Function Part Discussion

I'll just list the uses we have for it:
Heating something up (to cook it, smelt it or to get energy through a steam engine)
Getting light.
As a weapon on projectiles.

To sustain a fire you need:
Combustible material
Oxygen (usually free from the athmosfere)

As byproducts you get:
CO2
H2O
Contamination (reduce it to a single compound)

For contamination generated by the fire we can either:
Have a contamination map
Produce a contamination compound

Finally, fire has an important propierty, other than the usual from any other FP: Temperature. That depends on the material used, and some proceses need specific ranges of temperature to work.

In case you didnt notice, I updated my earlier post with my reply. Fires wont be able to smelt metals. That will be available by the Forge FP, unlocked later by researching Metal Working. Steam Engines as well will be a separate FP.

The light it provides should be simple enough.
I think we should specify how it would b applied to weapons though.

Should we specify the exact amounts of reactants and products in these processes, or save that for later discussion?

What do you mean by contamination?

I think throwing temperature into the mix would be a bit much, especially since smelting metal is the Forge's job, and those would be the only processes that require a significantly different temperature. I would imagine all of the processes it undergoes require relatively similar temperatures. i think it would be better to not concern the player with the specific temperature, and just make some basic simplifications and assumptions.

That works. If we have the forge and steam engine come with their own fire included, we can simplify fire to be able to cook (if big enough) and give off light.

However, then other means of getting heat need to be coded separatedly. What i was thinking was geothermal energy (which IRL uses a steam engine to produce energy and lava-powered smelting and forges)

When you burn a lot of coal, for example, some of the impurities get burned with it. That liberates acids and other contaminants into the athmosfere. Simplified, it makes creatures get sick. It also produces acid rain. Basically, what contamination does on simcity or similar games.

Ah, okay, I get you. So would the amount of contamination produced b dependent on the fuel used? If so, contamination index, or contamination rate, or some property along those lines should as well be added to the list of compound properties, but only if the Boolean for combustible is true.

In reply to Nick about his previous post: I don't think we should have fire spread. A building can either be on fire or not. It wouldn't really be that complicated to make a fire spread system, but still than it would be hard when the TO is slightly on fire (not dangerous) and when the whole thing is up in flames. This would make it very hard to simulate fires as a disaster, since we couldn't differentate the lethal and non-lethal fires.

Making a simple raw-cooked food system would be simple. When food is produced or imported in a SC, it enters it storage. Food would be divided into several subgroups. Meat is one of them. We'll just assume ever "meat" is cookable. When you have a TO that cooks stuff in your SC, the TO would take the amount of food it can convert in one TimeOfThrive and add that converted food into the "cooked" subgroup.

But how would you make a difference between fruits and vegetables? Grain is okay, and it can be separated, but you can't exactly say which part of a plant is soft and what not. Usable parts of the plants would be divided into plant matter (fruits and leaves), plant fluids and wood.

Charcoal is the same as coal. Let's ignore temp. for now.

Also, I think it is safe to move fire to the "Function developed, but needs revising" category.

Yes, I agree that there shouldnt be fire spread. I was merely speculating on some further uses of fire in case we didnt consider these enough.

I get all that. What I'm trying to say is... Actually, wait a second. I just realized only meat really requires cooking, so it would be fineto just add an extra compound so that there is:
Raw Meat
Meat

For fruits, they should be easy to distinguish from plant matter, and they are quite significant too. In terms of the OE, fruits can be easily identified on a plant, if it bears them. Simply saying that it is soft is not enough, true, but they are specific entities taht are attached to the plant, so the computer has easy access to identifying them.

We can't really define what contamination is. On Earth, for example, emitting carbon-dioxide is considered bad for the environment. This is because it increases the greenhouse effect, which in return increases the temperature which is already relatively high.

However, now let's look at another planet with life, that is not Earth. It has a low average temperature, before water freezing point (somewhere around 0 degrees Celsius). Life here would be stuck living around geothermal vents or something similar, and wouldn't be able advance. However, if the amount of CO2 increased in the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect would too. The temperature would increase as well, making it for water to be possible in liquid form in much more places than before. Over time, the simple organisms would no longer be restricted to geothermal vents only. They would evolve and spread. They would eventually start colonizing the land as well (if there is any) and finally, probably reach sentience.

On this planet, more CO2 is good, while on ours, more CO2 is bad.

This is why we can't define contamination.

Even if you take poisonous gases and/or materials, we would still have organisms that tolerate a certain element and some that don't.

That's why we should just let the player decide himself what is "contamination" and what is not.

@Current Discussion:
Contamination in this sense means smog or poisonous chemicals or substances to your organism. We can assume that there will be things that are hazardous to the health of all oxygen-breathing carbon based lifeforms, at least insofar as the game goes. Atmospheric composition should probably be calculated using a Greenhouse Gases byproduct, to increase or decrease global temp.

So my revision of fire would be like this.
Fire
Requires:
Combustible Material
Oxygen

Produces:
Heat
Light
CO2
H2O
Contamination
Greenhouse Gases



Now, on to the Function Parts list. Where did we get the list of Function Parts from? I am confused by a few of them. Things like Prison Cell, Observatory and Tavern seem more like TO tags than FPs. Also, cog and pulley seem more like things that should be assimilated into the actual systems of the Tech Editor. For instance if i wanted to use a treadmill to power a crane arm then i as a player shouldn't have to worry about making the pulleys and cogs and ropes in the right spot, but simply connect them. The game should have algorithms for defining how complex my joining can be based upon technology level.

What about Photosynthetic organisms or organism able to do both eat and photosynthesis... CO2 would be a bonus.

Here's my suggestion
Fire
requires:
Combustible material.
Produces/action:
heat (for organisms not cold tolerant)
Cooks
Smelts (kiln)

However on more global phases like civilization and space age, where you have factories and such.

Fire will produce CO2... And you can keep track of the planets %co2 to keep the planets temperature in check. CO2 will dissipate with time from plants and other carbon scrubbing tech.
Also burning certain substances other fumes, I.E. SO2 which is toxic.

Well, my whole sugestion for CO2 was as a green house gas. CO2 is not directly dangerous to any living creature, unless there is so much there is no space left for oxigen. The contamination was to simplify all general toxic gases, like the alredy mentioned SO2, NO2, or many of the other byproducts.

Daniferrito wrote:

Well, my whole sugestion for CO2 was as a green house gas. CO2 is not directly dangerous to any living creature, unless there is so much there is no space left for oxigen. The contamination was to simplify all general toxic gases, like the alredy mentioned SO2, NO2, or many of the other byproducts.

Right, we could even split the two up.

Greenhouse gas: (methane, CO2)-- only occurs on global phases with industrial components.
Made by living organism. Farming animals.
Factories, combustion.
Machines.

Toxic Gas: (any gas considered toxic by most living things)--occurs from aware phase forward.
In aware phase it only makes a toxic smoke cloud. Good primitive weapon.

On industrial phase it has a % level too like greenhouse gas. And once it builds high enough, it rains death. Not exactly killing your aliens, but killing their food, plants, and damaging buildings.--- like acid rain.

Sorry for the fact that I haven't been on this thread for some time, I was quite busy, and I expect to be on the weekend as well.

@Sundu- I guess I agree that we should split byproducts of fire into greenhouse gases and toxic gases. How would greenhouse gases be produced by "machines"? By machines you mean machines or buildings that use fire, right? Toxic gases would occur only when burning up certain material such as coal and oil, and the amount of poisonous gases the TO produces depends on the type of fuel.

Toxic gases in the industrial phase would decrease health in SC's, decrease crop yield, and acid rains would only appear if the area has a very high % of toxic gases.

@US of Alaska- The FP list was discussed on the crash course economics thread, and the list does need some revising. You are right about the prison cell, tavern and observatory being tech object tags. I don't understand what you mean by the cog and pulley. When creating a rope in the TE the player would first click on the beginning part of the rope , then choose the joints and then the ending part of the rope.

I have updated the description of fire. Make any suggestions and question, I think I'll move the fire to the "fully developed concept" category on Monday and that then we should move on to the next FP.

I know we were talking about fire, and this probably not thread for this.

But, yea or has a chemical reaction releases CO2 or methane into the atmosphere. Methane is a really good greenhouse gas too. So farming herbavores could releases greenhouse gases too.

We could have something a lot like sim city. We're power plants have varied power sources, from green to down right coal black. Also some factories, and processing plants might release toxic gas or green house gas.

However, I think there should be a distinction between Tribal and Industrial phases. Because when man first discovered fire, I doubt it has as much effect on the environment, as it does now where industry multiplies the amounts of CO2 emitted because of the sheer volume.

But each machine release x% per tick, and each scrubber ( plant or machine) scrubs x% per tick. They can be really small values too, like 0.2%. And farms/factories, will have a slightly higher rate like 4x or 3x the amount or however much feels balanced to you.

Of course, any alternative -- electric, nuclear, wind, water, or solar-- will have no emissions.

I was also talking about the planet as a whole... And the rains would occur at random locations in the planet, or in the scope of the map anyway.

However!!!!!!
This could effect the scope of RTS.

You could make the the following adjustments going from RPG/FPS in cell/creature stage, to RTS for the tribal phase (AGe of Empires, Command and Conquer), to RTT (something like total war) for the civilization/space age, where your whole planet environment is affected by what place in the cities. Or, you could make it RTS with no World scope per say, in other words, that little city you made represents the whole planet.

Or good RTS would be a map like RUSE, where its RTS, but you could zoom in and out on each city and actively micromanage.

Of course the pace will be a slower spore like pace and less like resource-hog and swarm all in the span of 30 minutes. Lol.

I like the idea of splitting up the contaminants into greenhouse and toxic gases.

The main problem i had with the FPs were the buildings you guys considered FPs rather than TO tags. Looking over the rope thing now, it is a better idea to have it as an FP. What i think iwas getting at was that it needs to behave differently to regular FPs and more like an electrical cable or pipe FP where the player connects it from one thing to another.

Edit: Also, did you guys look at the Researches and Inventions page? Because that has a whole ton of FPs already on it...

Whoa, theres a lot of discussion here. Just make sure not to jump to any conclusions yet, because there are several things I wish to dispute and add to. However, this free WiFi in the hotel ends soon, so I'll have to respond later.

And Alaska, I showed them the FP list from the Researches and Inventions List. Tarpy's list is based off of that. I have the list on one of the late pages of the Crash Course Economics thread.

Careful, the world keeps turning whether your present or not :p

@Alaska: Several things with internal systems and structures of FP's have been revised. For example, for the prison cell scenario, the player places a rectangular prism inside the building, instead of designating out a room, placing bars, a cot, etc. and all the other things that would make the CPU recognize it as a Prison Cell. If we ever get to letting the player see inside the internals of their buildings, then we could procedurally generate appropriate furniture inside these Structure FP's. Changing the size of the room changes its effects, by either magnifying them or diminishing them.

Also, creating a full fledged mechanics and physics system, with cogs and gears and etc, inside the TE will be tough, and I am not aware of any shortcuts to it yet. That is something that will need to discuss down the line.

@Sundu: Forges will be doing the smelting, fires won't.

@Sundu (Again): I see where you're going, but you're going to have to specify how to implement that.

@Sundu (Again x2): Forges and other later game FP's will produce more fumes/smog/gas/whatever you call it since they process their reactions more rapidly and in larger quantities. There is no need to add in arbitrary modifiers.

That's it for now, I also have lots of notes on pollution I can post soon. Try not to deviate too much from the compound system, and make sure not to get too complex. Nonetheless, great work guys.

I may be new here, but I think stating a forge will do the smelting is a mistake.
I think it would be more accurate to say kilns do the smelting. Because smelting/casting predates forging.


here's a forge

What separates a kiln from a forge is an air supply, and the way it works. Forges werent necessarily used for smelting, but heating metal so it could be worked more easily.

Forging can be tech that is researched later. You dont really need a forge to make metal tools and weapons. But, you will always need a kiln or bloomery, even to forge.

And kilns need fire to work, thats what I was implying.

Also you need to realize metalwork is very tribal in our history, real pollution didn't occur until the 1700s.


Modifiers are needed because some stuff are going to be more pollutant than others. For example a cow farm, will be less pollutant that a bare bones coal factory.
A rate air pollutant is needed in the program or code. Maybe not for the player, though it would be nice to know of how polluting this factory is going to be.---- otherwise I think pollution should be tossed because its not going an immersive part of the game, and more like an annoying statistic, not allowing the player to build.

A compound system? What do you mean like chemicals?

Nickthenick...
The maps the RTS, RTT suggestions are up to you? Those were my questions to you guys the game makers.
RTS- is like a real time startegy, your opponent is moving the the same time you making moves. Which, as I said, you could make a pollution per tick, and on the menu you have a global pollution bar which shows all the combined with will be a percentage or 0% if you are really green or have enough pollution scrubbing mechanisms. Again these machines, factories, etc. need small numbers for percentages in the program or else complete pollution will occur too quickly.

By RTT- you could compound the pollution made per turn/season. The only time it would be like real time strategy is when a battle occures. And you direct you units to attack and defend, and etc...

GUYS, if you did any other form pollution will more annoying or unrealistic.
If CO2, it's too specific because sure you all know there are other greenhouse gases. And, there are SEVERAL toxic gases. You can see for yourself, I'd show you myself but I'm not allowed to post links yet.
If it's a set volume rate, again, too specific. Some of your planets, moons will be larger or smaller, and their atmospheric volumes will vary.

If you do a rateless pollution, as in you add factory and it immediately tacks on 20% and just leaves it at that... it's going to be an annoying statistic. That no one will particularly care much for, because you already have several resources to worry about.

Forge, kiln, same difference. For the purposes of the game, a forge will do what you just outlined a kiln does, and a smithy does what you just outlined a forge does.

Again, modifiers are not needed. With your example, the cow farm wouldn't need a modifier to make it release more "polluted" compounds since it would by nature release a larger quantity of those compounds. The processing and exchange of compounds will handle all of that. Casting Plants and Assembly Lines from the late game will require more fuel to process their larger quantities and thus produce more emissions, and again naturally produce more "polluted" compounds then their early counterparts (ie fires, forges).

Again, just to reiterate, its great what you're doing here, but most of it is handled by the compound system.

Also, I wouldn't like the idea of creating a Pollution meter. Anything can pollute the environment, provided there is too much of it, or that it starts to throw other quantities of compounds out of balance. The atmosphere as a whole can be treated as a huge invisible stockpile, just like stockpiles found in buildings and nature. It would both store and release gases that are exchanged with it. Then, the CPU would run its calculations based off of the composition of the atmosphere, and determine what changes to make to the global climate. Likewise, plants and animals would draw their required gases from the atmosphere to respirate, so that would account for them.

The player would be able to get estimates of the Atmospheric Composition from researching Weather Lore, but at that point it would not really be necessary. After researching Meteorology they would be able to get the exact numbers, and that would be right around the industrial revolution so it would be hugely helpful. In Thrive, a factory just means any building that intakes one compound and produces another. All factories made or used by the player will show the player what the intake and what they produce. So, the player would look at the atmospheric composition, compare it to what their factories produce and intake, and would determine for themselves whether the environment is getting polluted by a certain compound.

The player would also have access to tables showing the total intake and outtakes of all the factories in their nation, as well as in nature, but those as well require certain Researches.

Now, what I'm wondering is why choose "Greenhouse Gases" and "Toxic Gases" over the actual gases, such as CO2, SO2, etc. Could someone explain the pros and cons?

I think we shouldn't have every single existing gas as an independent material in the game.

Major and common gases would be independent. Here are some of the "major gases" I thought of:
Nitrogen
Oxygen
Water Vapor
Carbon-Dioxide

The other, more minor gases, would be separated into multiple different categories.

These categories would be:

1. Noble gases (neon, radon, helium etc.)
2. Poisonous gases (carbon-monoxide)
etc.

Also, I think we are slightly derailing the topic. We were talking about the function of fire. Although discussing the gases it produces in the beginning was on topic, since we were technically still discussing the function of fire, I think we're going OT since we're discussing the atmosphere, not fire right now.

So, could we please get back on topic?

Tarpy wrote:

I think we shouldn't have every single existing gas as an independent material in the game.

Major and common gases would be independent. Here are some of the "major gases" I thought of:
Nitrogen
Oxygen
Water Vapor
Carbon-Dioxide

The other, more minor gases, would be separated into multiple different categories.

These categories would be:

1. Noble gases (neon, radon, helium etc.)
2. Poisonous gases (carbon-monoxide)
etc.

Also, I think we are slightly derailing the topic. We were talking about the function of fire. Although discussing the gases it produces in the beginning was on topic, since we were technically still discussing the function of fire, I think we're going OT since we're discussing the atmosphere, not fire right now.

So, could we please get back on topic?

Sounds good for me.Not complicated, not to simple.

Sure thing, I'll take the pollution discussion to a new thread.

Btw, I wasn't suggesting every gas, just the notable ones like you mentioned.

No problem, I was just about to suggest creating a new thread for pollution.

I am going to go and submit some of my ideas on the pollution thread.

Also, tomorrow we are closing the topic of fire and are moving on to the next FP. Your ideas were great guys, and I hope we will be able to get as much quality suggestions for the next FP as we did for fire.

How about you call the forge a "blacksmith" or "smithing complex"---(you can rename it as a some wierd Alien name if you want). But you star out with a kiln and as you research tech and gather resources like stone and clay (and as you reasearch or building within the complex the building changes).... You can upgrade building its forging components. Then after you've research the most metal work, your blacksmith can be replaced by "casting and forging" plants

Forge means either the hearth itself or the workplace. In Thrive it will mean just the former. Blacksmith, or Smithing Complex, like you mention, is covered by the Smithy FP.

Casting Plants are later game counterparts of Smithies, and Refineries are the later game counterparts of Forges.

Which FP do we do next? Handles?