CATA-Boy 3000

Game Talk The Lab
1

So after watching E3 trailers for Fallout 4 I decided to try my hand at making a not-Pip-Boy 3000 for the aspiring Cataclysm Survivor to assemble from the plans for a wrist mounted personal computer that wound up being a novelty before the world ended. The main idea is to create a wearable item that consolidates all the miscellaneous electronics a late game character might carry around into one Volume convient (if heavy) package, like the Survivor Utility Belt does for tools.

Making it a wearable item that tells you the time, acts as an alarm clock, gives you the ambient air temperature, relative humidity and atomspheric pressure through Flags was easy enough.

But making it capable of acting as a radio, handheld game system, mp3 player that broadcasts music from a speaker on the device (like a car stereo), doubling as a PDA for vehicle tracking purposes, being a Tablet for storing all the various electronic media you collect, along with having a geiger counter and radition biomonitor… Has been significantly more difficult. I’m led to believe this is all hard coded somewhere in the depths of CDDA, I just have no idea how to go about finding and bending it to my will.

2

I believe Cool add in the option to allow an item multiple uses. To add multiple uses to an item
"use_action" : {“HOTPLATE”, "MP3_PLAYER, etc }, I’m not sure if it automatically creates a menu or not, or if i work of as for the harder-coded cases.

3

Well, that sounds incredibly handy. I’ll to see if it works as intended and if so, to what degree I can make this work with it.

4

There is one problem:
An item can’t really have two (or more) active functions at a time. On-use functions are fine, one active + many on-use is fine, but having an item that is both broadcasting music and scanning the area for radiation at once requires hardcoding.

So in this case, you would have 5 items. Let’s call the base item “smartwatch”, because it is basically a bulky smartwatch.
All items would have the following functions: play game, scan area for radiation, scan self, tablet stuff except light.
Then individual items would also have the following ones:

[ul][li]Smartwatch (off): turn on radio, turn on music, turn on constant scan, turn on flashlight[/li]
[li]Smartwatch (radio): turn off radio[/li]
[li]Smartwatch (music): turn off music[/li]
[li]Smartwatch (geiger): turn off constant scan[/li]
[li]Smartwatch (light): turn off light[/li][/ul]

So you could play games while playing music, but you couldn’t play music while shining light. Or you could have all the functions provide light, but then you couldn’t turn off the light without turning off the watch itself.

Also, all use functions would have the same cost. So playing a game would always cost just 1 battery.

5

That all makes alot of sense and I thank you for explaining it so throughly, with the individual active item layout I think I can figure out how to make it work.

[Spoiler=Brainstorming]
x1 PDA
x1 E-Ink Tablet PC
x1 mp3 Player
x1 Radio
x1 Geiger Counter
x1 radiation biomonitor
x1 Barometer
x1 Hygrometer
x1 Thermometer

It could always provide a low level of light while active, say LIGHT_2, equilvent to an atomic nightlight. So you could read with it while playing music, though not particularly well and if your actively using it to say silently scan for radition, it makes sense something would more easily see you with a faintly glowing screen on your wrist. Flashlight mode would be LIGHT_6 to let you read properly or explore if you lack a proper light source. And given the same energy cost conundrum, it makes sense to just cut the game playing aspect.[/spoiler]

6

Can’t wait for this to be added (as a mod or actually merged with the main game). I’m sure it’ll change a lot of my character’s load-out once this is implemented.

7

Love that idea so much. Tell us when you are done.

8

I feel these are all side-functions to a proposed device, aside from the RAD interchange.

Altough I am aware this is only my imagination (and not the authors), this cutting-edge gadget should really become state-of-the-art DDA-fueled device, the one which is proposedly very hard to find yet demanded for its features. At this point, a feature in the lines of ETA for infection care purposes comes in mind. Perhaps another health-care parametermight come in handy, when a mutation is triggered and the player character is becoming prone to side-effects. At last, such a bio-scanner could propose drug administration, and according to overall stats; maybe even help trigger some bionics (active : ON/OFF) in critical situations.

I’m just trying to make it sound more CataDDA-ish, thus brilliant. Don’t mind me if you just want an item from the Wasteland.

9

Having the CATA-Boy 3000 give the Self-Aware trait would be a cool feature as well, considering one of the Pip-boy effects is showing your limb status.

10

It would be nice if Self-Aware wasn’t obsoleted by an item, though.

11

It would be nice to have one item that was an all-purpose electronic gizmo. Right now, every time someone adds a new feature, they also include a related device. So we have E-ink tablets, PDAs, RC controls, vehicles remotes, cameras, control laptops, and maybe others. Having all that rolled up into one item with one interface would be nice.

But giving it all those features at the beginning of the game would make it too awesome. What about having a base item you can add mods to to increase functionality?

12

Rolling up into one interface is done by the item action menu (under %), which also allows binding keys to actions, so that you can reach a great deal of item functions with just 2 keypresses.

13

[quote=“vultures, post:8, topic:9944”]I feel these are all side-functions to a proposed device, aside from the RAD interchange.

Altough I am aware this is only my imagination (and not the authors), this cutting-edge gadget should really become state-of-the-art DDA-fueled device, the one which is proposedly very hard to find yet demanded for its features. At this point, a feature in the lines of ETA for infection care purposes comes in mind. Perhaps another health-care parametermight come in handy, when a mutation is triggered and the player character is becoming prone to side-effects. At last, such a bio-scanner could propose drug administration, and according to overall stats; maybe even help trigger some bionics (active : ON/OFF) in critical situations.

I’m just trying to make it sound more CataDDA-ish, thus brilliant. Don’t mind me if you just want an item from the Wasteland.[/quote]
My current designs have it being more of a ramshackle utility item put together by an electronically inclined survivor to better make use of their resources. But I could see a high end military or scientific version with increased functionality beyond the scope of this jury rigged knockoff. I just have no idea how one would go about designing, coding and implementing such a beast.

[quote=“Sunshine, post:11, topic:9944”]It would be nice to have one item that was an all-purpose electronic gizmo. Right now, every time someone adds a new feature, they also include a related device. So we have E-ink tablets, PDAs, RC controls, vehicles remotes, cameras, control laptops, and maybe others. Having all that rolled up into one item with one interface would be nice.

But giving it all those features at the beginning of the game would make it too awesome. What about having a base item you can add mods to to increase functionality?[/quote]
This is something I was considering at first. Starting with a bare bones base item that you could add or remove electronic modules to for increased functionality (like how the Fallout 1/2 Pipboy worked). But technical difficulties and my lack of experience working with modding CDDA have basically curb stomped it. I still plan to cram in as much functionality as I can though, so it can replace or make more practical the use of items most late game survivor’s normally wouldn’t carry around.

Also, the “CATA-Boy 3000” isn’t likely going to be its working name, I was just using it as a place holder and thread title until something more original strikes me.

14

I’m really loving this idea SOOOOO much. If the coding ever works out to where you just have the base Item and then mods to increase its functionality, then I suggest that the base Item should just be a radiation biometer/clock/hitpoint meter(self aware trait).

all other functions should be recipes found on SD cards, survivor notes or, if this is ever implemented, tinkering projects. Tinkering being just messing around with any resources within a few tiles and possibly coming up with a new recipe that you didn’t read from a book or learn the hard way.

Perhaps it should simply be as simple as activating the CATA-boy and selecting an ‘upgrade’ option and selecting the item you’d like to merge into the CATA-boy (media player, flashlight, etc).

…on a side note… HTH does this thread have over 1000 views and only 13 comments? 0.o

UPS mod should also work for the CATA-boy along with the UPS bionic.

15

If the radio is FM then the MP3 player likely does that already, unless it’s an iPod. Even cheap $5 Chinese MP3 players have an FM function and have for many years.

16

having both an MP3(with earbuds) and a speaker function would be nice. Definitely should be the electronics version of Bionics (though not as good obviously since bionics has far more requirements including electronics) Perhaps at least some of the mods requires computer skill as well. (to keep it more late game than early game ass-kicking super tool.)