creatures caves welcome, guest
downloads   gallery   dev   community   creatchi   forum   mycaves
bookmarks | search | post new topic
Development Forum
old
Who wants to make a metaroom?   1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
sam999

sam999


 visit sam999's website: Speculative Evolution
  12/16/2011

silvak wrote:
It might as well be portable too. If both ends are portable it would mean one less thing to worry about on the background.


I know. That, and the sheer convenience of portable transporters as shown in Past Seas and the C3toDS rooms are why I suggested it in the first place.

silvak wrote:
I have a question, where is the room going to be located? Is it a spaceship? On an asteroid? On a planet? It would help determine what textures I would be using.


Based on the look of the dome, which is really cool I'd say either a shee starship or an asteroid.

silvak wrote:
Also does Mea, Mudpup, and Ettina still want to help? What were some ideas and designs that you all had? The layout is still very flexible as I might have to start from scratch anyways. Maybe we could also have a couple of genetic breeds to go with the room? I know that I'll need a ton of help with the lifts, and flora/fauna......and the pine trees!


As for Mea, Mudpup, and Ettina I have no idea but do you think this link to some free 3D models of trees might be useful?

 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  12/16/2011

Does it absolutely have to be the classic lift? A pair of up-down teleporters might be easier to code - something like the elevines, but fixed in place.

My TCR Norns
 
silvak

silvak


 visit silvak's website: Crazy Shee's Lab
  12/16/2011

A teleporter would make sense in such a cold environment. Less moving parts means less places for it to break. I don't know what the elevines are, so I'm going to go see if I can find those.

www.CrazyShee.com - Updated: Daily!

Lost Content, help find it a home!

 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  12/16/2011

The elevines were released by Amaikokonut during the last CCSF. :)

My TCR Norns
 
silvak

silvak


 visit silvak's website: Crazy Shee's Lab
  12/16/2011

Which was why I didn't know about it and couldn't find it on the wiki........ Those would be amazing!! They don't need a shaft, but would there need to be one to link the CA? Or could that be built into the "call buttons"?

www.CrazyShee.com - Updated: Daily!

Lost Content, help find it a home!

 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  12/16/2011

CA linking is built into the C3 lifts, but is handled in DS by the cos file "lift ca linkers.cos". It seems fairly simple to do. :)

My TCR Norns
 
silvak

silvak


 visit silvak's website: Crazy Shee's Lab
  12/16/2011

Learn something new everyday! I just wanted to make sure the CA would flow freely. But now I don't have to worry about shafts in the background.

www.CrazyShee.com - Updated: Daily!

Lost Content, help find it a home!

 
Liam

Liam


 visit Liam's website: Spellhold Studios
  12/16/2011

Why are you CA linking? As long as all the rooms connect you don't need to do anything of the sort.

- Liam / K'aeloree

Spellhold Studios, a Baldur's Gate II, Neverwinter Nights and Oblivion Modding Community

 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  12/17/2011

Some smells, like food, fruit and seed, don't travel vertically without CA linking. If I vend a piece of cheese in the C3 Engineering Room, the smell quickly permeates to the lower levels, helping a creature find the cheese, but the permeation doesn't happen in a world like Terra Nornia, where the lifts aren't CA linked. If the underground section ends up with more than one level and those levels are meant to be connected, linking would probably be helpful.

As I understand it, the intention is for the room to not have many food sources - so being able to smell them everywhere would help creatures be able to eat.

It'd probably be more important in high metarooms, rather than long metarooms, but it doesn't hurt to do so. :)


My TCR Norns
 
Liam

Liam


 visit Liam's website: Spellhold Studios
  12/17/2011

But every area should be connected by rooms. I mean, it's not a good idea to send norns in a lift through a null area, they're not built to handle it. It's always best to map as much as possible and just make use of room permiability for that reason.

I checked and you're right, of course, if the levels aren't linked then you need to link them; my point is more you shouldn't need to do that, because it's good practice to design them so they are. :)


- Liam / K'aeloree

Spellhold Studios, a Baldur's Gate II, Neverwinter Nights and Oblivion Modding Community

 
sam999

sam999


 visit sam999's website: Speculative Evolution
  12/17/2011

Malkin wrote:
Does it absolutely have to be the classic lift? A pair of up-down teleporters might be easier to code - something like the elevines, but fixed in place.


How about having them look like snow covered telsa coils which move the creature in a crackling burst of electricity?
More of the Norse/Scandinavian/Techno-Shee look?

About the stuff regarding how the CA must flow, I really don't understand it very well so can't comment besides "maybe normal lifts would be a better idea?"

Being coders, Liam and Malkin probably understand this sort of thing.

 
Gumbo

Gumbo



  12/17/2011

I can't freaking wait for this! Looking amazing!


in the spring you gotta let the flowers fully blossom

 
silvak

silvak


 visit silvak's website: Crazy Shee's Lab
  12/17/2011

I feel so ignorant listening to you both, but I think I followed. So it's a good practice to design so that CA flows freely without the need to be "linked", but also to link anyway to allow for creatures to find food better?

So......graphicly......how should I be designing this?


www.CrazyShee.com - Updated: Daily!

Lost Content, help find it a home!

 
Liam

Liam


 visit Liam's website: Spellhold Studios
  12/17/2011

You only need to CA linked if the areas aren't connected by rooms.

It's best to design so that all areas are linked with rooms.


- Liam / K'aeloree

Spellhold Studios, a Baldur's Gate II, Neverwinter Nights and Oblivion Modding Community

 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  12/17/2011

Rooms that are only linked vertically don't allow food CAs to permeate, though - the food CAs lay on unlinked levels like a wet blanket, rather than permeating through the lift shaft rooms to the level below like a smoke. Without CA linking, a creature can't smell the cheese downstairs.

To design around this would be to make everything be on the same level, which limits the usable space.

Also, Sam, thanks for the laugh - 'Malkin is a coder so she should understand'. XD


My TCR Norns
 
silvak

silvak


 visit silvak's website: Crazy Shee's Lab
  12/17/2011

Thanx you two! Shafts it is.......maybe they could be styled more like air shafts than lift shafts as that would be their main purpose. More steampunky-ness, which will make Sam happy.

www.CrazyShee.com - Updated: Daily!

Lost Content, help find it a home!

 
Liam

Liam


 visit Liam's website: Spellhold Studios
  12/17/2011

:D Malkin is totally right, I just checked.

Jesus, CL, you dumb.


- Liam / K'aeloree

Spellhold Studios, a Baldur's Gate II, Neverwinter Nights and Oblivion Modding Community

 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  12/17/2011

Thank you, Liam. :)

The 'lift shafts' could look like sunbeam-style spotlight thingies?


My TCR Norns
 
silvak

silvak


 visit silvak's website: Crazy Shee's Lab
  12/17/2011

Liam
 wrote:

CL, you dumb.


You do have to wonder sometimes.


www.CrazyShee.com - Updated: Daily!

Lost Content, help find it a home!

 
sam999

sam999


 visit sam999's website: Speculative Evolution
  12/18/2011

An idea that may be dumb but...

...why have the CA shafts be seen at all? Wouldn't it work to make the shafts as thin as the game allows, covered up by foreground imagery and on the ends have things like the C2 bridges but using sprites so they looked normally snowy to keep norns and agents from falling or getting stuck in them?

Or, as

silvak wrote:
Thanx you two! Shafts it is.......maybe they could be styled more like air shafts than lift shafts as that would be their main purpose. More steampunky-ness, which will make Sam happy.

the shafts could look like air vents. Which would be steampunk and therefore awesome.

 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  12/18/2011

You're right, Sam - if we link the upstairs and downstairs by CA, assuming we've got teleporters and not lifts, we don't have to have vertically-connected rooms to allow CA to move between levels. :)

I think we're getting bogged down in minutiae here - having a pair of teleporters which have a CA link between them based on "lift ca linkers.cos" will do. :)

We won't really know what we need to do until we firm up the ideas for the room and the background.

We've decided on pine cone seeds and winter berries, but what about food?


My TCR Norns
 
silvak

silvak


 visit silvak's website: Crazy Shee's Lab
  12/18/2011

Spot on, Malkin. We should move on. Regarding food......there should be at least one edible critter. Also to have food more handy should the hand want it, I had been including a greenhouse underground. It would have a sealable door should the hand wish to have the creatures "rough it". The little freezers would store food for later use or even eggs should the population be too much for the environment.

Possible idea might be a form of grass that lives under the snow might work. Caribou do that. Or make edible tree bark, as that is occasionally used as emergency fodder by animals. Termites or a grub of some kind.....they wouldn't need to be an actual critter, but could simply look like one. Sap from the trees......Maybe have a maple/pine, which turns red in the "spring" (in game season, not literal) and have the sap seep out It would be cool to have seasonal plants so the animals and creatures have to vary sources since food is so scarce.....maybe no all but some of them that don't reproduce......like the tree sap.


www.CrazyShee.com - Updated: Daily!

Lost Content, help find it a home!

 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  12/18/2011

What about 'food-the-category' in particular, not just 'food-the-substance'?

My TCR Norns
 
sam999

sam999


 visit sam999's website: Speculative Evolution
  12/18/2011

So for food we have:
1. Pinecone seeds
2. Some sort of grass under the snow
3. Edible tree bark
4. Grubs and termites
5. Sap from the trees
6. My own idea, an oven in the heated lower caves that makes roast turkey. After all, it's easy to get hungry on just deer food.

 
ylukyun
Patient Pirate

ylukyun

Manager



  12/18/2011

Food-the-category items could be various types of tubers that differ by season? Potatoes, yams, cassava. The real ones are starchy but it fits with the games' classification of carrots etc. as food.

I also really like the turkey idea, but I think it should be able to be deactivated, like the greenhouse, so that creatures can "rough it" ;)

 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  12/19/2011

Or... what about a turnip for food, using the sprites here or here? We could even have the white skinny ones growing on the surface and the red full ones growing in the greenhouse. :)

My TCR Norns
 
ylukyun
Patient Pirate

ylukyun

Manager



  12/19/2011

I had forgotten about those. They'd be perfect for turnips, and carrots, maybe even yams and sweet potatoes. :)
 
sam999

sam999


 visit sam999's website: Speculative Evolution
  12/19/2011

ylukyun wrote:
Food-the-category items could be various types of tubers that differ by season? Potatoes, yams, cassava. The real ones are starchy but it fits with the games' classification of carrots etc. as food.


Seasonal Tubers are a good idea yes, perfect food for the norn roughing it.

ylukyun wrote:
I also really like the turkey idea, but I think it should be able to be deactivated, like the greenhouse, so that creatures can "rough it" ;)


How about this idea?

The upper snowy levels are arctic and only have wild food, and not a lot of it at that. Underground the steampunk caves have prepared sheeish food, I.E. tea, cheese the turkey, hot coco and other such foods. The telaporter between the upper and lower level can be locked by the hand however, making it invisible to creatures. This would allow for "roughing it" in arctic WRs.

In fact, the idea of the upper tundra and pine forest having only natural arctic stuff, and the lower caves having processed steampunk/shee food, toys and sprites.

 
silvak

silvak


 visit silvak's website: Crazy Shee's Lab
  12/19/2011

Food-the-Category?.......sorry I'm unfamiliar with that term.

Great ideas with the other tubers and even the turkey/oven too! And being deactivatable too, should be easy to add.......or maybe a master control offswitch for all the non-native food sources.

Having transporter buttons with a built-in hiding feature would be really cool! If we are going to have it, might as well have it on all the levels. Then you could quarantine or isolate a norn or two.


www.CrazyShee.com - Updated: Daily!

Lost Content, help find it a home!

 
Ghosthande
Prodigal Sock

Ghosthande


 visit Ghosthande's website: Breeders Beware
  12/19/2011

Categories are words Norns use to describe agents, eg. 'critter', 'toy', 'Norn'.

Malkin was referring to the category of edible objects known as 'food', like cheese, carrots, honey, etc., not to edible objects in general.

Most Norns are hard-wired to look for certain types of foods to meet certain drives, and some will literally starve to death even though there are plenty of fruit, critters and seeds around, because they're only looking for 'food'. I think that's what Malkin was aiming at.



 
sam999

sam999


 visit sam999's website: Speculative Evolution
  12/19/2011

silvak wrote:
Great ideas with the other tubers and even the turkey/oven too! And being deactivatable too, should be easy to add.......or maybe a master control offswitch for all the non-native food sources.

Having transporter buttons with a built-in hiding feature would be really cool! If we are going to have it, might as well have it on all the levels. Then you could quarantine or isolate a norn or two.


That was more-or-less what I was thinking. On top, we have the arctic wasteland with sparse natural food kind of like KT but with the main dangers being starving or freezing into a nornsicle rather then being eaten by dinosaurs.

Below, we have a steampunk mini-room containing odd mechanical toys and cooked food. There are telaporters and/or lifts between the two levels which can be locked for WRs in the upper ice wastes or norn-care in the lower steampunk room.

P.S. Do you think we could see a Chione Improved 0.4 concept drawing incorporating what we added to the room?

 
Malkin

Malkin

Manager


 visit Malkin's website: Malkin's page at CWiki
  12/19/2011

Thank you Ghosthande. :) Norns have certain nutritional needs - and are instinctually wired to satisfy them in certain ways, and have set stimuli that dictate what objects do to creatures. While a norn could learn that hunger for fat is satisfied by a fatty pine nut, his primary preference will still be for food to satisfy his hunger for fat.

If we keep "Ron and Eve" and the hand in mind when rationalising Chione, so much the better. :)

Sam - some of the steampunk toy items could be classed as 'machinery' and 'gadget' as well, to cater to Chichi-clone breeds and any wandering Ettins. :)


My TCR Norns
 
sam999

sam999


 visit sam999's website: Speculative Evolution
  12/20/2011

Malkin wrote:
Sam - some of the steampunk toy items could be classed as 'machinery' and 'gadget' as well, to cater to Chichi-clone breeds and any wandering Ettins. :)


Seems like a good idea to me.

Now the only question regarding toys is...

what should they be?

 
silvak

silvak


 visit silvak's website: Crazy Shee's Lab
  12/20/2011

Sam999
 wrote:

P.S. Do you think we could see a Chione Improved 0.4 concept drawing incorporating what we added to the room?


Actually I think it's version 0.6......I mixed things up with v0.4 and had the forest low and the plains higher. It wasn't worth sharing. v0.5 while still incorporating the lift shafts, was pretty much includes all the other features. I did move the pond out from the edge and put a tunnel/tube going through it. And it would be much longer, like v0.3. I'll need to work on v0.6 for a completed and up-to-date look, which isn't a problem. (I had forgotten I hadn't shared v0.5 with you all yet.)

Thanx Malkin, having some "machinery" and "gadgets" included would be really nice, and to be remembered. "Remember Ron and Eve"???


www.CrazyShee.com - Updated: Daily!

Lost Content, help find it a home!

 
Gumbo

Gumbo



  12/20/2011

As for toys, some suggestions:

Some brassy musical instruments.
A steam-powered teapot. (:P)
A steam-powered robot of some sort, maybe a cat or something.
Helicopter-ball.
Snowblower.
Mechanical Santa, produces one random toy from all downloaded toys every time he is pushed.



in the spring you gotta let the flowers fully blossom

 

prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | next

downloads
cobs
adoptions
creaturelink
metarooms
breeds
 
gallery
art
wallpaper
screenshots
graphics
promos
sprites
dev
hack shack
script reservations
dev resources
active projects
dev forum
 
community
links
advice
chat
polls
resources
creatchi
 
forum
bookmarks
general
news
help
development
strangeo
survivor
mycaves
log in
register
lost pw
1 online
C-Rex
creatures caves is your #1 resource for the creatures artificial life game series: creatures, creatures 2, creatures 3, docking station, and the upcoming creatures family.

contact    help    privacy policy    terms & conditions    rules    donate    wiki