No, you won't be able to take back a Memento.

Quinn, for those purposes, write a Program instead of using a Door.

Just had to take a break in order to diagnose yet ANOTHER FUCKING BROKEN LAPTOP. Emily's machine had its screen go all wonky, and after dismantling and prodding with my multimeter, I spent fifty bucks on a new screen when I'm only 80% certain that that's the problem. Bastard fucking things breaking all the fucking time.

Back to work.

Oh, lord, CMJ. You have my great sympathy for computer problems. It's a pretty impressive record of disasters minor and major.

Oh, and, THANK YOU for telling us all this - it really really makes us much much happier to know what's going on and how things are going.

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Improbable Reference Links - goo.gl/MRBnb -------------- Land Registry (map of Places) ---- goo.gl/bpkRR

Generally I post "what I'm doing" type stuff to Twitter, because it stops me from spending too much time telling people what I'm working on (as opposed to working).

EXCEPT FOR RIGHT NOW.

So, I'm tasked with presenting what's essentially programming in a way that's understandable to people who don't program. I'm kicking around ideas for abstracting this into a simpler system, and one that fits in with the Island's post-EMP aesthetic, and here's what I've come up with.

MACHINES.

The idea is that you can acquire (by buying them in a shop or building them out of metal, I haven't decided which yet) components, that you then assemble in a visual sort of way along a track. A ball bearing drops into the top and clatters its way to the bottom - the ball bearing representing the player who's experiencing the effects of the Machine.

So, say you've got four mysterious wooden or metal boxes - one checks that the player is at full health (and looks like a beaten-up wooden box with a heart painted on it), one checks that she's been in the house before (and looks like a mysterious circuit board ('cause it's a custom one, y'see)), one checks that she has more than x Requisition tokens (this is a lacquered wooden box with a coin mounted on the front), and one pops up a flag that says "Well hello there! I like friends, healthy folks and rich people!" (this one's bigger than the others, since it's a machine that does a thing rather than checks a thing).

You'll be presented with a grid, upon which to arrange these things to create a program. For the program to work, the ball bearing must find a route from the top to the bottom.

To make the flag pop up if the player satisfies ALL THREE requirements:
Put the health box at the top of the track.
Put the familiarity box below the heart box.
Put the wealth box below the familiarity box.
Put the Machine at the bottom, underneath the familiarity box, so all four are in a straight vertical line. The ball will get trapped by any component whose requirements it doesn't meet, so if any one of them fails, then the machine will not activate.
This arrangement looks like this:

H
F
W
M

To make the flag pop up if the player satisfies ANY of these three requirements:
Put all three boxes side-by-side horizontally at the top of the track.
Put the Machine at the bottom. The ball will roll horizontally until it finds a hole it can drop through into the Machine below.
This arrangement looks like this:

HFW
M

To make the flag pop up if the player has all their hitpoints, but is EITHER rich OR familiar (they can be both, but only one is necessary):
Put the heart box at the top of the track.
Put the familiarity box below the heart box.
Put the wealth box beside the familiarity box.
Put the Machine at the bottom. The ball will first go through the heart box (stopping there and aborting the program if the player doesn't have max hitpoints), then will try to go through either of the wealth or familiarity boxes.
This arrangement looks like this:

H
FW
M

Bingo, you've got AND/OR logic presented graphically.

Also I'm gonna enjoy making those graphics.

this is ridiculously ambitious

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Goat Collector

That it is! But you can do it, and it will be gorgeous.

And for the visually-handicapped, and those already comfortable with logic, and maybe, I don't know, those playing on mobile phones and/or using the console skin, amongst your players, you will be providing a text alternative... yes?

please?

Does this mean you're looking at more than a month's-worth of work? Juuuuuuuuuuuust curious...

---

Something something unintelligible gibberish something.

Oh, quite possibly.

Update: on my dev machine, you can now complete the initial build job and get yourself an undecorated one-room dwelling.

Could we also have other machine bits that check if a player is at 0-33% health? Or 33%-66% and then 66-100% or something similar?

This way we could have a machine that might say "Oh jeez pal, you don't look so good." or "You doin' okay there pally?" or "Hey pal, lookin' great!"

What about a machine that drops a ball (player?) into a different track if they don't match a certain requirement for one component? Example,

F
H (0-33%)
M

would give you the "Jeez pal", but what if you failed the H (-33%)? Would we be able to stack something like,

F
H (0-33%) H (33-66%) H (66-100%)
M1 M2 M3

To check a possibility for all three flags or would we need multiple programs?

(Thinking about it, multiple programs would make things one HELL of a lot simpler for you in coding wouldn't they.)

---

A magpie's work is never done.

Yup.

Progress report: in case you're not looking at Twitter, I can now (on my test machine) make new rooms and link Doors between them.

EDIT: also, this teaser, taken from the places_show_doors function:

Is it ok to be slightly terrified and excited at the same time?

Mostly excited?



-Rosemoo

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moooooooooo Visit and help me finish the monster list: goo.gl/rpBGe (Ya'll mostly know me as CLOG, fyi)

---

It's not an optical illusion. It just looks like one.

Progress report:
Working on the updated Decorate function. New version compares new description with old, and adjusts Decoration Job cost accordingly. Minor changes and additions are priced proportionally. Typo fixes should be very cheap.

Okay, that works. Rooms can now be decorated.

Before too long I'll probably set up a public test server for this...

EDIT: Before then, I'll have to stop naming my test areas things like "Wanky Shit Room."

Wow just wow.... I cannot even begin to imagine the programming nightmare this must be, but I thank you a thousand time over for this. (Mostly because I have wanted to literally create almost an entire world in my Dwelling... I have too many ideas.)

Two questions though,

1. Can the system be used to make Combat encounters?

2. Can you make things permanent for just one person? (Like someone unlocks a door with a "key" and can enter, even if they leave the dwelling, but someone who hasn't found or used the "key" cannot until they do so?)

1. No. Maybe someday, perhaps, but this isn't a currently planned feature, and if it gets that way, it'll have to be very carefully done.
2. Yes, you can do that. It's worth bearing in mind that Keys have their own system, but you can certainly create a puzzle-type thing whose consequences are permanent.

Ah, I see. I know all about Dwelling keys, but the "key" was more of the "Random puzzle object" thing as you mentioned. (Sorry if I didn't make that too clear.) Anyway, I wish you the best of luck and I look forward to seeing this come online.

Progress:

Decoration is done, both inside and out. Both work beautifully.

I quite like the new Job system, too. All of the Jobs in the Place (decoration, expansion, addition - all the jobs) are now shown on one page, with full details of what you need for each job, and options to take materials from the stock or use your own. All jobs have x1, x5, x10 and until-it's-done-or-I-am options. No need to be in the room you want to help with.

(I'll probably add a "private" option for Jobs that makes them work like in the current system, where you have to be in the Room affected)

Quick before bed:

I've been thinking a bit more about how to handle the changeover, too. Since all the jobs have x1/x5/x10/to-completion iteration options, rebuilding will be a hell of a lot easier than it was around the Cataclysm, but we can make it easier still.

Right now I'm thinking we'll recreate all the Rooms and their descriptions automatically, but leave the Doors up to the player (after putting the required Wood in their house stores), so they can shuffle things around if they like. All the Furniture from the house will go into the Place's central storage too, so you can rearrange beds and such if you want. So basically, rather than your house being knocked the fuck down, it'll be shaken the fuck up and you'll be invited to put things back the way they were or change them to fit the new system as you please.

I'm pretty sure that someone already asked about this, but could there be something like a permissions system? To elaborate, could there be a way to allow some people into certain areas of a dwelling while keeping others out? Every time I run out of stamina or almost die while traveling and don't have any more saved days I always come across places where I'm not allowed to enter. I'm assuming that this applies to everybody and there is no way to let a certain, hand-picked few into your house. It would be interesting to make a remote, secret clan headquarters outside of an outpost.