whilst there'd be a comparatively low chance of the parent attacking territorially (like the Hive does, but a lower chance), it would probably be from the nest being destroyed that the parent(s) would drop, along with any eggs, nest materials and the like. You could potentially destroy an egg, somehow evade the angry parents (I could probably make the active nest shoot a high "anger" weapon on death to annoy everything nearby - basically the parent's angry roar that makes both the parents and anything nearby hate your guts), then come back later to recover any eggs or nest material.

If parents > 0, then this nest could also form an additional spawn for the area, dropping 1-3 small aliens of that specific type every N seconds (up to a maximum of 9, 1 higher than the natural spawn cap). This would skew the spawn in the direction of the nest naturally. I could also add this "broken nest" as a possible spawn on the Nest/Hive seed, so some would remain as per the current natural wreck.

Every time these small aliens dropped, there would be a 1/3 chance of one parent dropping as well. If both parents leave, the nest is inert, ready to be broken, and will not spawn again.

Empty nests will then have a 1/100 chance every 60 seconds of becoming inhabitted by a random parent species 1-2 parents, if the player is not nearby (probably if no Turrets or other Player-Controlled NPCs are nearby either).

Thoughts on this alternative? Good point, Fire now increases temperature by 1 for every point of health it reduces. Bee Hives do have a limit on the number of swarms they can produce - Four in a limitted amount of time. If a hive completely empties of bees, it will take ten seconds for it to refresh enough to spawn a new swarm. I could tweak this to take longer if you like. Nests are indeed supposed to function like "natural wrecks" at present, with a chance of spawning a parent of any creature that inhabits the area. Aliens do not currently eat corpses. Part of the problem is that each creature can have exactly one eat object. Whilst I plan on having a scavenger species to eat corpses in general, this will consist of a single species that will change constantly according to nearby corpses, something that will involve 10+ iterations of small, medium and dire or more. I could add corpses as an eat item for each alien, but the main question there would be which? Small or medium? Dire? What would eat dire corpses? Blah blah blah blah blah. It goes on forever. Making a parent waypoint to food, then back to the nest is unfortunately beyond my abilities. You might be able to use Guard Firm type behaviour to make it come back, but as per the above, gathering food like that would be pretty awkward. This said, to make them more interesting.... I could indeed make Nests like Hives, a creature in their own right, with a "race" that's a bar set on spawn, based on local Habitat markers. These nests have a chance to be "active", with a quantity of 1-2 parents. On death it would drop a plot object which can then be "collected" to spawn sticks, kindling, plant waste, or some combination thereof. If the nest was active before death, then it would have three 50/50 chances of dropping an egg. Nests would be fragile, so whilst there'd be a comparatively low chance of the parent attacking territorially (like the Hive does, but a lower chance), it would probably be from the nest being destroyed that the parent(s) would drop, along with any eggs, nest materials and the like. You could potentially destroy an egg, somehow evade the angry parents (I could probably make the active nest shoot a high "anger" weapon on death to annoy everything nearby - basically the parent's angry roar that makes both the parents and anything nearby hate your guts), then come back later to recover any eggs or nest material. If parents > 0, then this nest could also form an additional spawn for the area, dropping 1-3 small aliens of that specific type every N seconds (up to a maximum of 9, 1 higher than the natural spawn cap). This would skew the spawn in the direction of the nest naturally. I could also add this "broken nest" as a possible spawn on the Nest/Hive seed, so some would remain as per the current natural wreck. Every time these small aliens dropped, there would be a 1/3 chance of one parent dropping as well. If both parents leave, the nest is inert, ready to be broken, and will not spawn again. Empty nests will then have a 1/100 chance every 60 seconds of becoming inhabitted by a random parent species 1-2 parents, if the player is not nearby (probably if no Turrets or other Player-Controlled NPCs are nearby either). Thoughts on this alternative?

Narvius 12 years ago

Let me put it this way.

On paper, everything that increases the perceived interactivity of the world seems awesome beyond any and all boundaries. In reality... YES GO FOR IT.

Edited 12 years ago

TNN17 12 years ago

Green Aliens are done.

Well, at least their image is, which is the thing that takes the longest. It has a funky tail and "swims" through the swamps towards you oh so dainty.

This means I can now work on making the appropriate stat blocks for the small and medium alien, their weapons, their habitat, their side, and of course most importantly the goodies they drop when you murder them horribly.

From there it's making the Swamp habitat and climate, and 0.31 is done.

For swamps, I'm thinking a new type of "green water", which will have the same chance as swampland of having something bite you. Beyond that, maybe another type of swamp terrain (same as the original except different graphics). These, the original swamp terrain, shallow water and dirt tiles would make up the bulk of the swamp's terrain unless anyone has anything else to suggest.

I sort of figured I'd be improving Nests. I doubt I'll get to it for 0.31, but I've added it to my to do list for 0.32.

Speaking of my to do list, for one of my long term goals, I'm thinking of having the specimen container actually be usable with the various plants to create useable plants after 2-3 days (probably 2 useable plants out of 1 specimen with a ~75% chance each of surviving to full growth). If the season wasn't appropriate, these plants would require a structure above them to protect them from the elements (and when that was implemented, this would then apply to wild plants too, making them disappear once autumn/winter hit). I'd apply a limited quantity within a single map (maybe thirty seedlings/grown plants), but that should still be plenty for survival if you can maintain the area (and survive long enough to get that many seeds/plants going at once).

These plants would require the correct soil-type to spawn - you can actually see this in action in the new update, Blue plants, for example, require silicates, such as sand or stone.

Herbivores would/could still eat them accordingly as well, making fence maintenance an important aspect of any potential "farm" survival situation. The larger a farm, the more likely a herbivore could spawn inside the fence, but the more plants you can grow.

You could also potentially maintain herbivores instead, though you'd probably need to cultivate some of the Undergrowth grows to achieve this in any real level.

Nest-farming would be another, riskier aspect of long-term survival, for recouping ether, poisons, batteries, and of course, food and water.

Long term threats on the other hand.... Small Aliens will eventually be tweaked to grow up into Adult Aliens (probably using the same Genesis code as the Seed - and probably any plant seedlings as well - so this will happen even if you leave the map they're on), and from there, over a much longer period of time, become Dire Aliens.

Anyway, just some random thoughts o' mine. Think about other long term survival activities you might be interested in seeing in the game. [img]http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/073/a/d/fm__the_green_alien_by_horizonedge-d4srtid.jpg[/img] Green Aliens are done. Well, at least their image is, which is the thing that takes the longest. It has a funky tail and "swims" through the swamps towards you oh so dainty. This means I can now work on making the appropriate stat blocks for the small and medium alien, their weapons, their habitat, their side, and of course most importantly the goodies they drop when you murder them horribly. From there it's making the Swamp habitat and climate, and 0.31 is done. For swamps, I'm thinking a new type of "green water", which will have the same chance as swampland of having something bite you. Beyond that, maybe another type of swamp terrain (same as the original except different graphics). These, the original swamp terrain, shallow water and dirt tiles would make up the bulk of the swamp's terrain unless anyone has anything else to suggest. I sort of figured I'd be improving Nests. I doubt I'll get to it for 0.31, but I've added it to my to do list for 0.32. Speaking of my to do list, for one of my long term goals, I'm thinking of having the specimen container actually be usable with the various plants to create useable plants after 2-3 days (probably 2 useable plants out of 1 specimen with a ~75% chance each of surviving to full growth). If the season wasn't appropriate, these plants would require a structure above them to protect them from the elements (and when that was implemented, this would then apply to wild plants too, making them disappear once autumn/winter hit). I'd apply a limited quantity within a single map (maybe thirty seedlings/grown plants), but that should still be plenty for survival if you can maintain the area (and survive long enough to get that many seeds/plants going at once). These plants would require the correct soil-type to spawn - you can actually see this in action in the new update, Blue plants, for example, require silicates, such as sand or stone. Herbivores would/could still eat them accordingly as well, making fence maintenance an important aspect of any potential "farm" survival situation. The larger a farm, the more likely a herbivore could spawn inside the fence, but the more plants you can grow. You could also potentially maintain herbivores instead, though you'd probably need to cultivate some of the Undergrowth grows to achieve this in any real level. Nest-farming would be another, riskier aspect of long-term survival, for recouping ether, poisons, batteries, and of course, food and water. Long term threats on the other hand.... Small Aliens will eventually be tweaked to grow up into Adult Aliens (probably using the same Genesis code as the Seed - and probably any plant seedlings as well - so this will happen even if you leave the map they're on), and from there, over a much longer period of time, become Dire Aliens. Anyway, just some random thoughts o' mine. Think about other long term survival activities you might be interested in seeing in the game.

Endymion 12 years ago

yeah 10 seconds for swarm respawn seems too short 15-30 might be better.
Nest idea sounds great.

Regarding long-term survival besides what you already mentioned I just think that there being some things that you can't do/reach right away or take a while to do would be important, I mean atm. it takes only a little time to get all items and explore everywhere after which there's little reason to keep playing. But I imagine once enough areas and other stuff get added it won't be a problem.

Do tools need to be a weapon? Since there are lots of things you might want to repeadetly combine them with it'd better to not always have to scroll to the top of the inventory to do so(well I could of course drop everything else but that's not that fun either).

Strings seem to be undroppable for some reason.

TNN17 12 years ago

Endymion said:
yeah 10 seconds for swarm respawn seems too short 15-30 might be better.
Nest idea sounds great.

Regarding long-term survival besides what you already mentioned I just think that there being some things that you can't do/reach right away or take a while to do would be important, I mean atm. it takes only a little time to get all items and explore everywhere after which there's little reason to keep playing. But I imagine once enough areas and other stuff get added it won't be a problem.

Do tools need to be a weapon? Since there are lots of things you might want to repeadetly combine them with it'd better to not always have to scroll to the top of the inventory to do so(well I could of course drop everything else but that's not that fun either).

Strings seem to be undroppable for some reason.

I always like your responses, they at very least give me something to think about.

Bear in mind what you're currently playing is still basically a tech demo showing off the new technical schematics, no plot, not even all the characters, so yeah, I appreciate that it's easy enough to get all the items, especially since I have them all in piles of tens. That part at least will change fairly quickly.

Long-term game-wise... I'm a little reluctant to define all my long term schemes here (given how long it will likely take to reach these sorts of levels of progress there's always the chance that I'll move onto another, mutually exclusive, scheme by then), but here's some of my current plans, just for the early game.

The player starts on an island. 5x5 or so, mainly jungle and swamps, and an abandoned "Comms Base".
The island is surrounded by water, populated by leviathans. This should keep most players from walking across multiple screens full of rapid, one-shot-kill monsters which are immune to bullets (drowning bullet/laser/plasma effect), and would need to somehow be killed in melee, even after they get gravity skates.
The "Comms Base" is an interior/exterior base area which is, at least in the beginning abandoned except for aliens. Breaking in requires the player to break the gate. It is unpowered, but will feature a teleporter pad outside, and inside will have a complex which is unlit and empty.
Inside the Comms Base will be a generator, unpowered. The player may Right Click it with a Fuel Cell in their inventory (there will be a warning text by coming close to avoid the player losing their only fuel cell unless they're willing to do this).
When the facility becomes powered, automated turrets and interior lights activate. Obviously the turrets are hostile to the player.
The player must then escape the facility. Now it is powered, they can use the telepad to leave the island. Later when they return, if the Marines have arrived, they'll find themselves in the middle of a populated marine comms base which they may or may not have to disable.

To insure that the player can continue the game no matter the spawn, a single Fuel Cell will be spawned on one of the island squares randomly. Only when this is done can they move on to the temperate "continental" area.
That right there I plan to be the first "true" demo for the game, and will probably stick an ending in right there once that is actually implemented.

So yeah, "more" is definitely planned, and with a little more structure to the actual "plot" aspects of the game (though I'll still be trying to keep the sandbox part in-place where possible). This will probably be after I have most of the core aspects of the game system in-place though. Turrets and other structures, the new "real tree" system and so on are all things planned for 0.32.

Once the system is done though, it's going to be less technical updates and more content updates, so hopefully by 0.5 the above scenario is going to be in place and working great, and hopefully won't take another year to get that far.

As I always say though, people are always welcome to make add-on maps/things to do to fit into FM. Abandoned jungle outposts and their interiors, the desert base, deserts.... The system should eventually be robust enough to handle all the mechanical aspects of item spawning and enemy spawning on its own.

Tools: Tools will be useable as an "anti-weapon" to repair turrets, walls and other structures the player can possess, along with just being combinable with the android's core. Obviously this aspect will be a whole lot more important when they're implemented, but the tool weapon is going to be a pretty big deal (you can just fix your stasis field generator with it right now).
I could make an identical duplicate item that wasn't a weapon if it's a big deal for you, with the original having an "L" key activation to turn it back and forth?

String is undroppable? I'll check my code when I get home (working late as usual). Sounds like it's just in the wrong category.

Updates:

String done.
Swamps done. If you're bleeding then decide to take a swim in some disease-laden swamp water, you will get sick and have to deal with acute blood poisoning.
Critters - those things that bite you whilst moving through swamp terrain, may be poisonous instead if you're in the swamp.
Spawns updated to account for the new terrain.
Probably other stuff too, but meh, lazy. [quote=postid_349001]yeah 10 seconds for swarm respawn seems too short 15-30 might be better. Nest idea sounds great. Regarding long-term survival besides what you already mentioned I just think that there being some things that you can't do/reach right away or take a while to do would be important, I mean atm. it takes only a little time to get all items and explore everywhere after which there's little reason to keep playing. But I imagine once enough areas and other stuff get added it won't be a problem. Do tools need to be a weapon? Since there are lots of things you might want to repeadetly combine them with it'd better to not always have to scroll to the top of the inventory to do so(well I could of course drop everything else but that's not that fun either). Strings seem to be undroppable for some reason.[/quote] I always like your responses, they at very least give me something to think about. Bear in mind what you're currently playing is still basically a tech demo showing off the new technical schematics, no plot, not even all the characters, so yeah, I appreciate that it's easy enough to get all the items, especially since I have them all in piles of tens. That part at least will change fairly quickly. Long-term game-wise... I'm a little reluctant to define all my long term schemes here (given how long it will likely take to reach these sorts of levels of progress there's always the chance that I'll move onto another, mutually exclusive, scheme by then), but here's some of my current plans, just for the early game. The player starts on an island. 5x5 or so, mainly jungle and swamps, and an abandoned "Comms Base". The island is surrounded by water, populated by leviathans. This should keep most players from walking across multiple screens full of rapid, one-shot-kill monsters which are immune to bullets (drowning bullet/laser/plasma effect), and would need to somehow be killed in melee, even after they get gravity skates. The "Comms Base" is an interior/exterior base area which is, at least in the beginning abandoned except for aliens. Breaking in requires the player to break the gate. It is unpowered, but will feature a teleporter pad outside, and inside will have a complex which is unlit and empty. Inside the Comms Base will be a generator, unpowered. The player may Right Click it with a Fuel Cell in their inventory (there will be a warning text by coming close to avoid the player losing their only fuel cell unless they're willing to do this). When the facility becomes powered, automated turrets and interior lights activate. Obviously the turrets are hostile to the player. The player must then escape the facility. Now it is powered, they can use the telepad to leave the island. Later when they return, if the Marines have arrived, they'll find themselves in the middle of a populated marine comms base which they may or may not have to disable. To insure that the player can continue the game no matter the spawn, a single Fuel Cell will be spawned on one of the island squares randomly. Only when this is done can they move on to the temperate "continental" area. That right there I plan to be the first "true" demo for the game, and will probably stick an ending in right there once that is actually implemented. So yeah, "more" is definitely planned, and with a little more structure to the actual "plot" aspects of the game (though I'll still be trying to keep the sandbox part in-place where possible). This will probably be after I have most of the core aspects of the game system in-place though. Turrets and other structures, the new "real tree" system and so on are all things planned for 0.32. Once the system is done though, it's going to be less technical updates and more content updates, so hopefully by 0.5 the above scenario is going to be in place and working great, and hopefully won't take another year to get that far. As I always say though, people are always welcome to make add-on maps/things to do to fit into FM. Abandoned jungle outposts and their interiors, the desert base, deserts.... The system should eventually be robust enough to handle all the mechanical aspects of item spawning and enemy spawning on its own. Tools: Tools will be useable as an "anti-weapon" to repair turrets, walls and other structures the player can possess, along with just being combinable with the android's core. Obviously this aspect will be a whole lot more important when they're implemented, but the tool weapon is going to be a pretty big deal (you can just fix your stasis field generator with it right now). I could make an identical duplicate item that wasn't a weapon if it's a big deal for you, with the original having an "L" key activation to turn it back and forth? String is undroppable? I'll check my code when I get home (working late as usual). Sounds like it's just in the wrong category. Updates: String done. Swamps done. If you're bleeding then decide to take a swim in some disease-laden swamp water, you will get sick and have to deal with acute blood poisoning. Critters - those things that bite you whilst moving through swamp terrain, may be poisonous instead if you're in the swamp. Spawns updated to account for the new terrain. Probably other stuff too, but meh, lazy.
Edited 12 years ago

TNN17 12 years ago

More minor, and not-so-minor, updates:

Voltaic sacs now have an additional use.
Life is much, much easier for the Captain. I'll let you figure out how yourselves.

To compensate, I'll be adding some more weaponised versions of the Android's Cutting Torch to the game next version to make sure they stay on an even footing.

Venom Sacs are now ready and tested. In my opinion they're hard to use, risky, but pleasantly powerful. This is the first poisonous weapon in the game - to celebrate, I've made all the non-green aliens vulnerable to poison. Reapers will not visibly be affected by poison, but it will stop their regeneration, which is actually nastier than poison considering how fast they regenerate. Other aliens will simply lose health over time, the same as the player does (and will if you're careless).
Sacs will have the Safety Switch - Special safety.

Fairly major:
In a sudden flash of lateral thinking, I've figured out how to determine if the player is not moving by dropping a plot object every second and having it manually check if the player is still there.

As such, now, if you do not move, you will recover fatigue more quickly than if you do move, finally allowing the resting mechanic I wanted to implement since page 1 of this very thread.

This opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for me. Sleep and movement fatigue (aka: Not standing still to recover fatigue) are back on the cards.

This is going to be realised at -0.1 per second, whilst standing still will then increase fatigue by 0.6/second for a net increase of slightly more than current, but only when not moving.

Low fatigue penalties would still apply, meaning a food/thirst penalty to recover 0.3 fatigue (0.8 stationary, 0.2 whilst moving).

This would only apply to organics, the android covers basic motion with his standard energy consumption. I might also waive this in Easy mode (which is actually very easy compared to the medium and hard difficulty at this point).

And since I just thought through the whole sleep thing in the Pandora mod thread (which was partly how I came upon the sudden inspiration for "resting" in the first place), I've already a working idea of how to handle sleep as well.

So yeah, anyone strongly against this? Or shall I implement fatigue and resting in for this version? More minor, and not-so-minor, updates: Voltaic sacs now have an additional use. Life is much, much easier for the Captain. I'll let you figure out how yourselves. To compensate, I'll be adding some more weaponised versions of the Android's Cutting Torch to the game next version to make sure they stay on an even footing. Venom Sacs are now ready and tested. In my opinion they're hard to use, risky, but pleasantly powerful. This is the first poisonous weapon in the game - to celebrate, I've made all the non-green aliens vulnerable to poison. Reapers will not visibly be affected by poison, but it will stop their regeneration, which is actually nastier than poison considering how fast they regenerate. Other aliens will simply lose health over time, the same as the player does (and will if you're careless). Sacs will have the Safety Switch - Special safety. Fairly major: In a sudden flash of lateral thinking, I've figured out how to determine if the player is not moving by dropping a plot object every second and having it manually check if the player is still there. As such, now, if you do not move, you will recover fatigue more quickly than if you do move, finally allowing the resting mechanic I wanted to implement since page 1 of this very thread. This opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for me. Sleep and movement fatigue (aka: Not standing still to recover fatigue) are back on the cards. This is going to be realised at -0.1 per second, whilst standing still will then increase fatigue by 0.6/second for a net increase of slightly more than current, but only when not moving. Low fatigue penalties would still apply, meaning a food/thirst penalty to recover 0.3 fatigue (0.8 stationary, 0.2 whilst moving). This would only apply to organics, the android covers basic motion with his standard energy consumption. I might also waive this in Easy mode (which is actually very easy compared to the medium and hard difficulty at this point). And since I just thought through the whole sleep thing in the Pandora mod thread (which was partly how I came upon the sudden inspiration for "resting" in the first place), I've already a working idea of how to handle sleep as well. So yeah, anyone strongly against this? Or shall I implement fatigue and resting in for this version?

Endymion 12 years ago

Go ahead, it sounds fine to me.

TNN17 12 years ago

Implemented - Resting only at current. Sleeping I'll be putting in later, probably happening if you're:

a) On low fatigue.
b) Stay still for around ~10 seconds.

Or ~30 seconds or so if you're on high fatigue.

At this point you'll doze off. Time will speed up, your eyes will close (I'm undecided if you'll be blind or just "dimmed" at present), and time will accelerate by a bit. Food and thirst will decrease more slowly during this time, though any effects of malnutrition or dehydration will continue unabated, as will temperature loss/gain.

Firing during convalescence will reset this timer, so you'll never have to worry about the chance of dozing off mid-combat.

Sleeping will dovetail nicely into the Alien PCs, who will need to sleep periodically to evolve. They may even have an evolution bar which only goes up during this sleep state (and potentially zeroes if the alien wakes up before evolving, if I'm feeling like a jerk).

Dreams may come during the sleep state, which is something I'll work on at a much later date, since that's pure fluff.

Anyway, enough side-quests, time to make green aliens and slap in some swamps so I can put an update out on this puppy and get on with the fun stuff due in .32.

More updates: Weapon vulnerabilities have finally been asserted.
As a rule of thumb:
Laser weaponry functions worse against most organic, unarmoured targets. They're at a mere 15 damage/second against Reapers with the laser pistol, lower for the Pulse Laser. A laser shotgun will still exterminate most things though.
Fire works pretty well against most aliens, as does Plasma.
Cold works best against living creatures, especially those in hot climates.
Electrical energy works well against living creatures and machines alike, but things that deal with electrical bolts normally are well insulated against such measures.
Sonic weaponry works against most targets equally, but deals low damage normally. It deals more damage against more fragile structures and targets however. Implemented - Resting only at current. Sleeping I'll be putting in later, probably happening if you're: a) On low fatigue. b) Stay still for around ~10 seconds. Or ~30 seconds or so if you're on high fatigue. At this point you'll doze off. Time will speed up, your eyes will close (I'm undecided if you'll be blind or just "dimmed" at present), and time will accelerate by a bit. Food and thirst will decrease more slowly during this time, though any effects of malnutrition or dehydration will continue unabated, as will temperature loss/gain. Firing during convalescence will reset this timer, so you'll never have to worry about the chance of dozing off mid-combat. Sleeping will dovetail nicely into the Alien PCs, who will need to sleep periodically to evolve. They may even have an evolution bar which only goes up during this sleep state (and potentially zeroes if the alien wakes up before evolving, if I'm feeling like a jerk). Dreams may come during the sleep state, which is something I'll work on at a much later date, since that's pure fluff. Anyway, enough side-quests, time to make green aliens and slap in some swamps so I can put an update out on this puppy and get on with the fun stuff due in .32. More updates: Weapon vulnerabilities have finally been asserted. As a rule of thumb: Laser weaponry functions worse against most organic, unarmoured targets. They're at a mere 15 damage/second against Reapers with the laser pistol, lower for the Pulse Laser. A laser shotgun will still exterminate most things though. Fire works pretty well against most aliens, as does Plasma. Cold works best against living creatures, especially those in hot climates. Electrical energy works well against living creatures and machines alike, but things that deal with electrical bolts normally are well insulated against such measures. Sonic weaponry works against most targets equally, but deals low damage normally. It deals more damage against more fragile structures and targets however.
Edited 12 years ago

Narvius 12 years ago

Waitwaitwait, dreams pure fluff? You have an entire race (iirc, literally) based around that to work with!
Edited 12 years ago

TNN17 12 years ago

Narvius said:
Waitwaitwait, dreams pure fluff? You have an entire race (iirc, literally) based around that to work with!

Good point, wasn't thinking about it in terms of Dreamscapes. I was mainly referring to dreams as descriptive passages that go into the journal rather than interactive ones however. I was thinking about all the funky dreams that the Psionic has on the ship though.

You can see the skeleton of the Psionic's items from 124-163 as they are now - I'm open to suggestions, especially since I lost most of my notes and plans for him last year when I lost the computer.

Right now it's slated to be:

1: Look around for yellow plants.
2: Consume.
3: Trip floaty balls in a safe place.
4: Probably doze off whilst "expanding your mind".
5: ???
6: Get a Thought Token.

Thought tokens can then be transformed into whichever tokens you like.

I want to avoid:

Dreamscape maps & Drastic gameplay differences - The Psionic will function like every other character - fighting for survival, exploring for resources, and searching for shelter. This means no extensive puzzle-game-play, no ignoring 90% of the game looking for your next dreamscape portal, and no getting away with not eating.

This also means that the psionic will be able to carry a small amount normally, and have quick and easy access to carry heavier weights with his abilities.

It's about only one or two versions before I implement him, so if anyone has hopes and dreams for everyone's favourite hoverworm, now's about the time to speak up.

Narvius 12 years ago

I kinda hoped you would cross off the dreamscapes, for pretty much the reasons you cited. (NOT because I was never able to finish them all, right?)

And you can always implement some semiamnesiac subplot for the captain via dreams. I mean, he DID bump his head fairly hard during the crash, no? There are plenty of things you can do with it. :3 (Yes, I am unnecessarily strongly insisting that a mechanic isn't pure fluff for no particular reason. I need to get out more...)
Edited 12 years ago

TNN17 12 years ago

Not to worry Narvius, I agree that dreams do have a lot of potential for awesome. Still, gotta implement the mechanical foundation for everything first though, otherwise I'd be busy all day writing dreams and item descriptions and never get anything done.

Speaking of, Green Aliens are implemented (though not currently spawning). The large ones are dangerous, hit like a train, slow you, poison you, and will rapidly leave you in a state of toxic shock.

This said, small Green Aliens are probably more dangerous, especially in packs. Their long range venomous spit is fairly accurate, carries a chance of causing blindness, slows you, poisons you, hurts you.... And they run away when the player gets too close, whilst their buddies keep hitting you. You might want to wait until you have a long range weapon before trying to head into the swamps.

TNN17 12 years ago

As the snazzy title change might have hinted, version 0.31 is done: http://www.filedropper.com/31_2

This version includes the Realism drop system.
Hives full of murder bees.
Green Swamp Aliens.
Lumberjack-compatible trees.
Wrecks now provide the bulk of loot you can acquire. Bear in mind that having Tools in your inventory will provide you with consistently better loot, the same with the Android's Cutting Torch, and the Welding Torch. These are cumulative.
Updated Fatigue System - Now you need to actually rest to recover fatigue, unless it's easy difficulty.
Swamp Regions, for the swamp aliens to live.
You can now poison aliens, rather than just DoTing them.
Various other changes. More than half of these should be invisible unless you look in the code itself, but cover things like Starvation now taking much, much longer to kill you, whilst simultaneously having minor negative effects more quickly.

Sidenote: Don't feel too bad if you die a few times at the start, for the moment at least the game's beginning is pretty intense.

Any bugs, suggestions, questions, lemme know.

0.32 will primarily involve the introduction of turrets and other machinery.

Endymion 12 years ago

Yay turrets!
Anyway played the new version for a bit.

There sure are a lot of hives. Would being able to hide from bees in water be possible? Also I haven't seen any nests is that intended?

Making treated fabric out of ether and bandages consumes the canister too(fabric works fine).
Description of bow claims that scrap metal+kindling would make arrows but it doesn't.
Recovery pack heals 10hp and Red Plant 15? That seems a bit weird.
I can't use blade or tools to make seeds out of reeds, only knife works.
Are reeds useful as anything other than food?

Oh! Cool I had no idea I could make tinder out of plant waste.
I can't find a lighter is there some ship type more likely to drop it?
I think I've seen only 1 big blue alien, didn't have any weapons at the time so didn't kill it and now I've been forever(5 days) without any armour

.

TNN17 12 years ago

Ahhh, knew it was best to just sit back and wait for the inevitable bug report.

Hives have been capped to five in an area. I did fix another wonky bug where they would propogate around the same tree, making a megahive of ten or more hives, guess that wasn't enough. =P

Made it to that if you're in *Deep* water, Bees cannot attack. Since you can still attack bees with certain weapons in the water, this gives you a major advantage if you have enough fatigue to not drown and die. Shallows do not negatively affect bees.
Nests.... Should be working. I think the problem was that there were too many trees. Since it takes about 10 seconds for a nest to generate, and it spawns instantly into a hive if it passes a tree, it was just never getting enough time. I've capped the number of hives in an area, and upped the chances of a nest spawning. I need to test it, but I got work, so it'll have to wait.

The Bow's description is corrected to say "some kind of metal". This one's an artifact from a long time earlier before arrowheads used bullets.

Red Plants are intentionally more potent than Reaper Blood (they're a lot rarer), but Recovery Packs should have an improvement over raw corpses and doesn't. I've now fixed it. Recovery Packs will cure 20.

I think I broke Bandages while I was trying to find the last Combinations bug, now fixed, thanks.

Reeds are now interactable with the Blade, the Claw Blade, and Tools. If you find any other occasions where the Blade/Claw Blade and Tools/Knife/Claw Knife aren't interchangeable let me know.

I see you've already found the use for Plant Waste.

Currently Seeds are for a basic, light food supply and nothing else. If I advance cooking anymore, you'll be able to combine Pebbles with Seeds to make flour, Flour with Water to make dough, and then Dough will either bake naturally, or be able to have stuff like fruit or meat added beforehand to make pie. Since you already have a whole mess of foodstuffs right now, the pastry system is on hold until either major interest in the prospect or I have nothing better to do.

Lighters are actually one of the rarest items in the game, since there was no chance of them dropping from wrecks at all, the only chance was a 1/1500 chance per rubbish starting spawn. I've now amended the Survival Kit to include a lighter, since that's actually sensible, so it will be a lot more common in future.

I'll have to have a very thorough look into the Wreck Loot items to make sure every item is represented adequately.

Luck of the draw for Big Blues I'm afraid, they're fairly uncommon, but no more so than Big Browns or Big Greens (Slightly skewed against you since Nests weren't showing up as well). Eventually Small Aliens will "grow up" over the period of a few days, so you'll have more control over what populates the area by going there, waiting for the spawn, and then leaving for awhile to let it mature. Leaving an area for a week is going to be a good way of having a large alien filled death trap when you come back there.

Thanks a lot for the bug report, lemme know if you find anything else and I'll get it fixed ASAP. Ahhh, knew it was best to just sit back and wait for the inevitable bug report. Hives have been capped to five in an area. I did fix another wonky bug where they would propogate around the same tree, making a megahive of ten or more hives, guess that wasn't enough. =P Made it to that if you're in *Deep* water, Bees cannot attack. Since you can still attack bees with certain weapons in the water, this gives you a major advantage if you have enough fatigue to not drown and die. Shallows do not negatively affect bees. Nests.... Should be working. I think the problem was that there were too many trees. Since it takes about 10 seconds for a nest to generate, and it spawns instantly into a hive if it passes a tree, it was just never getting enough time. I've capped the number of hives in an area, and upped the chances of a nest spawning. I need to test it, but I got work, so it'll have to wait. The Bow's description is corrected to say "some kind of metal". This one's an artifact from a long time earlier before arrowheads used bullets. Red Plants are intentionally more potent than Reaper Blood (they're a lot rarer), but Recovery Packs should have an improvement over raw corpses and doesn't. I've now fixed it. Recovery Packs will cure 20. I think I broke Bandages while I was trying to find the last Combinations bug, now fixed, thanks. Reeds are now interactable with the Blade, the Claw Blade, and Tools. If you find any other occasions where the Blade/Claw Blade and Tools/Knife/Claw Knife aren't interchangeable let me know. I see you've already found the use for Plant Waste. ;) Currently Seeds are for a basic, light food supply and nothing else. If I advance cooking anymore, you'll be able to combine Pebbles with Seeds to make flour, Flour with Water to make dough, and then Dough will either bake naturally, or be able to have stuff like fruit or meat added beforehand to make pie. Since you already have a whole mess of foodstuffs right now, the pastry system is on hold until either major interest in the prospect or I have nothing better to do. Lighters are actually one of the rarest items in the game, since there was no chance of them dropping from wrecks at all, the only chance was a 1/1500 chance per rubbish starting spawn. I've now amended the Survival Kit to include a lighter, since that's actually sensible, so it will be a lot more common in future. I'll have to have a very thorough look into the Wreck Loot items to make sure every item is represented adequately. Luck of the draw for Big Blues I'm afraid, they're fairly uncommon, but no more so than Big Browns or Big Greens (Slightly skewed against you since Nests weren't showing up as well). Eventually Small Aliens will "grow up" over the period of a few days, so you'll have more control over what populates the area by going there, waiting for the spawn, and then leaving for awhile to let it mature. Leaving an area for a week is going to be a good way of having a large alien filled death trap when you come back there. Thanks a lot for the bug report, lemme know if you find anything else and I'll get it fixed ASAP.

Endymion 12 years ago

More stuff:
Venom sacks also require knife, tools don't work. Also I think the only thing blade/clawblade can do atm. is kindling(knives or tools make wood instead out of branches) so I think things are fine as long as either they or tools work.

Big green aliens drop small corpses.

Poison arrows don't work, I can do the combination but they won't show up in inventory and bow tries to shoot(it won't unequip like if I'm out of ammo, at least if I have used other arrow types, tested on a new game and couldn't equip the bow then) but I'm quite sure it doesn't actually shoot anything.

While I can make paste out of roasted taros(even with cold water) I can't make soup out of roast mushrooms.

I assume that red tea should also heal more than 10hp. Also it gives immunity to poison for a while, right? Is there any indication of how long it last?

I can't equip life support monitor for some reason.

Closing options unequips all items.

Shouldn't at least medkits remove poison in addition to just healing.

Found the big blue I saw earlier.

Edited 12 years ago

TNN17 12 years ago

Blades are supposed to be good for obvious stuff, yeah. So chopping wood works, or cutting the head off some reeds, but if you tried the same thing with a corpse you'd basically shred whatever you were trying to remove.
They should work with tools however, so that's fixed.

Green Aliens were linked incorrectly because I'm a lazy, lazy copy and paster. Fixed.
Red Tea has its own effect.

Poison Arrows aren't implemented yet, shoulda mentioned, sorry. They're due this coming version.

Good idea with Roast Shrooms, I've also expanded this so that Roast Shrooms + Roast Taros + Water will make one instance of Broth, rather than needing two lots of soup to achieve.

Medikits do indeed remove poison. They reduce the Poison Bar (not yet metabolised poison) by -25, and remove 5 lots of Q-tokens (essentially metabolised, "active" poison). This means they're better taken sooner, rather than later, but they're still pretty much the best anti-venom around.

Red Tea is intentional - It's not just a healing item, it's a drink, it restores some hunger, it adds some fatigue, and it's got fairly potent antivenom properties (if you consume it). Red Plants only give 15 Health and help bleeding. It's "better" than the Red Herb, but it's not just better at healing, if you see what I mean.

Opening Options unequips all items, sadly. It's an engine limitation - since you're currently "in" Inventory #1, not inventory #0, you have no equipment, hence it unequips. This is why I have the main inventory open after you close the Options screen, and why I'll do the same with Dialogue menus and anything else that messes with inventories.

Now, I can and will make this work "properly" and manually record and reequip every item that was equipped when the menu closes:

1: Using the Open Options and Open Dialogue options uses an item: "If X Equipped, add Token X to inventory (0).".
2: Use the same item on inventory close and reallocation to inventory 0: "If Token X in inventory, Remove Token X, use X if there is one."

This will mean two Conditions/Effects Blocks per equippable item, as well as an additional item for per equippable item, so this is definitely waiting until a) I've finished all the items, including racial specifics, and b) I feel like writing about as much content as I did when I rewrote the items.dat from scratch.

Edit: Found the Nests bug, took a few, instead of checking off a list of incompatible terrains, it was checking off all except one, and checking the last was true. Net result? Nests were only spawning on Swamp Water. Fixed. Blades are supposed to be good for obvious stuff, yeah. So chopping wood works, or cutting the head off some reeds, but if you tried the same thing with a corpse you'd basically shred whatever you were trying to remove. They should work with tools however, so that's fixed. Green Aliens were linked incorrectly because I'm a lazy, lazy copy and paster. Fixed. Red Tea has its own effect. Poison Arrows aren't implemented yet, shoulda mentioned, sorry. They're due this coming version. Good idea with Roast Shrooms, I've also expanded this so that Roast Shrooms + Roast Taros + Water will make one instance of Broth, rather than needing two lots of soup to achieve. Medikits do indeed remove poison. They reduce the Poison Bar (not yet metabolised poison) by -25, and remove 5 lots of Q-tokens (essentially metabolised, "active" poison). This means they're better taken sooner, rather than later, but they're still pretty much the best anti-venom around. Red Tea is intentional - It's not just a healing item, it's a drink, it restores some hunger, it adds some fatigue, and it's got fairly potent antivenom properties (if you consume it). Red Plants only give 15 Health and help bleeding. It's "better" than the Red Herb, but it's not just better at healing, if you see what I mean. Opening Options unequips all items, sadly. It's an engine limitation - since you're currently "in" Inventory #1, not inventory #0, you have no equipment, hence it unequips. This is why I have the main inventory open after you close the Options screen, and why I'll do the same with Dialogue menus and anything else that messes with inventories. Now, I can and will make this work "properly" and manually record and reequip every item that was equipped when the menu closes: 1: Using the Open Options and Open Dialogue options uses an item: "If X Equipped, add Token X to inventory (0).". 2: Use the same item on inventory close and reallocation to inventory 0: "If Token X in inventory, Remove Token X, use X if there is one." This will mean two Conditions/Effects Blocks per equippable item, as well as an additional item for per equippable item, so this is definitely waiting until a) I've finished all the items, including racial specifics, and b) I feel like writing about as much content as I did when I rewrote the items.dat from scratch. ;) Edit: Found the Nests bug, took a few, instead of checking off a list of incompatible terrains, it was checking off all except one, and checking the last was true. Net result? Nests were only spawning on Swamp Water. Fixed.
Edited 12 years ago

INFERNUS 12 years ago

Found some bugs:

Stun laser and Tazor have same range even if there says that Tazor is low-ranged weapon and Stun laser is Long-ranged weapon.

Fuel cell + Tazor = Battery
String is still undroppable.

------------------------------

Is there an way to cook blue alien meat?

Bees are stronger than aliens.
2 hives killed 10 small aliens very fast.

That is all I found for now.

Edited 12 years ago

Endymion 12 years ago

I guess I shouldn't have excepted medkit to heal everything after meleeing 5 hives under the same tree.

Also yeah noticed the benefits of red tea right after mentioning it, but does it grant perfect immunity to poison for a time (and if so for how long) or what?

EDIT:You can make soup out of alien meat with hot water.
Edited 12 years ago

TNN17 12 years ago

Stun Laser has triple the range of the Tazor.

Tazor + Fuel Cell = Battery + Stun Laser. I've switched the order around so that Stun Laser shows up first.

As Endymion says, Blue Aliens are indeed cookable in hot water.

Bees are indeed stronger than small aliens, but also inherently more limitted - a bee swarm has 25 HP and loses 1 HP every time it's hit or attacks, as well as dying automatically after 100 seconds. Swarms are also harmless to Green Aliens, robots, Reapers, and anything else that isn't vulnerable to poison.
I'll switch the Hive to be an enemy with aliens, see if it causes problems with the Hive dying randomly.

Red Tea isn't incredible, but it will drop your poison bar by 5 and Q Tokens making it a good antivenom.

Update: Powered Field Emitter now has a secondary feature, as well as being a Utility Item armour slot. By holding the middle-mouse button you'll overcharge your field emitter, boosting your armour dramatically at the expense of your energy.

Endymion 12 years ago

Ok I'm pretty sure Ion Storms stack or something like it. I spent about a day or two in ship graveyard and then went to swamp area for a bit killing about 7 green aliens and a few reapers based on my inventory and then proceeded to a jungle and killed 6 aliens there and still can't use my laser pistol, but 4 hours after that I can.

Hmm so is taking red tea before attacking a hive a good idea?

EDIT:
Here's a save 4 hours before I became able to use electronic weapons.
And another one I believe should be about a day before it.
Edited 12 years ago

TNN17 12 years ago

Hm. Before attacking a hive I'd eat some Medicinal Salve. It has some long term healing properties which should probably off-set the poison more effectively.
The moment you started experiencing severe side effects from poison, I'd drink some Red Tea, since Red Tea has more potent anti-venom than the medicinal salve (which would save you more health in the long term).

I have now tweaked the Detox item (the thing that deals with Q-tokens), now it sticks around for a bit after you take it (up to around 60 seconds per token) meaning you can indeed now take Red Tea and other anti-venoms as a precautionary measure, or before starting to manifest symptoms.

You want a cap on the amount of electronics damage? Pffft. Fine. I've implemented one extra line of code that should rapidly eliminate electronic interference if it reaches excessive levels.

Edit: And since I was there, fixed a bug with it not showing up in options to boot.
Edited 12 years ago

INFERNUS 12 years ago

If you use ("Y" key) Hot water, it wont give you empty container

Im not sure about this- If you stand near Fire in ship graveyard area , Ion storms wont effect you

Some nights are very cold and if i stand near fire it wont heat me up fast enough even if i stand in fire.
Edited 12 years ago

TNN17 12 years ago

Fixed. Thanks a lot for all these bug reports guys.

Fires should have absolutely no bearing on electrical interference. Were you near a source of shade?

Some nights are indeed very cold, even with a fire going. Have you tried either using a blanket, or making a bigger fire?

Modified the Wrecks to correctly drop all tech items, though some remain vanishingly rare.

INFERNUS 12 years ago

Fires should have absolutely no bearing on electrical interference. Were you near a source of shade?

No, there was no shade near me or any other things, I was just near fire.

Some nights are indeed very cold, even with a fire going. Have you tried either using a blanket, or making a bigger fire?

No, I forgot about blanket

EDIT:
That knife have a long range for melee weapon.
Im not sure but, if you have survival kit in your inventory , it weights 5.000000
but if used all items that are in weighted 6.00000

Edited 12 years ago

TNN17 12 years ago

Looking into it, the Knife has the same range as the basic punch does at 50px. This should probably be around 40 - 10 shorter than blades, 10 longer than Default Punch, so I've tweaked both accordingly. The game is now harder, everybody thank Infernus.

Ah hah! Nice one, I've increased the survival kit accordingly, good catch. I try to keep combinations with roughly the same weight as their components, but I'm sure I lose track of it, so if you see any more things like this, lemme know.

0.32 Update:

This evening I've been getting bogged in with tree generation. I'm pretty sure I've cracked how to work around the Ngine limitations for this one:

1: Tree Spawns.

2: Tree Selects Type - The Genesis bar is activated within at most 1 second of spawn: If Genesis = 0 then roll Genesis. If I can, this will be activated sooner, by changing the "Tree Seed" into the tree, then as part of the same effect series, randomly select their Genesis bar. If that works, this will be instant, if not there will be a brief pause.

3: Peach Tree will always have Genesis bar = X, Quince Genesis bar = Y, so these trees will have different, but consistent canopies. The normal tree has all canopy types possible and randomly selects what canopy the tree will use later and will be a random number on their genesis bar.

4: Every 1 second, if Tree Plot Object Type is within 0px then disable weapons for 1000ms. This stops the tree from creating secondary canopies. There is a potential problem here for a bug - if a tree spawns under another tree's canopy, so this will have six different condition pairs, so weapons are only disabled if they're touching "their" type of canopy.

If the tree dies, destroy Canopy object in 0 ms. Again, six duplicate death effects, one for each plant type, to minimise the chance of destroying a neighbour's canopy instead.

5: Canopy is controlled by a Canopy Control weapon: Fire all Canopy Emitters - Condition: Genesis = 1-6. Drop Canopy type 1-6. I'll be leaving extra space.

6: Canopy: Every 10 seconds: Automatically self-terminates if player is >300px away. This is a backup method that cleans up canopies if the tree dies and deleted the wrong object or something. Meanwhile, if the player is nearby, this will hopefully fix the wind glitches and allow it to function normally.

If anyone can suggest a more elegant method, feel free to make a suggestion. I'll be hitting the code part of this tomorrow.

Update: New tree graphics done. Still slogging through TreeCode.
Blanket bug fixed.

Update: It's taken around six hours of hammering my head against the code trying to find a way around it (sometimes the simplest things are the hardest with Notrium), but I've finally got a working fruit tree.

This tree is normally "fruity". If right clicked, the available fruit is gathered. Once this has happened, the tree's normally disabled canopy generator fires, removing the replacement canopy and returning it to a fruity state. This can take hours, possibly even days to occur.

In winter, the tree loses its fruity canopy entirely, instead getting a plain canopy. If the season wraps around to spring again, the canopy is once again restored.

Still need to transpose this to Fruit Tree #2, then on to the regular trees, which are going to be even more awkward to do. Then to strip out all the plot objects and replace them with these randomiseable trees. Looking into it, the Knife has the same range as the basic punch does at 50px. This should probably be around 40 - 10 shorter than blades, 10 longer than Default Punch, so I've tweaked both accordingly. The game is now harder, everybody thank Infernus. Ah hah! Nice one, I've increased the survival kit accordingly, good catch. I try to keep combinations with roughly the same weight as their components, but I'm sure I lose track of it, so if you see any more things like this, lemme know. 0.32 Update: This evening I've been getting bogged in with tree generation. I'm pretty sure I've cracked how to work around the Ngine limitations for this one: 1: Tree Spawns. 2: Tree Selects Type - The Genesis bar is activated within at most 1 second of spawn: If Genesis = 0 then roll Genesis. If I can, this will be activated sooner, by changing the "Tree Seed" into the tree, then as part of the same effect series, randomly select their Genesis bar. If that works, this will be instant, if not there will be a brief pause. 3: Peach Tree will always have Genesis bar = X, Quince Genesis bar = Y, so these trees will have different, but consistent canopies. The normal tree has all canopy types possible and randomly selects what canopy the tree will use later and will be a random number on their genesis bar. 4: Every 1 second, if Tree Plot Object Type is within 0px then disable weapons for 1000ms. This stops the tree from creating secondary canopies. There is a potential problem here for a bug - if a tree spawns under another tree's canopy, so this will have six different condition pairs, so weapons are only disabled if they're touching "their" type of canopy. If the tree dies, destroy Canopy object in 0 ms. Again, six duplicate death effects, one for each plant type, to minimise the chance of destroying a neighbour's canopy instead. 5: Canopy is controlled by a Canopy Control weapon: Fire all Canopy Emitters - Condition: Genesis = 1-6. Drop Canopy type 1-6. I'll be leaving extra space. 6: Canopy: Every 10 seconds: Automatically self-terminates if player is >300px away. This is a backup method that cleans up canopies if the tree dies and deleted the wrong object or something. Meanwhile, if the player is nearby, this will hopefully fix the wind glitches and allow it to function normally. If anyone can suggest a more elegant method, feel free to make a suggestion. I'll be hitting the code part of this tomorrow. Update: New tree graphics done. Still slogging through TreeCode. Blanket bug fixed. Update: It's taken around six hours of hammering my head against the code trying to find a way around it (sometimes the simplest things are the hardest with Notrium), but I've finally got a working fruit tree. This tree is normally "fruity". If right clicked, the available fruit is gathered. Once this has happened, the tree's normally disabled canopy generator fires, removing the replacement canopy and returning it to a fruity state. This can take hours, possibly even days to occur. In winter, the tree loses its fruity canopy entirely, instead getting a plain canopy. If the season wraps around to spring again, the canopy is once again restored. Still need to transpose this to Fruit Tree #2, then on to the regular trees, which are going to be even more awkward to do. Then to strip out all the plot objects and replace them with these randomiseable trees.
Edited 12 years ago

Forum » Notrium Final Mix - New Version out. 0.31

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