I think there is some merit in the idea of either some kind of item that can track the nearest undiscovered anomalies, or terminals in a lab that reveal any anomalies within a certain distance(say, 25 tiles). this would provide more benefit to a high computer skill level, and make it so that it’s not just sheer dumb luck to stumble across an anomaly.
Sorry to kind of lose focus on the original post, but with anomaly, you mean…?
a portal with nethercrap spewing from it, Marloss, an artifact location, etc. locations not natural to our world
Most of those are randomly rolled when the map tile containing 'em enters the reality bubble, so that’d need a mapgen rework. Sorry.
how far does that reality bubble extend?
Roughly a 60-tile radius: just past the farthest you can see on a Sunny day and/or everything that’s visible on the minimap.
Additionally lore wise pretty much all of these occurred post cataclysm. It’s extremely unlikely you’d find anything that had them marked down anywhere, except for maybe on some sort of survivor-made map.
One thing we could do would be to mark them on your overmap once you’ve come in range of them.
Maybe make some anomalies emit spooky radio signals? Would make the currently useless radios a bit less useless.
Spooky radio signals sounds very nice, at least for portals and artifact locations. And that can’t be too hard code-wise, right?
works for me. I don’t really care what the method is, I’m just tired of having an artifact sitting only 3 or 4 map tiles from my base, but I jut keep missing it because I have no idea it’s there
Maybe it could even be something as simple as , once an anomaly or artifact appears in your reality bubble, you get different messages as you get closer to it?
*you feel that something isn’t right.
*you feel your skin begin to prickle.
*you begin to feel a tickling in the back of your brain.
*you start to wonder if this is a good idea.
*It’s not too late ya know, you can still run away.
*etc.etc.
Same here, some kind of anomaly detector that bleeps or whatever once it enters the reality bubble would be great.
[quote=“CosmicKobal, post:11, topic:9072”]works for me. I don’t really care what the method is, I’m just tired of having an artifact sitting only 3 or 4 map tiles from my base, but I jut keep missing it because I have no idea it’s there
Maybe it could even be something as simple as , once an anomaly or artifact appears in your reality bubble, you get different messages as you get closer to it?
*you feel that something isn’t right.
*you feel your skin begin to prickle.
*you begin to feel a tickling in the back of your brain.
*you start to wonder if this is a good idea.
*It’s not too late ya know, you can still run away.
*etc.etc.[/quote]
Hmm, reminds me of Schizophrenia and its messages. Fun but would likely be a perennial source of not-a-bug reports. :-/
[quote=“KA101, post:13, topic:9072”][quote=“CosmicKobal, post:11, topic:9072”]works for me. I don’t really care what the method is, I’m just tired of having an artifact sitting only 3 or 4 map tiles from my base, but I jut keep missing it because I have no idea it’s there
Maybe it could even be something as simple as , once an anomaly or artifact appears in your reality bubble, you get different messages as you get closer to it?
*you feel that something isn’t right.
*you feel your skin begin to prickle.
*you begin to feel a tickling in the back of your brain.
*you start to wonder if this is a good idea.
*It’s not too late ya know, you can still run away.
*etc.etc.[/quote]
Hmm, reminds me of Schizophrenia and its messages. Fun but would likely be a perennial source of not-a-bug reports. :-/[/quote]
Although these aren’t very different from the ones above, perhaps the messages could be more directed towards the area you are in, so you know it is something about the current map tile, and not necessarilly a problem with your character.
Such as:
*This place just doesn’t feel right.
*You look to the West(whichever direction) and envision mystical place, filled with secrets more ancient than mankind.
*As you move closer you begin to be filled with dread and terror (Morale penalty?)
*You find yourself walking (direction to anomaly) and enter a clearing in the forest, you see a odd pedestal/ shimmering portal/etc. You wake up and find you were dreaming, but feel as if you must now go to this place. (Perhaps reveal the map tiles leading to it).
This would at least make it so people don’t think that there character is insane for some reason, and that something else is happening.
I like this one. Special locations giving a morale penalty to discourage visiting would be cool.
We’ve been pretty firm on the character not having fears, etc separate from the player. Portals, etc specifically making folks queasy is borderline and I’d suggest that it focus on something being Wrong/unearthly/unreal/etc rather than tell you that you’re afraid.
Create fear, don’t just dictate it.
[quote=“KA101, post:16, topic:9072”]We’ve been pretty firm on the character not having fears, etc separate from the player. Portals, etc specifically making folks queasy is borderline and I’d suggest that it focus on something being Wrong/unearthly/unreal/etc rather than tell you that you’re afraid.
Create fear, don’t just dictate it.[/quote]
soooo, ‘you SHOULD be afraid’, not ‘you ARE afraid’?
[quote=“CosmicKobal, post:17, topic:9072”][quote=“KA101, post:16, topic:9072”]We’ve been pretty firm on the character not having fears, etc separate from the player. Portals, etc specifically making folks queasy is borderline and I’d suggest that it focus on something being Wrong/unearthly/unreal/etc rather than tell you that you’re afraid.
Create fear, don’t just dictate it.[/quote]
soooo, ‘you SHOULD be afraid’, not ‘you ARE afraid’?[/quote]
“Hmm, did that tree move? It looks a little shifty…”
“The grass ripples to the $ANOMALY_DIRECTION but there’s no wind…”
Just report the situation and let people worry.
[quote=“KA101, post:16, topic:9072”]We’ve been pretty firm on the character not having fears, etc separate from the player. Portals, etc specifically making folks queasy is borderline and I’d suggest that it focus on something being Wrong/unearthly/unreal/etc rather than tell you that you’re afraid.
Create fear, don’t just dictate it.[/quote]
That is a good point, let the players choose how to interpret the situation, rather than be told by the game that is how they feel. But, I suppose that these could still be used, just in the way that you suggested, saying they are strange or unearthly.
I may not have the lore completely correct in this case. But, doesn’t it mention that certain portals drastically change the landscape, and possibly cause bizarre or dangerous weather? Perhaps other anomolies could had similar, yet less drastic effects on an area. Such as the strange aura previously mentioned, or maybe animals behaving differently. Things along the lines of that, which would allow you to know that something strange is afoot.
But again, this’ll only work in reality bubble range unless the anomaly has been generated already.
How hard would it be to modify the map generator so that it does “pre-generation” at a much larger range than full generation, just determining tile types and/or flagging it as “put funky stuff here when you get around to it”? So whenever you use an "anomaly detector/map/whatever’, it does a random roll, and if it comes up positively it looks for an ungenerated space within some given limit of the character’s position and flips the “put anomaly here” flag on that tile, and then if/when the tile is actually visited/generated, the generator will work out the specifics. Or these flags could be set everywhere within sixty map-screen tiles of the player and the “detector” only reads them.
Come to think of it, having a “force this map tile to ___ when you generate it” system would also fix the whole “reading maps hangs the game for a minute” issue as well.