So, some people have been discussing that anomalies would make a good game mechanic. But what are anomalies? Well, anomalies were originally shown in the book Roadside Picnic, but more people remember them from STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. Anomalies manifested as strange places where the laws of physics were ignored. Some anomalies would make gravity in the area higher then Jupiter, others would cause you to have a heart attack two hours after you went into it. Now, doesn’t that sound like a fun and bizarre addition to Cataclysm?
Well, why would it happen? Due to the massive amount of portals from the alternate dimension, reality has taken a bad beating. There are even spots where reality has become ripped, like an old scarf getting holes from moths. This has created anomalies in space-time where things really drop off the deep end.
So, how’d it effect gameplay? Think about it. You’re walking along the fields when suddenly, you see a moose get eaten by the ground near an old tree. You toss a rock in the patch where the moose got eaten, and the rock disappears into the dirt too. You go past the old tree at a respectable distance, then arrive at a forest. You see a house! Awesome! You go in, and find it has a basement. You walk down the stairs, and see that it’s lit up for some reason. There is blue jelly that glows, and you guess it’s probably an artifact. You go over to pick it up, and suddenly your arm registers as broken. What the hell? You check your @ and find that your arm no longer has any bones in it because you tried to pick that up. You get the hell out of there and run into the forest, but you enter a patch of ground where things are randomly teleported to random places, and you find yourself in the middle of a zombie horde in a town several miles away.
So, it’d be a good reason to keep on your toes in forests and fields. It wouldn’t be very common, obviously, and there’d be signs as to where anomalies are. What do you guys think?
More STALKER-ish stuff? For sure man. Also for anomalies, they should have a chance of spawning artifacts nearby, but I don’t think they should be ‘you touch the moonrock, your arm is broken’ kinda thing since that just seems a cheap way to punish curiosity. Teleportation anomalies should be enough for that purpose.
I’ll give a few examples of SoC anomalies:
[ul][li]Whirligig: A small zone of high speed air. Go near it, (within 10~15m) you get sucked into it and span around like a bitch until the vacuum explodes. Frequently eats mutant zombie dogs and the like. once caught, very hard to escape from until the vacuum explodes, as there’s a brief period of calm.[/li]
[li]electro: What else? it’s a small zone that keeps arcing electricity now and then, but if you time it right you should be able to run through it. Maybe put it on a mediumish timer.[/li]
[li]Burner: often appears in clusters. a small zone of heat hazed air. Very hard to see. When near it, it erupts into a pillar of flame. I wouldn’t recommend putting this in until fire damaging maximum hp is resolved somehow, be it burn cream or months-long recuperation.[/li][/ul]
Well, the moonrock thing was actually based off the Witch’s Jelly from the novel Roadside Picnic, which is one of my favorite novels and a good read for anyone who likes STALKER, since that’s what STALKER based itself off. There’s a few anomales in it that I think would be amazing for Cataclysm, like the meatgrinder: it’s an extremely dangerous anomaly that only turns itself off when an organic goes through it. “Hey, random NPC follower, go get that nice shiny artifact.” “Why don’t you get it?” “I dunno, get your lazy glitchy ass over there.” GRIIIINDSCREAMING “Alas, random NPC, we hardly knew ye. Hey, nice artifact.” whistles
There are anomalies based around artifact in game. Once, I was looting houses on the outskirts of a middling town, and inside one house’s bedroom, an artifact (can’t remember what it was, some kind of gloves I think) was creating “pulse” of acids, one every 10 turns or so. Those stopped when I picked the artifact.
Yeah the current anomaly/artifact system we already have is pretty much a RNG-driven version of the ones from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. though some Roadside Picnic style ones would be great.
It’d be too cool to encounter basements flooded with deadly witch’s jelly or those weird metallic spiderwebs of doom.
Welp, I prefer to stick with the Roadside Picnic anomalies - they’re more roguelike-ish than the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. ones.
Sorry for maybe wrong names, I’m actually russian and read that book in original and now trying to translate names into the english
Though i’m surprised that here’s a lot of people who knows this book
Graviconcentrate - field of IMMINENT PUMMELING
Witch’s Jello - enjoy your molten bones… if you’re fast enough. Actually, a puddle of something that looks like a blue napalm
Scorching Fluff - black wedges, which often being catched by the wind and will burn your skin and equipment
Lightning anomalies are already implemented.
Grinder - sucks you in and wraps you tightly until you squeal. Eh-he-he-he. More like landmine - unlike the graviconcentrate
"Weird place" - Something’s just wrong here. Chance of teleglow.
“Wish granter” - Happiness, free for all! And left no one aside!
We need something fast and gruesome, which will mangle your body easily if you’re not smart enough.
They don’t quite fit the game theme (i know we have portals from the 4th dimension and stuff) and they are the kind of ‘sudden death out of nowhere’ type of things.
If i wouldn’t have noticed this thread and anomalies were in the game i’d probably die 10 times because of not knowing why did i suddenly get sucked into something and wrapped into a piece of turd.
It’s an ASCII game , if something is wrong somewhere you have to manually check the tile and ain’t nobody got time for that(if im walking 5 miles over fields to get home).
We HAVE anomalies in the game. I kinda like them, as a show that the very fabric of reality is being torn apart. But no instadeath anomalies, as such, the exemple given here kinda sucks.
Portals will also basically turn large swathes of the map into anomalies eventually, with the otherworldly behavior intensifying as you get close to the portal.
Sorry, I was thinking more STALKERish anomalies, which means more instadeath that can only be detected through visual changes. Bad example.
@Glyph: I heard about those plans, but I’d like it if you found occasional parts of the map like that without a portal terraforming the whole thing. Just small areas.
Well, lore-wise, that could just indicate a very small portal or rip in spacetime at the boundary with another dimension. Not large enough for stuff to get through, but still caused by the same sort of effect.
[quote=“Fniff, post:14, topic:2703”]Sorry, I was thinking more STALKERish anomalies, which means more instadeath that can only be detected through visual changes. Bad example.
@Glyph: I heard about those plans, but I’d like it if you found occasional parts of the map like that without a portal terraforming the whole thing. Just small areas.[/quote]
Current anomalies can be serious health hazards, but artifacts are nifty. (Even if they’re generally less-than-useful, in my experience…they’re still nifty.)
Tricky-to-detect instadeath(well, any instadeath, actually) tends to discourage exploration & experimentation…or at least, not without backing up the save file first. I’d as soon not have stuff that just gets in the way. Oppose.
