You paid a hundred SP for a secret room, you got a secret room, months before folks who didn't wanna pay for one.

Should the programming features be a supporter-only thing?

Good lord, no, this is far better. Was simply wondering, is all. For those who have sunk quite a few SP into them (and I've heard of a few), it might be a bit disappointing if they thought they would be saved as items, prior.

Don't worry, I was just curious. This is far, far better.

Yes, precisely my point. Again, not complaining, just wanted to clear that up.

Don't worry - things like this will come up.

Ideas that we're used to will be replaced with other things. For example, Memento Effects and Secret Rooms will both become part of the same system of Pure Awesomeness. Whereas once we had all these things that were different interfaces, different modules, different experiences - they'll all be part of the same simple mechanism.

Here are a pair of testing Contrivances. These graphics are preliminary, and the finished thing will probably be a bit different:



Those are Contrivances for Commentary Commands and Hitpoints.

To replicate the functionality of a Secret Room inside the new system, you'll do something like this:

Make a new Room, fill out its Description, but don't add a Door.
Obtain a Commentary Commands Contrivance and a Room Redirect Contraption (you'll get one of these for every secret room you had in the old system).
Click on the Commentary Commands Contrivance and edit the list of Commands that the Contrivance can accept.
Click on the Room Redirect Contraption and tell it the room you want to redirect to.
Enter the Contrivances and Contraptions menu of the Room or Page in which you want to listen for the Commentary Command (aye, you can apply this to a Page too if you like! Set it up like this, and your player has to be looking at the bookcase before typing TAKE RED BOOK or whatever - it's extra secret).
You'll be presented with a Logic Grid.
Place the Commentary Commands Contrivance at the top of the Logic Grid.
Place the Room Redirect Contraption at the bottom of the Logic Grid.
All done!

Simple things to remember:
* Contrivances check things, Contraptions do things.
* Contrivances are wooden. Contraptions are metal.
* Flow in the Logic Grid always goes from top to bottom. If two Contrivances are placed side by side, then if either of the checks are successful then the Contraption will trigger (if the Contraption is right below the Contrivances we're talking about - if there are more Contrivances below the top two, then obviously those need to pass okay as well).
* An example of the above reasoning would be to set a secret room to trigger if a key phrase is said OR if the player has a particular Memento (Contrivances side-by-side). Alternatively, require a particular Memento AS WELL AS knowledge of the trigger phrase (Contrivances arranged in a vertical line).
* Contraptions and Contrivances can be re-used. You can take them off the Logic Grid and put them back into the building's Inventory and then use them again for another program.

I really, really can't wait to see what you guys come up with using this stuff.

Also, about Place Prefs:

Place Prefs are data stored about a player, pertaining to your Place (yeah, first it was Dwellings, then it was Buildings, then it was Structures, now it's Places). These are the only new thing about Places that you'll need Supporter Points for.

Lemme think of an example, how you'd go about using these...

Okay, so say you've got a player who's going through your museum, getting deeper and deeper in, admiring all the portrait of long-dead people that you've meticulously described in Pages. Eventually they come across a display cabinet, with some shiny thingy inside that they want. They try to take the shiny thingy, and it makes Bad Things Happen.

To do this, you'd pay your SP's and make a new Place Pref (I'll come up with a better name later) called "Bad Times" with a default value of 0.

When they try to take the shiny thingy (by clicking on a link to a Page, or by typing in TRY TO TAKE SHINY THINGY, however you want to handle that), your Contraption sets the "Bad Times" pref to 1.

In every Page you've made containing a portrait, you've also put a Logic Grid that checks the "Bad Times" pref and, if it's set to 1, shows a different Page instead - and in these Pages, all the portraits look very angry.

Just an example for ya.

Oh, and I should probably clarify:

This will all make a lot more sense with the interface in front of you.

So we're getting OR and AND. That's lovely -- but, um, missing something important.* How about NOT?

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* Complete logical conditions can be built up without XOR, NAND, NOR, and XNOR, though an XOR would be nice to have -- it's complicated to make.

Aww, and here I was hoping it'd be a monster attack!

This all sounds like so much fun! I cannot wait to start fiddling with it! It sounds like there's going to be lots of options for doing the same things, which is always a plus!

Question: (Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica) Will soundproofing remain?

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Something something unintelligible gibberish something.

Will it be possible to link different rooms of different Places together (on the same square or adjacent)?

If not, will it be possible to change the permanent heading of the Place you're in (to denote a different building or area)?

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http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/560/004/989.gif

If we have 'check if pref is greater than X' and 'check if preference is less than X' then those two things ORed together are the same as 'check NOT preference is equal to X'.

For anything else, set a pref to zero, check for condition - making pref change to 1, and then NOT is just 'check that preference is zero'

So NOT is always possible, albeit a little fiddly. There will probably be easier ways as well.

How long after the system comes out that someone designs a calculator and then a computer out of this computer game?

http://inception.davepedu.com/

True. I had not sufficiently considered the matter. If we are getting 'greater than' and 'less than' along with 'equal to', though, it ought to be relatively simple to give us 'not equal to"-- as well as 'not greater than' and 'not less than'. Then we'd have a full toolset.
Your mission, Fred, should you choose to accept it...

I have to confess, it had crossed my mind to wonder about building a Turing machine...

For what it's worth, I obviously don't know the complete details of how it's all going to work, and I'd need to play for a little while first, but I reckon that it would be possible, but you'd need to have a user activate each step. So possible, but not the fastest machine ever...

Oh dear. I clearly need to get out more often.

I'm going all "SQEEEEEE!" inside now, imagining all the horrible, horrible things we will be able to do with the hapless victims of the Bingo Hall with this.


I swear, that building is going to EAT people. Which reminds me, can we make the exit links disappear? Aww? Pretty please? *grins* I've always wanted to depopulate the island.

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"Censure acquits the Raven, but pursues the Dove." "So, that means i'm -always- innocent, right?"

Soundproofing will be a furniture item that affects the Room once it's placed in a Slot.

We'll also have something new, along similar lines - a more romantic option...

I've got the basics for arranging Contrivances on the Logic Grid all sorted.

If I really go for it, knuckle down and stay up late most days this week... I might be able to have something ready for testing on a beta server by next week sometime.

So far I have Contrivances made for checking male and female gender.

The code for working through the Logic Grid and firing or aborting the program is DONE!

Now I'm building the ScrapYard from which you'll be getting these awesome thingies.

The Scrapyard is DONE!

This is all coming together nicely!