An Essay on Motivation II: Technology & Quests

[Jur Schagen]

Saz, you are right, programming Soc's ideas is only a bit short of a nightmare. Soc, if you don't take my word for it, ask Chris.

The tech tree: on Soc's apparant request, I'll take that to another thread.

Jur.

[Mykey]

It to it will not pass for nothing.

[Pie]

WE don't need a eurika, or bluprint.

Manipulating miniscuel persentages with things such as amount of limestone, and coal(causing less damage and efectevness in the iron, and deviding it into three groups, steel, exelent, medium and low. And theres the efecteveness in the tools that your using that would come into play, such as, if you made a bellows with less good tools, like the bone needl instead of the metal needl, it would be less... good... and then that bellows would be less good when you use it to make iron.)

Its all about what you know, what you make, what you do. Such as, with a bone needle, you cane manipulate it in time making it, iron when using it, and the such, untill someone finds the PERFICT NEEDLE!!! Its in the other thread.... called.... whatever it was called... Its the one were i posted the long post.

[Nalaris]

Programming nightmare or no, this idea is amazing. I say we give it a go.

Of course, current technologies will have to remain 'discovered'.

[Mykey]

What entertaining question

[Pie]

Yes, but they wont actually be compleatly 'Discoverd'

Itll work like this, that you click on a thing you want to build, it won't name names, no names like 'sabr' or anything like that. Itll be a symple thing, like 'sword' or 'automobiel' or 'hammer'(no sledgehammers, though') or somthing like 'ax' And then you choos materials and smaller items, like a handle, to use. but of course, there is no set time limit to making anything. It will just be an add up, frome the beginning, such as, a sword will origionally have.. maby 2 days, and then, depending on the amount of stuff used, and the tools used(yes, you won't have to use all tools*GASP* But it will have detrimental effect to anything you make, such as, if you try and make iron without a bellows... then your just making metal thats black. Seriously, black. Iron looks black when the fire isn't hot enough.) It's really not that hard to implement, exept for the math thing... aparantly computers cant just easaly do variables and math without knowing alot of things... I really don't know. It'll just be timestaking, and it will need jos's aproval for every little detail. It's no harder than weather. easyer than weather, really, caus in weather you have to add either worldwide variables(wich includes the evilness of MATH. Aparantly, computers like easyer this does this, rather than this + this + this equils this. and thats not what you need with weather. can i join a department? like implumenting thingy department? sure, I cant program worth squat.... but i'm young. i can be tought. I'm insightfull. I'M SMART!!! and plus i know the rudementary thingsabout comps. PLEAS!!! Anyway... jos, pm me with your answer. By the way, where is jos lately?) Anyway...

its all about equality. you gotta just think about what you should have something do. ok, lets take the needle.

150+ iron wont work on any projects(or something like that) And then you have to think about the right amount of iron, or any material, to make it work best, and then how detrimental each gram will be to making the needle work.

Its as simple as that.

[Frits]

The problem is, I think, that you can't just offer something more, you need to offer something different. If doubling my smelting furnace output is going to make me jump through hoops for 15 years, I can just forgo the hoops and spend that time making iron. On the other hand, if I can get a smelter that makes a different type of iron that I can sell so people can make superior tools/weapons, and I can have a monopoly on the smelter for a good chunk of time until someone else figures it out, then that would definately be worth spending 15 years to invent.

Funny you should choose this example, i wonder why the smelter can make steel. Steel is a metal superior to iron, it's way harder to mould, a stone hammer surely won't work. Steel needs to be steamrolled (flattened) in thick or thin huge plates and is cut, then rolled up and shipped. Only then steel is a bitesize resource of which steel rubber knives can be made. Since steel is widespread IG it's useless to implement this process

[The Sociologist]

The problem is, I think, that you can't just offer something more, you need to offer something different. If doubling my smelting furnace output is going to make me jump through hoops for 15 years, I can just forgo the hoops and spend that time making iron. On the other hand, if I can get a smelter that makes a different type of iron that I can sell so people can make superior tools/weapons, and I can have a monopoly on the smelter for a good chunk of time until someone else figures it out, then that would definately be worth spending 15 years to invent.

Funny you should choose this example, i wonder why the smelter can make steel. Steel is a metal superior to iron, it's way harder to mould, a stone hammer surely won't work. Steel needs to be steamrolled (flattened) in thick or thin huge plates and is cut, then rolled up and shipped. Only then steel is a bitesize resource of which steel rubber knives can be made. Since steel is widespread IG it's useless to implement this process

Ah but that's precisely what we were getting at. You could say they had a primitive version of "steel" in the later middle ages. Let's call that Crucible process. Then there was Bessemer process and after that Oxygen process, which is not even 100 years old. And consider all the possible steel alloys: manganese, chromium, nickel, molybdenum, copper, tungsten, cobalt, or silicon. Recognize many of those from Cantr already? In time, I'm sure RD would be adding some of those to the game anyway, and also new machines.

What all the above was about, was to try and simulate information flows in a way that gives each RD action a bigger impact and more uneven arrival in the game. Rather than having a technology appear instantly right across the game world. It's a pity that ProgD won't be able to handle the programming involved, but there it is. Nothing to be done.

[Pie]

My idea is SIMPLE DARNIT!!! Its just really long and requiers allot of talking to agree that this will epual this. It just requirs alot of talking. Other than that its a simple variable. This through this equals this print this here when activated add this to project and

Ouch.... my head.... Ok.... Its harder than that...

Its a simple 3 step prosses.

First, go to the machines. change it so that when you start a project, unstead of getting what you need to put in, you can just put in whatever, and hope it comes out right. Also, do the same thing with tools. Unstead of giving what it needs, just put in what you think is a reasonable amount of stuff.

Secont stage. Effects apon this. Put in, this through this equals and eficiantly made needle, and the like. And then, put in, an eficiantly made needle equals speed up production of objects used with this and increas quality of objects used with this by such and such number.

third stage. Extra invention. Lets take the sword.ou will need to make sertain other steps in the progress, such as Where to put the center of weight, will you make it in one prosses or premake the parts and put them together, and you need to thusly make changes on the eficiantsy of bypassing armer, maby even making blocking swords posibal, and other things such as this.

The third stage is by far... the most hard IMO. Well, goodby to you all... I have to eat somthing.

[Frits]

Well yes, that's not a bad idea and realistic too. If a cantrian can make a bone knife with 100 bones 60 or 70 could also suffice but it would be a worse tool. A small knife is cheaper in your local shop as well.

I imagine though that programming implies standards applied to an item contrary to real life which is way more versatile but you'd want to live for thousands of years to live on the same scale as in cantr.

A few ideas and questions occurred to me from this thread, in RL a lot of experimentation took place like for instance with boiling water. That was new at one point in time and while hazardous it obviously had it's pros. They must have tried everything, all plants on the world but also seperate plantparts, wood, stone, hide, fur and meat. Can PD mimick the way materials react to processing it? Boiling is one process, burning is another, can PD add more ways to process materials?
..

[Pie]

I think you said that this could be abused, by making a "can do everything" tool. Thats what you said... right?

BUT no. You will still have to choos ONE TOOL or wheapon, or part of a wepon thingy, and nomater how many pices of stuf you put in it will only be able to do what you chose to do.

[Frits]

What all the above was about, was to try and simulate information flows in a way that gives each RD action a bigger impact and more uneven arrival in the game. Rather than having a technology appear instantly right across the game world.

This and there was also talk each part of the cantrworld should have different characteristics (attributes). This would be really beautiful but we would need an evolution model. We all know there's a difference between asian and african elephants, the same goes for wheatplants probably all forms of life. Evolution takes a lot of time (a bit more than PD sketched).

That's food and lifeforms, i'd like to add that disease and epidemics have had a big influence as well. Another thing is weather, it's the main reason different races build their houses the way they do or why they paint them white. Nature restricts what lifeforms do and makes them think it's smart to do this or that. What i'm getting at is you can't expect the game to evolve unless you add a whole range of possibilities.

My adventures on the english islands show it clearly, on the one with the treefeather map cantrians control nature and it's resources and it's too easy. On the island where Hobbes started his journey from Naron it's harder, no decent map, and altho more dangerous, still too easy. My favorite char lives on animalcontrolled Burgeo altho he has achieved little, it's the constant struggle, the lack of everything, great! Currently he is very disappointed a newspawn (a helping hand is needed) doesn't seem to want to live. Yesterday he killed one aggressive animal which is reason to rejoice, one threat less.

It seems cantrian have evolved too much and now long for something comparable to spacetravel, this would allow PD with enough time and a valid excuse (wait some more, it's a very long journey to create new lands, a new game.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's a good game but 90 days of experience is ample, 30 was enough. I said it then, this game needs weather, now i say that and more, it needs more and it especially needs more reasons to worry.

[Frits]

I think you said that this could be abused, by making a "can do everything" tool. Thats what you said... right?

No that's not what i meant, i agree. I just doubt it's possible to program, maybe the knife (only bones) but what about an engine?

[Marian]

It seems cantrian have evolved too much and now long for something comparable to spacetravel, this would allow PD with enough time and a valid excuse (wait some more, it's a very long journey Smile to create new lands, a new game.

I'm not really following this thread all that closely, but this just popped out at me, and Coolest. Idea. Ever.

Of course chars aren't even close to filling up the existing world, but if we ever got a ton of new players and overcrowding became a problem this would be an awesome solution...wouldn't it be great to find out that Cantr is only one planet in a solar system?

Some of the planets would be livable, but some would require terraforming (cantrforming?), since more advanced farming and domesticated animals would be introduced by then, so you could import them from Cantr, or else spend time learning about all the native plants and animals.

4567-4.01: You efficiently hurt a gzybuk with a laser rifle, which loses 61 strenght.

OMG, I'm geeking out! We need sci-fi Cantr right now!

[pur]

I was reading this thread until page 2 =)

A point coming back is that there will be notes / Encyclopidia's with everything in it.

A solution for that may be, paper rotting. "In the real world" paper won't last forever. If unused it gets yellow, if used holes fall in it.

If notes don't last forever or blueprints, knowhow would get lost or disappear over time.

And ofcourse you could copy/copy/copy notes and blueprints. But if wear and tear of the blue print is for example 50% the copy would also be 50%. Because the rest isn't readable anymore.

If blueprints whould be unique items in OOP sence. Two 50% rotting blueprints could become a 80% new copyied blueprint for example.
Because the first can have different readable information then te latter.

There would even be a quest possiblity to find rotten blueprints and make a full 100% one again. Or 99% since nobody know how the orginal one looked like