Working title: Otherworld

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SekoETC
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Working title: Otherworld

Postby SekoETC » Sat Jul 30, 2016 4:00 pm

I've been working on an idea of my own game ever since before I started Cantr. Back in 2011 I started planning it out in more detail and did some coding in 2012, but then I dropped it for several years. Again in January 2016 I did a bit of writing, then in June I started planning it in more detail and also coding. At first I didn't want to say anything because it seemed unclear if I was going to get very far with it, but now as I have advanced more in it, I decided to create a topic for it. Well, my Facebook friends have been hearing about it earlier. I've been working on it pretty much daily for two months now.

The basic ideas of the game:
- to explore and discover new resources
- to develop communities with different culture
- to advance from hunter-gatherers to farmers
- to advance from stone age to iron age
- to plant seeds acquired from other islands
- to cross-breed different local varieties to develop crops with superior qualities
- to form families and take care of your offspring
- to employ (or enslave :twisted: ) NPCs to do the menial and repetitive tasks

Major differences to Cantr:
- Most plants are only native to one island or corner of a continent. It will be necessary to travel to discover them all.
- there will be children
- there will be NPCs
- there is an AP system
- time is faster and flexible - one day in real life is one month ingame, but within that month, the players can use their time and AP as they please, either in one go or divided to several play times a day
- it will be possible to add stuff to scenes (chats) that happened in the past, as long as your character was present when it took place
- all combat actions will be resolved after 18 RL hours from initiation - sooner if the target logs in earlier
- there will be an advantage to discarding obsolete technologies once new ones are discovered (no using bone knives next to steel tech)
- building components can be mixed and matched, so you can select the material for different parts of the house
- players are allowed to plan out societies outside of the game and have them start out with some equipment instead of starting from scratch
- players in a community can create pending characters that are written as detailed RP characters and can then be picked by a player who doesn't have a character in the community in advance
- communities are allowed to set their own OOC code of conduct (such as if it's allowed to have sex in public, in which case underage players will be unable to enter the town)
- it will be possible to "spawn" as a neuter (a character who has no sexual organs or external traits of either sex)

Things that have been coded:
- preset editor (the thing that allows adding categories and object types, and adding related features such as weapon class)
- character list
- the possibility to watch characters that are not played by you (in the final system, the player can invite watchers, they are visible to the player and can be kicked at any time, but there's also a possibility of invisible watcher, which is similar to PD's ability to view other people's characters)
- scene system (chat)
- land traveling system, including hindrance from ground vegetation and swampiness and steep hills
- a local map system that knows how many trees are per are in a mapped location, where buildings and people are located, the possibility to visualize roads
- the possibility to generate new local maps automatically based on a global map
- current system for rivers (in the future the same system can be used for sea currents)
- action point usage (partially)
- activity logging system
- natural resource deposit finding and gathering system
- automatic memorizing of deposits, possibility to forget deposit and automatic purging of oldest deposits from the memory if the amount exceeds 100
- dynamic naming of locations
- random naming system for NPCs (each zone has a different pool of names)

Things that exist in the database:
- 129 animal types
- 194 natural resources
- 243 derived resource subtypes (some of these are related to resources that haven't been implemented yet)
- total 6636 rows in 47 tables, some of these are obsolete and will be removed later

Currently I'm working on adding tool presets to the database. I'm trying to start from stone age and add the types in a reasonable order so that if I decide to leave some for later, the game will be playable up to a certain tech level.

Image
This is the list of planned tools and machines I'm going to add. It also has a few techniques in the mix because I didn't know which tools they need. Viewing in full size recommended. Am I forgetting anything major? The technology range is stone age to iron age.

Screenshots:

Image
Viewing a memorized resource deposit.

Image
Image
Viewing memorized resource deposits.

Image
Dynamic naming

Image
Foraging first page, where you select what to forage for and how many AP to spend searching (max)

Image
What happens if you run into a mountain side that's too steep to climb (yes, there are altitude differences)

Image
Local map view

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A location that hasn't been unlocked

Image
Local map of a swampy location

Image
What happens if you run into a shore

I realize that there's already a game called Otherworld and it's a sex game, so I should eventually come up with a new name, but for now I'm sticking with this one.
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computaertist
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Re: Working title: Otherworld

Postby computaertist » Sat Jul 30, 2016 4:29 pm

Do you need / would you like help? Is it in html, php, mysql, css, and/or javascript, or is it something else?
Mark Twain wrote:Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
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SekoETC
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Re: Working title: Otherworld

Postby SekoETC » Sat Jul 30, 2016 5:18 pm

Like you guessed, it's php/mysqli and css with some javascript. I'm not very good with javascript, so currently only the preset editor uses javascript. Which aspects would you be interested in working on?

The map system is based on reading png files and generating new ones when a user explores a location. Four 100x100px files are generated for each local map, and I initially calculated that each set of four takes 75 kb, but now it appears it's closer to 115 kb. If the whole world got mapped by players, it would generate about 615000 locations which would take about 70 Gb of disk space to store. That's why I'm relying on people not exploring every location, but concentrating their exploration on areas they plan to settle. It's possible to forage without exploring a location, but resources with a commonness of less than 30% won't be visible and can only be found at random. I'm also considering that locations that are only memorized by dead people will be purged and regenerated only once someone re-explores them. Also one way to save space would be to scrap local altitude files, because the only thing they would affect would be large scale combat (if you're higher, you get an upper hand), and that might be too hard to code. It might also be possible to generate random battlefields only for the sake of combat and they wouldn't otherwise be generated.
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witia1
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Re: Working title: Otherworld

Postby witia1 » Sat Jul 30, 2016 8:14 pm

I would rather assume that players would explore all locations. How fast it will happen depends on accessibility of areas and ease/speed of travelling but there will be for sure players with goal of exploring just for sake of exploring.
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Rmak
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Re: Working title: Otherworld

Postby Rmak » Sat Jul 30, 2016 8:18 pm

Looks cool Seko.
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SekoETC
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Re: Working title: Otherworld

Postby SekoETC » Sat Jul 30, 2016 8:36 pm

One might consider that not all of Cantr has been explored and yet it has been over 10 real life years. I don't expect my game to survive that long. Then again, traveling is faster, so I might require to figure out a way to store locations in a more compact manner.

Originally I was planning that characters will be given a different amount of AP a day based on their endurance, but now I'm considering that everybody will get 720 AP per game day, with the possibility of claiming an extra 240 extra AP once per month (real life day) as a bonus. The most a person can have accumulated at once is 1000 AP, so they need to rest to move onto the next day and get the next day's AP. Resting will be instant in real time but take time in game time. You can play up to 24 days in a month (RL day), but I'm considering that if you leave some days unplayed, you won't be required to eat those days and they won't count. That way if you don't want to play 24 days each day, the game just assumes that the character ate what they gathered and the sum of the day is 0.

Another option is setting up routines. This has been part of the plan for a long time, but I haven't thought in detail how I'm going to implement it.
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MattWithoos
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Re: Working title: Otherworld

Postby MattWithoos » Sun Jul 31, 2016 12:04 am

I'll help as well. I don't think Cantr needs/wants my help anytime soon :lol:

I might be able to convince my partner to help with front-end stuff too (design, HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc), if that's wanted.

I'd also be curious / interested in helping form some initial standards around the community, too - fostering an open, fair, transparent relationship with players and having as much of a democratic & involved process in all aspects of the game - if that's of interest to you?

edit: If you're getting my and computaertist's help, then I'd like to also help with setting up project management tools so we always have tickets/tasks assigned and progressed... as well as integrations with bug reports for when we go beyond one or two people testing
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SekoETC
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Re: Working title: Otherworld

Postby SekoETC » Sun Jul 31, 2016 8:59 am

One thing that might be an issue is that I don't have a server yet in order to save money, I'm running this locally through xampp. I can share the files and you can set up your own local environment, either that or I can send individual files that are related to the thing being currently developed.

I'm registered on a forum in another place and the forum owner said that if I wanted to, he could allow us to have our own dedicated section on the forum where we can post development things.
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Re: Working title: Otherworld

Postby MattWithoos » Sun Jul 31, 2016 10:30 am

Happy to support it financially and use the budget I had for Cantr for this (~$100 a month). Can chat more about it, still reading all the docs and I think it has a lot of promise.
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Re: Working title: Otherworld

Postby nateflory » Mon Aug 01, 2016 3:08 pm

ooooh, sounds interesting! :)
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computaertist
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Re: Working title: Otherworld

Postby computaertist » Mon Aug 01, 2016 6:38 pm

Sorry for the slow reply, I'm kinda busy in real life, but I really like the sound of this project.

The second listed basic idea of the game is to develop communities with different culture, and yet I don't see much about how that's going to be facilitated. I'd most like to help flesh that out, work on how players will be able to customize their environments and items and foods and anything else that's feasible in your system so there can be different cultures, with mechanical support.
Mark Twain wrote:Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
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Re: Working title: Otherworld

Postby SekoETC » Mon Aug 01, 2016 7:14 pm

I'm planning to have clothing consisting of customizable parts and people can bookmark their own favorite combinations instead of having preset strict options that everybody must stick to. For example if you're making a shirt or a tunic, you need to pick how far it descends, how wide and long the sleeves are, what kind of collar it has and maybe something else like closure. Likewise buildings will consist of parts and each part can be made of a different resource.

For example:

Componental building

floor base

dirt floor
stone floor
split timber floor
plank floor

flooring

sprigs
palm fronds
hay
stone floor
coarse planks
sanded planks
parquet
tile floor
mosaic floor

floor insulation

none
air
sprigs
hay
wool
cotton
asbestos

support structure

none
sticks
planks
bamboo
wooden beams
stacked stone pillars
brick pillars
solid stone pillars
bronze trusses
steel girders

walls

twigs
wicker
planks
stone
bricks
logs
concrete

outer walls

boards
bricks

inner walls

paper
boards
clay
tile
cardboard
plaster
veneer
mosaic

roof

twigs
heather
palm fronds
straw
wicker
shingles
planks
timber
clay slabs
stone slabs
stone blocks
tin sheets
copper sheets
steel sheets
corrugated iron
tiles

extras
growing grass on the roof
...

Sure more primitive buildings will have less components but you get the picture.

Different areas will have different resources, so it will be more beneficial to work with what you've got instead of going to the other side of the world to get something you don't have, unless you're going to plant that something and grow it locally. Also if you're going to plant something, you need to make sure that you have the right kind of soil type for it, because certain plants prefer a sandy soil while others prefer loamy or clay soil. So it won't even be possible to grow everything everywhere. You can try but it doesn't necessarily work.

My idea is that there will be forums and if someone suggests an idea for a culture and it seems feasible, they will be given a starting location and some help to get started. Other players won't know where the new society has been placed, so they have to find out ingame. Also, in the beginning the continents will be pretty isolated because building ships won't be as easy as in Cantr. With a stone hammer and bone knife you can build a canoe max and you need at least bronze tech to build an actual ship.
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pulkownikarnold
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Re: Working title: Otherworld

Postby pulkownikarnold » Mon Aug 01, 2016 9:04 pm

Oh, another one? :?

One thing that might be an issue is that I don't have a server yet in order to save money, I'm running this locally through xampp.

Rule #1 - Stop using windows for any serious web developing. And if you really have to, install docker


- there will be NPCs


Ugh...

- there is an AP system


Why, is it turn based like Fallout?

- time is faster and flexible - one day in real life is one month ingame, but within that month, the players can use their time and AP as they please, either in one go or divided to several play times a day


A month?! Why? What problem does it solve?

- it will be possible to add stuff to scenes (chats) that happened in the past, as long as your character was present when it took place


Nope nope nope...

- communities are allowed to set their own OOC code of conduct (such as if it's allowed to have sex in public, in which case underage players will be unable to enter the town)


I'm sorry but it sound like you have no general idea about the direction of your game.
Also, the location map looks weird. Are these radio buttons with image ovelays? How are you going to make that mobile friendly? Why don't make one big map, throw it into a div and make an overlay with anchor links (just like dawn2055 and some other games did).

Currently I'm working on adding tool presets to the database.


Why do that at this stage, when half of your planned things and ideas aren't implemented yet? You will lose a lot of time with rewriting things like tools/object classes. TDDs are necdessary unless you want to make a bugged mess.
You should start with collecting your ideas and THEN making a general [mockup/wireframe](https://moqups.com/) of your website's layout, THEN writing tests ([Test driven development](http://agiledata.org/essays/tdd.html)) THEN coding stuff based on your tests. What technology is this, a framework + rabbitmq/redis? Real time with socket.io? Python or pure php garbage?


Well good luck, but we all know how it will end. Developing your own game is super exciting and stuff, until you start encountering problems with more complex things, then all the hype fades away, and we see another vaporware just like the 10th other projects in this forum. That's why I'm fan of showing stuff when it's ready

I'll help as well. I don't think Cantr needs/wants my help anytime soon


They need help with programming, but you clearly have no patience/knowledge. Cantr is a very advanced product, so we should fix our existing problems instead of making another games but again, that's just me.
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MattWithoos
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Re: Working title: Otherworld

Postby MattWithoos » Tue Aug 02, 2016 12:00 am

You seem like a troll but I'll bite.

pulkownikarnold wrote:They need help with programming, but you clearly have no patience/knowledge.


Okay, I've played 11 years. I am patient. I am unlikely to get into staff due to my history though. Patience won't help :D

You should start with collecting your ideas and THEN making a general [mockup/wireframe](https://moqups.com/) of your website's layout, THEN writing tests ([Test driven development](http://agiledata.org/essays/tdd.html)) THEN coding stuff based on your tests. What technology is this, a framework + rabbitmq/redis? Real time with socket.io? Python or pure php garbage?


This is why I wanted to join to help, to overlay a proper software development methodology and project management process over the top.

However, you mandating a development methodology as the obvious only answer, and then calling php "garbage" really sounds like someone who follows whatever article they read online blindly (this is an age-old debate - older than the problems PHP used to have ;) ). I'm guessing you've read a few of those "PHP is terrible!" articles without actually understanding that PHP has solved most of it's issues. Not just that, but it's used by most websites - and many of the major ones. The right tool for the job. PHP has a few cowboys, but I wouldn't be quick to think of yourself as better than them with how judgemental you are about a very good, very popular programming language. Python has it's benefits and pitfalls, so does Ruby/Rails, so does NodeJS. Trying to demerit any one of them without a basis (i.e. calling PHP garbage without any idea of whether it's the best choice for the project) is an amateur mistake.

I understand you want to show off your knowledge, which is fine (even if wrong and a little outdated), but given it has a negative lean to it and is quite cynical and critical, I'd suggest trying to convey them in a friendlier way.

If you truly want to give help and advice, try to be less sharp and snarky with your words. I'm guessing the intention isn't actually to help though, or you probably would have been nicer. :oops:
Last edited by MattWithoos on Tue Aug 02, 2016 3:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
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computaertist
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Re: Working title: Otherworld

Postby computaertist » Tue Aug 02, 2016 3:46 am

pulkownikarnold, I love the ideas you're saying nope to above, so I'd say Seko's game is simply not for you. You go ahead and help Cantr, I'm pretty much through with it. Or do whatever you want; I'm under no illusion that you should do anything I suggest. Thank you for that input that may be helpful, though, such as sites to check out.

SekoETC, your cultural support sounds awesome, like everything else you described. Which part of the process are you finding most challenging or least fun? Maybe I'll be able to help with that.
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