Function Part Discussion

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?

NickTheNick wrote:

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.
Handles?

Ok. Sounds good. Just, know casting isn't equal to forging.
There actually might be merit in disguising the two, as forging adds quality to tools in both early and later. Casting is cheaper than forging...

Usually it goes Refinery ----> Factory(plant) either a does it's own casting/forging or b) it's an actual metal working plant sends blanks to be fitted in another factory.

========================================

Wish I was here earlier. I feel like I'm out of the loop by topics either discussed ages ago, or I'm misunderstanding.

But yeah, what's next???

@Sundu- Don't worry, we have just finished discussing fire and have moved on to the next FP- Stockpiles.

I can see that you want to contribute here. That's very good, since the Tech Editor and function parts have been rarely discussed in the past, so we really need a lot of ideas here.

Also, I have moved fire to the "concept fully developed" category.

If you have any more ideas for fire or want to make changes to the current concept, please don't post on the forum- Send me a private message and I'll examine your suggestion.

Stockpiles should be easy.

No minimum or maximum space. The volume of the prism you create with them is the volume of storage they provide for the TO. A building without a Stockpile cannot store compounds. All compounds have density as one of their properties, so converting between mass and volume won't be a problem.

All I can think of at the moment.

I imagine stockpiles would work similar to your suggestion.

Once the player takes the "stockpile" function part, he will be able to choose a shape of the stockpile.

The possible shapes would be:
1. Cuboid
2. Prism
3. Cylindrical

After he places down the stockpile, he would choose what would the stockpile hold. (note that stockpiles would only be used for storing solid materials). Then he would choose the dimensions of the stockpile, and the game would tell him how much of the chosen material would fit in the stockpile (mass).

Mass would be calculated by dividing the total volume of the stockpile with the density of the material.

Also, here are some traits of the stockpile function part:

1. Cannot be placed on surfaces smaller than that side of the stockpile
2. Cylindrical stockpiles would not be placable on their "round" side
3. Fire can be placed on flamable stockpiles

Tarpy wrote:

I imagine stockpiles would work similar to your suggestion.

Once the player takes the "stockpile" function part, he will be able to choose a shape of the stockpile.

The possible shapes would be:
1. Cuboid
2. Prism
3. Cylindrical

It also might be interesting to play with phase specific stockpiles. Like a solid stock, and liquid/gas. Solids come standard with a actual landfill appearances, or building shapes like a warehouse.


If the player leaves it at landfill appearance the landfill building changes with what's most in stock. Like lumber pile for wood (and yes alien lumber could be differently colored). And, as time progresses and fuel becomes more important, liquid tanks and gas tanks could added (again editable like you say). Silo's could be added to increase storage size

You might could also add company logos (alien themed) to choose from... Or a way to paint your own anyway.

You might could also designate zones like on sim city. And when another landfill (stockpile) pops up you can click on it and edit the way it looks. But then again that would mess with the "infinite space" on a stockpile. Also maybe you could link two buildings and create a larger building or warehouse....?

This all linked to a factory or something right?

@Tarpy: Those are some good ideas, but is far too complex than is needed. It would be best to just leave the player with just a rectangular prism that they place on the working space of the TE, and that they then drag and shape to what they want. Stockpiles would hold any compound, and it would just be assumed that the solids, liquids, and gases are kept in respective sections. Also, stockpiles offer storage in terms of volume, not mass. Stockpiles are purely for just storing compounds. Adding fires wouldn't work for stockpiles.

@Sundu: When placed inside a building, the stockpile FP would be invisible to the player and wouldn't require a model. When on the outside it would have various models based on how full it is, with several models as well for each threshold for variety. Changing the model of the stockpile, when it is outside the building, and based on its composition, would be way too much work, and is really not necessary.

There's no zoning, like Sim City, it is based off of building the structures yourself, like in Age of Empires. It doesn't only apply to factories, it applies to any building that stores compounds. This could be buildings that harvest compounds from nature, markets, and buildings that consume compounds to produce an effect, as well as factories.

Although I agree that stockpiles shouldn't be flamable and there should only be one shape, I disagree that stockpiles would be able to hold liquids and gases. Liquids would be held in cisterns, buckets etc. While gases would be held in, well, we haven't really decided that.

Also, the amount of materials would be measured in mass, not volume and here is the reason:

If we had a stockpile of lead and a stockpile of magnesium, both the same volume, than there would be a noticable difference in mass. Since we will measure the amount of materials a nation has in tons, I really see no reason to measure the amount of materials by volume.

Tarpy wrote:

Although I agree that stockpiles shouldn't be flamable and there should only be one shape, I disagree that stockpiles would be able to hold liquids and gases. Liquids would be held in cisterns, buckets etc. While gases would be held in, well, we haven't really decided that.

Also, the amount of materials would be measured in mass, not volume and here is the reason:

If we had a stockpile of lead and a stockpile of magnesium, both the same volume, than there would be a noticable difference in mass. Since we will measure the amount of materials a nation has in tons, I really see no reason to measure the amount of materials by volume.

50 pounds of lead is not = to 50 pound of feathers in terms of volume. I would also reconsider the trade too, to volume is this in any hamper is it.

Liquids and gases are commonly sold by volume.

NickTheNick wrote:

When placed inside a building, the stockpile FP would be invisible to the player and wouldn't require a model.

I would hope so
Besides you further cleared it up. No, your right stock pile wont change. What I'm suggesting is a building editor much like spore.
Where you can click over it and change it's shape, with several templates, at first there might be one or two, but as the game updates I'm sure more will be added.

The landfill can be 1 single shape per factory/and or dependent building. A pile of rocks, looks like just that, a pile of lumber looks like lumber. And, it won't change as long as that's it's the same FP or Building using the stock pile. It's just of matter of making a model for it, not an ungodly amount of detail.

Age of Empires had zoning.... with farms

Spoiler:

add "spoiler" tags to large images to prevent page stretching ~scio

And, I wasn't exactly suggesting every building would spontaniously build... for example houses and such.

@Sundu- Exactly. Also what did you mean about trade? I didn't quite understand. I think that trade should be done in mass (when trading resources, of course)

Liquids sold by volume? I'm not sure about that. Liquids are usually sold by mass.

I already suggested making stockpiles of different shape and size. Shape won't probably even be that much important, so one shape is enough. As for size, size is a must since we will be having stockpiles of different capacity. Implementing modify-able size would be easy.

Placing farms in age of empires is not zoning, since you are placing one individual object every time you click, not say, designating a zone for residental buildings like in SimCity.

Gas at least is sold in us by the gallon US and UK by the liter. Not only that, we buy liter/2 liter bottles of pop. Helium is sold in liters, and not to mention the classic fluid ounces (a unit of volume not weight) sold in can, glass bottle and slightly bigger plastic bottles ;).

Btw the way I meant "if this is going to hamper trade, I would suggest switching to volume." (But I misstyped) But, I just thought of something,

Anyways the program itself could perform mass density conversions internally for the storage unit.


Say you had a space of 50 m^3
Lead has a density of 11.24 g/cm^3 and magnesium 1.738 g/cm^3
You make conversion to bigger units, lead has a density of
11.24 MT/m^3 (metric tons/meter cubed), and magnesium 1.738 mt/m^3

Meaning the storage unit can store 562 Metric tons of lead.
And 87 Metric tons of magnesium.

The program itself could have a stockpile of different densities to go by.

It keep age old tradition of selling/storing liquids by volume and solids by weight or mass

Quote :

I already suggested making stockpiles of different shape and size. Shape won't probably even be that much important, so one shape is enough. As for size, size is a must since we will be having stockpiles of different capacity. Implementing modify-able size would be easy.

Placing farms in age of empires is not zoning, since you are placing one individual object every time you click, not say, designating a zone for residental buildings like in SimCity.

Ok, your right. I was simply referring to the permanence of the farm itself. The villager would run out of food and auto re-seed to the farm you designated by telling the villager to build a farm there in the first place... But I see that it has nothing to do with zoning, my mistake.