Remember the ‘Stone Soup’ fable? This is sort of like that. Everyone contribute something to make a nice weapon, er… soup.
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Fresh Ideas in Gaming
Remember the ‘Stone Soup’ fable? This is sort of like that. Everyone contribute something to make a nice weapon, er… soup.
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quick thought: if you’re going to vaguely imitate other games, they should obviously be Factorio rather than Minecraft 😛
Mostly kidding, although Factorio _could_ provide some interesting inspiration
inspiration or just best practices/things worth imitating, to be clear
something something grumbling about patenting basic techniques for doing things
You do realise this is a series and it came out before factorio.
Creeper World/Factorio crossover when?
W00t w00t!
At precisely 10:38 in the video, you can see 2 arg(s) get produced instead of 1 at the arg fab
Happens at 8:46 too
That could be but I think that actually only 1 is produced, and put into storage, but then the same Arg box is consumed twice in a single tick, so 2 of them are sent out before it has time to remove it from storage and realize it can’t supply any more
Yeah, good eyes…. It will be an interesting one to debug. Could be double consumption from storage, I’ll have to see.
I’m seeing custom maps. Tons of them. And a lot of different uses for this system.
I am hoping they have long term goals of making a custom server to access peoples creations. Ideally, similar to CW3. This allows for unlimited replay ability once the database is filled.
This is going to be amazing.
I just checked if there was any CW4 news and there wasnt, but half an hour later on youtube and it tells me about this video, meaning you put this out SECONDS after I checked. GG.
looks awesome, the factorio player in me is annoyed at the bottle necks that are going to be created by the limited outputs but I guess thats just part of the game.
im getting more excited for this game every time I see it. I usually dont let myself get excited for things but considering the things you have accomplished before im not worried about the quality of the game
Okay, so, more serious commenting:
I wouldn’t go full Factorio. Heck, I wouldn’t even make the crafting chain as deep as it is here. For one thing, this is indeed not an automation game, and for another thing, my first instinct would be not to imitate an automation/crafting game, but to use the system as if it was any other set of resources in an RTS, if that makes sense. Starcraft and Age of Empires already have systems where you harvest multiple resources and combine them, they just don’t have you ship the resources around.
So… have, say, three to four resources. Ideally, each a little different, so that it doesn’t feel like they’re redundant, although it might be tricky either making one unit handle them all or finding space for a bunch of different harvester units.
That aside, I’m imagining one resource that’s pretty much like the crystals shown here, perhaps harvested with units placed next to it? little drills on the side? Thematic coherence is nice, and maybe this would be your basic, general resource.
Another resource could be something that makes up the ground, and perhaps instead of mining ore veins you outright strip mine the spot you’re harvesting, leaving a hole behind. I’d imagine this would be something stony and focused on defensive recipes, like the walls you mention in the video.
Third one would be something you synthesize by throwing a lot of energy at it. An energy crystal or something. Use it for reactor upgrades? Extra energy storage? Improved cannon units?
Fourth idea is a little bit extraneous-feeling at the moment, but I’m thinking volatiles, harvested out of the atmosphere or out of low-orbit or whatever. Chemicals and whatnot. For Anti-creeper, maybe.
Anyways.
Don’t go too crazy on the crafting/recipe chains. Harvest the resources, maybe have storage of them (since you don’t have a global storage like in aforementioned other RTS games, a local storage building might be of particular importance, if you can make it work without too much lag and stuff), and keep processing to a minimum. Fabricators can be an aspect of the resource system, but they should come after you’re already using basic harvestable resources for upgrades or units or what the heck ever.
wow, okay, I’m all over the place here, aren’t I?
I guess what I’m trying to get at is that I’d like to see a nice broad range of stuff your basic resources can do (build units! upgrade units! ammo for some units?) before going into the ways to ‘tech up’ too much.
Though I do find myself kind of worrying that having enough different things to do with the basic resources AND also a bunch of different things to do with fabricated resources would end up making the game feel a little less focused, if that makes any sense. ONe of the nice things about the Creeper World series is that it feels very elegant. It’s not full of different units and buildings, it has a relatively limited number of objects that the player has to manipulate. Sure, the enemies can get weird, but the options the player has have always been fairly constrained, and while that could be seen as a bad thing, it can also be seen as a good thing. Having only a few offensive unit choices, for example, makes it easier to understand and master how to use those units in various situations, as opposed to another game that might have one or two dozen units you want to understand how to employ. Less work in understanding one thing also makes it easier to devote attention to other things, which is always a plus!
Still, I want to be able to use all sorts of different resources to do all sorts of different things. Hrrrrm.
It takes a village to kill a village.
Neat! The extra effort and thought required to go through potentially multiple levels of crafting will definitely give a sense of investment that’ll make resulting upgrades feel more satisfying and meaningful (permanent upgrades, anyway; having to go through that to craft consumables like ammo that once used are gone would probably be more annoying).
Amazing! make sure to add an input buffer to the FABs, that bottle neck is ugly and has to go. Other than that i like it. What if this allowed the production of parts that can be equipped to turrets to increase range, fire rate, etc (like amp gems)
Certain buildings could require these components or build faster if spare pre-assembled parts are available.
Also, i would recommend a storage building that can bulk store many parts (in stacks).
You would set the storage block to receive from one or more factories, and the factories would send the products to storage.
Just a small detail that bugged me: I noticed that the crystals give out redons/bluites not on a constant rate, but only when the corresponding fabricator has built a box. This means that productivity is based on how close the fab is to the minerals. I guess it was not intended.
Yeah, that bugged me too. At first I couldn’t figure out the production rate and then realized it only sent one when the FAB requested one and did not send another until the first one satisfied the request.
Perhaps a storage facility would be ideal to isolate an area for production regardless of distance from node.
Neat. Reminds me of factorio.
Also, I didn’t know you had a discord??
I can already see this system being customisable for custom maps, which means the map maker can get a huge amount of control over the resources the player has, as well as providing many types of rewards for reaching distant places (given that there are enough types of raw materials, or that new plans can be picked up on the map).
Thumbs up from me.
I hope that there will be a setting for how transparent the connection lines are when they are not active. I prefer to at least be able to see them, even if faintly, rather than have them completely disappear while not active.
I like the idea of adding a crafting/building complexity. I would caution making it into a micromanaged system like making ammo or something in constant need.
I’m thinking these FABs should be used as background production of “special packets” specific for making THOR or Bertha weapons or next tier buildings.
Also BOATS!! Guppys are too cheaty. Rowboats, tankers, and pirate ships!!!
heck this looks awesome! this is actually going to be made? wow! hope this grabs more attention then the older games.
im now just imagining a CW 5 with actual full round planets with cracks reaching to the core as you defend against the creeper.
also a production n construction chain? sounds interesting.
btw don’t remember if this had already been implemented in the later games, but for some maps after a while it just gets logistics management. so would be cool if emmiters slowly ramped up production over time?
I think it could make some cool timed missions, with unstable emitters that ramp up and finally explode and make a creeper tsunami.
So you could either go for an aggressive route and neutralize them before they ramp up too much, or go for a turtle route, and build high walls to break the wave. and wait for it to arrive. It could make for a good achievement too.
I was quite interested to see this development and it’s certainly an interesting thing to experiment with. When you first revealed the fab my first thoughts were: that 3×3 grid looks perfect to park a blaster or mortar on top of to augment it with some kind of upgrade.
It also reminds me a bit of a guppy landing pad which makes me wonder if the bomber would be replaced with a generic transport capable both of dropping anti-creeper bombs as well as deploying structures like the wall you mentioned- maybe even condensed energy packets to remote locations filling the guppy role. Fabricating heavy bertha shells was a particularly nice idea I think.
It also occurred to me that a fab could be used to very quickly build units at a fixed location, with the caveat that they would need need to be moved into position- something which in relative terms is already done with say building cannons next to the orbital before then moving them to the dangerous front line. Would this be useful when you can build anywhere in the energy grid? It would probably depend a lot on the normal build time of units as well as their fly speed and vulnerability while being constructed.
If you combine that with upgrades for units on the other hand, it would save you from moving a unit to the fab to upgrade and then out again (if such a thing were to be as opposed to remotely deploying upgrades using the energy network).
Whatever you end up doing it’s looking like it’ll work out good! It’s great to see you experimenting with things. (and thinking back to the solar panel design you tried… what would it be like to do both? Extract energy from the ground with a collector, then double up with a panel on top? And of course where do reactors come into this? Many rhetorical questions, and a long road ahead no doubt.)
Right off the bat, I hope the recipes will be CRPL – customizable, not for my sake but for more skilled map-makers. This could have interesting implications for the story, with humans creating more versatile, adaptable weapon systems against the creeper. Of course, payloads for bombers and Berthas are the obvious choice, along perhaps with upgrades. Say, a “Forge” that requests a larger area of resources to unlock the upgrade. With the new physics engine, it might make interesting payloads possible. Reminds me of the planned AC Refinery.
This looks to be a very interesting mechanic.
It opens up a lot of possibilities for the future. Even just being able to manufacture special ammo types for each weapon can give a lot of room for tactical manouverung. Like for the mortar you could have some gravity trap shell, that dosen’t destroy any creeper, but pulls it to the point of impact for a few seconds, so other mortars with normall shells can dispose of it easier. Or a shell that deposites anti-creeper instead of exploding.
Similarly the Big Bertha could have a cluster bomb ammo, that isn’t very effective against deep creeper, but covers a large area, or a simple anti-creeper shell. Althoughit’s quite far fetched, but I can even imagine containers filled with ammo/build/energy packets to be fired to reach and resupply areas, where a guppy can’t go for one reason or an other.
I look forward to see where this is going, and I hope you envisioned something at least vaugely similar uses for this system to what I described in the previous paragraph.
PLEEASEE
TAKE MY MONEY
I WANT TO PLAY IT
I appreciate that you are limiting this feature to be much more about “spice” and not a core mechanic, while it absolutely still accomplishes your goal of “multiple goals” on a single map.
For example, I know a wave of spores is coming in two minutes and a super spore in 5 minutes. The mini spores can be defeated by a redon resource missile made of ‘arg’, but the super spore that has special protection (and creates a new emitter upon impact) that requires me to collect redon, bluite, and emerald to build a super missile.
Also +1 to Jevry’s post where s/he mentioned having emitters scale throughout a level as a basic mechanic just so we have incentive to play more aggressively and make interesting plays. The dream being that there are levels where I start in a basin with emitters north and south of me, and I have to hold off the southern emitters that scale faster (Cannot fight them yet, essentially), while fighting my way up a hill to the northern emitter me, nullifying it, moving command up to the top of the hill, and having to be frustrated by losing my former build-out. I would now having the proper footing with which to take on the southern emitters.
Thanks for the great series! I hope it someday it’s big enough for you to hire help:)
Looking really good. I’m playing CW3 again to fill the time. Here’s hoping to possibly / maybe seeing a release date end 2018 / early 2019?
Good luck on your project, looks to be the best CW yet.
Kinda reminding me of an online game called Factory Idle. Quite a few recipes you got here.
Hello!
BIG fan of your work!
Just got a bug and wondered if you’d started a new game. I’ve spent a blissful afternoon catching up on all your posts thus far.
Here is an idea for you…
Should you have terrain modification in-mission, you could use the fabricators required to make special packets to fuel the terrain modifiers. Might add some challenge to the game?