New Faction:: Any feedback or ideas appreciated [Testers Welcome!]

[faefux]

Hi, currently adding a new faction, having trouble with a few things but hopefully that should be dealt with soon. Apart from that heres the rough design for them, (sorry for the shitty formating, blame github…), would really appreciate ideas for other NPCs to interact with, new faction buildings, missions, A FACTION NAME, etc. etc. etc. Would be nice to see what other people wanted to see in a group of misfits disdainful of the old world, trying to survive the cataclysm…

faefux/Catacylsm-Faction

The base of this is about ready to go, contains a building, a faction and about half a dozen missions. Anyone out there willing to test this for me? Thanks Guys.

[mlangsdorf]

Is there any reason you’re not submitting this to the main game? You’l get more and better feedback, and this is definitely the kind of thing we definitely want to support.

Technical concerns:

• The squat chef doesn’t like US Marshals. Excellent! In addition to telling them to get out, he should maybe have a response like this:

{ "text": "Fine, I'm leaving.", "topic": "TALK_DONE", "condition": { "u_is_wearing": "badge_marshal" }

if you wanted to be really fancy, you could make it the first entry in a switch by setting "switch": true and then having the other 5 lines set to "switch": true, "default": true so they show up if the player isn’t wearing a US Marshal’s badge.

• Why do members of the Outsiders faction know the voices of every member of the Free Merchants, Old Guard, Tacoma Commune, and Wasteland Scavengers? Why do they defend members of the Tacoma Commune and Wasteland scavengers from threats, as well as sharing the Squatter’s stuff with them, etc? Faction relationships are meant to be a tool for defining faction relations, so please don’t copy them willy-nilly without any thought.
• you might want to add an NPC_INVESTIGATE_ONLY zone to warehouse_squat so the Squatter NPCs don’t go wandering off too far to investigate noises, and some "faction_owner" definitions so they can defend their belongings from the PC.

[faefux]

Thanks for the tips, didn’t know about zones until you mentioned them, it appears only one map in mainline uses them so far too, i’ve added them as well as updated the map and another NPC a little bit.

Changed the Faction stuff, too. was mostly just playing about with those things, trying to understand it. Thanks for the clarifications. I eventually intend to have it so they will all refuse to talk to you and go hostile if you turn up wearing a marshals badge and have the trait for working with the Old Guard. My only gripe with this last thing is i’m not sure how exactly they would know if you have the FED quality.

I’d be really happy to add this stuff to the main game when it’s at a good enough level, i don’t feel it is at the moment as well, we currently don’t even have a name for this new faction. The fact that github gives me a massive headache doesn’t help, either… I don’t think i want to go through the pain of trying to send a pull request.

[faefux]

Could someone please, please, please, explain to me what i need to set the overmap id’s as in ‘specials.json’!!! It doesn’t matter what i set it too, i get the ‘invalid overmap terrain id’ error and it’s driving crazy to the point i’m about to RM -RF everything in a fit of rage…

I really just want to start implementing what i’ve made and this super minor thing has been fuxking me up all day… If someone could give me examples based on what’s in the github i linked, that’d be amazing…

[TheMurderUnicorn]

The actual id of the overmap special shouldn’t throw an error unless it’s a duplicate of an existing omspecial id.

If it’s the terrain id, though, it’s probably this . . .

Make sure the terrain inside of the special has a directional tag (as in _north or _south) or it will throw an error about IDs, which is the thing people most often forget. So if you were using:

{ "point": [ 0, 0, 0 ], "overmap": "house" }

You wouldn’t actually put just ‘house’, it’d throw an error about ids. You’d put

{ "point": [ 0, 0, 0 ], "overmap": "house_north" }

You’ll need to do this for all terrain you list.

Is that your issue?

[faefux]

Uhhh, i don’t see why i would have to put a direction on the end because i havn’t used directions anywhere else, didn’t work though, just threw the same errors with the new name… I give up, it really shouldn’t be this hard to add maps. -.-

I appreciate you trying to help though, Thanks.

[TheMurderUnicorn]

It just needs to know how to orient each tile within the special, in case the mapgen was oriented differently or something.

Let’s step by step it.

You created a new location right? I’ll assume its more than 1 tile/location if you’re trying to make a map special. Okay. Those entries have an “id”, which we’ll need.

Now, you need to create an overmap terrain entry for each of those tiles. Here’s an example of one from my caches mod.

{
    "id": "cache_main",
    "type": "overmap_terrain",
    "name": "prepper cache",
    "sym": 63,
    "color": "white",
    "see_cost": 3
  }

The id has to match the id of the corresponding location entry (I always make them match, anyway). You have to do this for each tile you’ve created.

Then you create an overmap_specials entry where you tell the game how to stitch those locations into one large location as discussed above. Again, this “id” much match the id of the location, but also should have a direction tag after it.

You can see a full example of this on my github: https://github.com/TheMurderUnicorn/PrepperCache

I know there are examples in the core game, but my mod has these broken down into three files (which are smaller than the long lists in the game). C_caches has the locations. C_om_terrain has the om_terrain entries. C_om_specials has the entry where its all stitched together.

o_o That all sound very confusing? Probably. But hopefully that helps. . ?

Alternatively, you can show what you’ve been working on and maybe get some more targeted insight.

[faefux]

Alright, i’ve been looking at this too long and it’s fried my brain a bit, i’ll go have a cigarette come back to this and look in your github in half an hour or so. I dont know if it makes a difference but the map i’ve made isn’t multiple tiles, It’s in the my github i linked for reference.

faefux/Catacylsm-Faction/blob/cc3609b0b432c7d08254aecfaecfc6776c1446c0/warehouse_squat.json

I really appreciate you taking the time to help me, hopefully when i chill out a bit and come back this will do it. Thanks. x

[TheMurderUnicorn]

Ah, I think I see.

So, you’ve created a location with the “id” of “warehouse”, which is an already existing location id. This means that when the game tries to spawn a warehouse, it will choose (based on the weight) which one to spawn.

Your location does not need an overmap specials entry or an overmap terrain entry, because it’s just one tile and a warehouse already exists.

Change the weight of your entry to 500000 and load your game up. When you spawn or find a warehouse, it will be yours that spawns.

[faefux]

Sorry, i just changed it back to warehouse for testing , so i could easily spawn it. forgot to change it back before i uploaded to github, did just change it back.

[TheMurderUnicorn]

Yeah, so, I just threw together some entries, copied from the example I gave earlier. You’d obviously want to change things, I just did this for quick and easy testing.

Spawns in game, naturally (without me debugging it), without any issues.

  {
    "id": "warehouse_squat",
    "type": "overmap_terrain",
    "name": "Warehouse squat",
    "sym": 63,
    "color": "white",
    "see_cost": 3
  },
  {
    "type": "overmap_special",
    "id": "Squatter Warehouse",
    "overmaps": [ { "point": [ 0, 0, 0 ], "overmap": "warehouse_squat_north" } ],
    "locations": [ "forest" ],
    "city_distance": [ 20, -1 ],
    "city_sizes": [ 0, 12 ],
    "occurrences": [ 3, 5 ],
    "rotate": false,
    "flags": [ "CLASSIC" ]
  }

[faefux]

Welp! It works!! I think i know what i did wrong buit that irritated me enough to not question it and move on. Much appreciated, @TheMurderUnicorn !!

Is there anything specific you’d like to see within this new faction as a thank-you?

[TheMurderUnicorn]

Cannibal prostitutes wearing full body fur suits would be nice.

Mostly just what Mark said. Make some contributions. Many hands make light work.

Maybe don’t add cannibal prostitute furries, though.

[faefux]

Well, i was thinking of adding an ex-prostitute, If you wanted to name her.

Github gives me a headache so i very much doubt i’ll be adding this to mainline, gonna package as a mod though and should have an early playable version by tomorow. Am happy to let anyone else do the fiddly pull stuff if they like.

[TheMurderUnicorn]

o_o Resisting my urge to make more jokes (because I’m a grown up), I’ll assume Marge Simpson won’t fly.

Kyna is my favorite girl name, since you pressed. Do what you will.

[faefux]

Need testers if anyone wants to help with new content.

[mlangsdorf]

PRs are easy, and you get better feedback on them, but whatever.

If you don’t think people should be able to recognize a marshal by sight, then check "u_is_wearing": "badge_marshal" instead of "u_has_trait": "PROF_FED". The first checks if someone is wearing the badge, whether or not they’re a Marshal; the second checks whether someone is a Marshal, whether or not they’re wearing a badge.

As a note, the Old Guard Rep checks whether you’re a Marshal - because he would know - and everyone else checks if you’re wearing the badge.

[damalsk]

Interesting premise, really.

If I got everything right, I think that reading through the books by Lewis Mumford, John Zerzan, Jacques Ellul and Ted Kaczynski would be essential in order to gather as much as information as possible for the faction’s ideas and NPC lines in order to make them interesting. Personally I would also replay Deus Ex and take some hints on how they write their characters, etc.

Missions like “assassinate a free merchant representative” should be some mid/end-game kind of stuff, I don’t see why they would have such a hatred for these factions so early in the game or why they would risk themselves at killing someone important without a good (and developed) reason.

[faefux]

Yep. You have exactly what i’m thinking, In part, at least!! They’re not so much a homogeneous group but definitely a part of the group that will break away to a hunting camp will be Zerzan-like primitivists and i was really interested in adding a Kaczinksi-esque character living in a cabin in the woods, maybe who hadn’t even noticed the Cataclysm has happened yet. Not sure how i can implement that to this faction though, aside from a ‘Hey, i have a buddy that lives in a shack in the woods, could you go and check on him’ kind of deal.

Well, the rationale for wanting to kill off the Old Guard people is that they wish to rebuild The US State, something a large part of the group would violently oppose, as some did even in the Old World. You’re right though, survival is the priority to begin with, it should be later game. (was even thinking of making it an assassination through package-bomb, a la Ted.) I’d like the feud with the Free Merchants to develop as time goes on though, yea.

I’ve read most everything Ted K wrote and a fair bit of Zerzan, I’ll check out Mumford and Ellul, thanks for the info.

If there are any other ideas you have for anything else, please feel free to shoot them my way. I’d love for this to be a more communal effort rather than just me.

[crazykiddeath]

Blaming the Old Guard for what happened would be very reasonable to some people, those were govenment agencies (or agencies contracted by the govenment) that were performing all the wacky experiments that led to the world being in the state that it is.
On top of that I’d assume they are also at least partly responsible for the robotic forces going haywire, maybe not pushing the button pre se, but sactioning their use in the first place and presumably being the deciding factor in which company/companies it got delegated to.
It wouldn’t be unreasonable, even in the dire circumstances, for a group of people to decide “Yeah, how about no. You can’t be trusted with that level of power again” and choose to be proactive about it.