Fyi: design doc updates

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Hi folks, I am in the midst of some sweeping updates to the design doc and affiliated pages. This is stuff I think many contributors may enjoy flipping through, and that contributors and devs can use as a resource to help answer questions about why we do things the way we do.

Design stuff

On the game design end, I’m expanding a balance document Kevin started, discussing general game balance and design principles that guide our decision making. As you’ll see, many of these describe what we want rather than what is already in the game. I hope it will help clarify some of the process we go through in continuing to improve and fix stuff.

Lore stuff

If you’re not a contributor I would really prefer you not open this Pandora’s box! This is stuff we work hard to keep in an emergent story, and presenting it like this kinda ruins it in my opinion. Many things in here will never be presented directly to the player.

That said, anyone interested in lore contributions may be interested in the factions page I am working on. There is still a lot to do here but I hope when done it will give some clear direction ideas to what the factions should think about each other and what possibilities there are for missions, trade, interaction, etc. I may branch from here into some more gritty information about specific story concepts, but that will be for later.

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Design doc:

  • Locations: Swamps are not mentioned currently. They’re current turning into extremely dangerous places.
  • Major Factions could be renamed as Major Human Factions, as it seems the Exodii would be a major faction.
  • Extradimensional and Alien Forces: Triffids should probably end with “, except for the Exodii”.
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Is there a github-like place to contribute to that? I’d be interested in that because there are a few things, mainly more screenshots and typo fixes and all that, the website may benefit from.

The design document talks about hills, which were apparently never implemented, but I heard some whispers about plans to support “attributes” for tiles, including height, so maybe there is still some hope? But anyways, this is in the potential far future. Caves also already exist but are not exclusive to any biome afaik.

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You can submit PRs to the gh-pages branch to suggest changes yes.

The design doc is a place for us to write out what we want the game to look and play like, unhindered by what it currently is, so it makes a lot of reference to stuff that isn’t in game currently as if it was.