Useful computers

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

I have a deathrig with every utility imaginable. Welding rigs, chemical labs, minifridges, generators, etc.

So why is it that the ONLY things in this universe that can play games are handheld consoles and game watches?

Why not just salvage and rebuild computers?

Here’s the idea - you can find discs scattered around the world of Cataclysm. Some will contain info, some will be empty or broken, and others will contain games.

We already have playable games such as Snake, so it’s a matter of reusing them. A randomly generated table of subtitles such as “Super”, “DRM-Protected”, or just typical numbers (Ex: Snake 4: Electric Boogaloo) will be applied to game cartridges and will mix up the buffs you get from them. DRM-Protected will remove all fun from your game since it’s always online and you’ll need to be a computer whiz to play it, Super might affect the fun, etc.

Game scores will be randomly generated and applied, which is literally just going to be a number from 1 to 10.

Computer frames can be built from scrap, plastic, or found/salvaged. This will act like any other car furniture, and it will have an internal storage.

It will not be extremely complicated - there’s no PCI ports, no wiring, etc, because that would be absolutely ridiculous. Instead, it would work as a chest.

The internal storage isn’t a typical chest, it is what is in your computer. Removing items with the category of disk will require no expertise, but adding items with the category of computer part will require some skill in computers depending on how much shit you already have in there (ex: installing three graphics cards)

Since the interwebs are down, you’re going to have to rely on physical media. These can be recovered from labs and search engine database buildings, houses, etc. The more sensitive/important the info is, the more powerful of a computer it’ll take to run it.

It provides fun and knowledge, and with a good vehicle setup it’ll run forever. It sounds pretty overpowered, which brings me to how it could be balanced.

It requires two things - ventilation and electricity. If you don’t stick enough fans there to run your 4 GPU monstrosity, your computer will melt. If you don’t supply enough electricity for your monstrosity, it will, well, you know.

The more budget your build is, the less electricity and ventilation it needs. Therefore, if you want to hook one up to your looter scooter for on-the-fly data access, you might want to rethink the 8-core Haswell.

Most of the systems I’ve described rely on one thing - the components. This means that the necessary Computer Skill, electricity, ventilation, etc needed will be based solely on the stats of the components. This way it’ll be much easier to program in - just have a single function that you pass the component values to and you’re set.

2

i’ll bite.

you seem to want a whole computer building system just to add another way obtain recipes plus gaming.
Considering that this functionality already exists, a whole system seems way too complicated, because it adds almost nothing new to gameplay.

I can argue for a ‘computer rig’ vehicle component, that will be combining the functions of PDA & game watch, and be upgradable with software to function also as a stronger control laptop (maybe also required for future in-vehicle automations?), but no pc-building mechanism…

unless… we get features that really require a strong pc.
Ideas on that: Weather forecast, CAD for larger projects (or to lower skill requirements), advanced vehicle functions like turret IFF, decrypting and hacking into military grade equipment… hmmm

3

[quote=“jcd, post:2, topic:11338”]i’ll bite.

you seem to want a whole computer building system just to add another way obtain recipes plus gaming.
Considering that this functionality already exists, a whole system seems way too complicated, because it adds almost nothing new to gameplay.

I can argue for a ‘computer rig’ vehicle component, that will be combining the functions of PDA & game watch, and be upgradable with software to function also as a stronger control laptop (maybe also required for future in-vehicle automations?), but no pc-building mechanism…

unless… we get features that really require a strong pc.
Ideas on that: Weather forecast, CAD for larger projects (or to lower skill requirements), advanced vehicle functions like turret IFF, decrypting and hacking into military grade equipment… hmmm[/quote]

It will not add anything to gameplay if we don’t actually make it add to the gameplay. This idea will allow for a computer framework, and would be a stable foundation for things like hacking and weather forecasts. Hell, maybe you could even control bots.

The PC building mechanism would be simplified - you have part, you have skill to add part, you add part. Part adds more electricity and heat, heat is removed by other part.

4

Nobody wants information in general about the game world story? Maybe a few people in the game world should have a good idea of what really happened.

Would be amusing though to fire up an in game PC and find Pong able to be played on it by the player :slight_smile:

5

We’d need some people in the real world who have some idea of what happened first. :stuck_out_tongue:

6

This feature is already in the game. If you press windows+D (Windows) or F11 (OS X) while you have a laptop in your inventory or are standing next to a functional console, it opens a fully functional computer that can even play CataclysmDDA.

:stuck_out_tongue:

7

But will there be a game in CDDA in which the character plays a character that plays a post-apocalyptic game? Or are we not deep enough yet.
Edit: Also, what makes me think I’m not being played right now?

8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbBX6aEzEz8

9

What’s with all of the sarcastic replies? There’s already playable minigames in Cataclysm for the in-game Gameboy, so just port 'em over to the in-game computer.

It would make the computer skill more useful, it would add a morale boost, and it would be able to process information.

I’m not saying I want an entire OS in Cataclysm, that’s far from what I want. I just want in-game computers to be useful and not pieces of decoration.

10

Calm down man, just joking around :slight_smile:

I like the idea but sadly I think it’s something that would be added a while from now. After they implement everything of course.

11

[quote=“Artyom177, post:10, topic:11338”]Calm down man, just joking around :slight_smile:

I like the idea but sadly I think it’s something that would be added a while from now. After they implement everything of course.[/quote]

Apologies for my tone, I wasn’t sure if it was an IGN-forums-esque circlejerk of snide remarks or just a few people joking around.

I’m fine with waiting, and at worse I’ll just attempt to mod it in.

12

I like it, and I’ll see what I can do as part of my “make an endgame” mod attempt. It’s a fine idea, at any rate.

13

In this forum we like to joke around. Don’t take everything we say to heart :smiley:

If we could make the computers connect with each other like how Fallout 4 does it’s whole base building. That would defiantly be awesome and something that I would LOVE to see in Cataclysm.

14

If you create an electronic item and assigned it all the flags maybe it would work. I guess the control laptop and Ink tablet would conflict…

15

Oncevsomeone gets around to implementing the, “powered furniture” feature that keeps being requested, this would be fairly trivial, as far as making a stationary version of a laptop at least.
To extend the concept further than that it would need some in game benefits that you can’t get with a laptop or otherwise standard system.
I can’t immediately come up with anything that qualifies for a single survivor, and if it’s used in the context of npc settlements I’d rather it stay abstract.

16

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:15, topic:11338”]Oncevsomeone gets around to implementing the, “powered furniture” feature that keeps being requested, this would be fairly trivial, as far as making a stationary version of a laptop at least.
To extend the concept further than that it would need some in game benefits that you can’t get with a laptop or otherwise standard system.
I can’t immediately come up with anything that qualifies for a single survivor, and if it’s used in the context of npc settlements I’d rather it stay abstract.[/quote]

Moar power! Each part would have a power rating.

Data and games would need a higher power rating the better they are, ex: a super fun game or a huge research database.

There are two ratings: GPU and CPU. If you’re running a craptop with a low gHZ dual core processor, it won’t be able to run advanced simulations that you stole from a lab which contain recipes to powerful/useful high-tech items. In exchange, it’ll also have a longer battery lifespan, less heat, and less electricity used. Also, games and ebooks.

Various programs will be scattered around the world - radio, hacking, medical examinations, etc. The better the software is, the more powerful the computer will have to be.

Once you have a beastly rig with 8 GPU’s and 6 8-core Haswells with 3TB SSD’s, data and games would seem like a trivial task to you. In which case, you’ll be able to modify it to complete tasks. Automatic fire extinguishing (provided there’s adequate water), repairs, alarms, etc. To do these you’ll need specially made software you “borrow” from labs, making labs even more valuable.

Software installation will depend on two things - available computer space (larger programs are usually better), and your computer skill. If you’re a computer illiterate redneck, you might break your computer by trying to install Snake. If you “borrow” advanced software from a lab, you’re going to have to be a computer whiz to break the encryption and successfully install it.

Oh, and low quality software will cause computer issues, requiring you to figure out how to fix it or getting better software.

17

I think upgrading/changing parts in computers would be pure fluff. It doesn’t seem like it would serve enough gameplay purpose to be worthwhile. However, having the ability to set up a static computer to do various things (would have to be greatly expanded from what we have now) would be useful. One of my pie in the sky ideas that I haven’t been able to deliver on so far would be to create custom options for computers that are compositions of a variety of actions, so that people can add custom computers to json mapgen. Something that I think could be extended to what you’re saying might be to have those actions available to the user to program computers that they build. These actions could be tied to the player’s computer skill level, so that they can be used to train, and that higher level computer skill allows more advanced or more useful actions.

So here’s an example of something that it could be used for:

  1. Install a static computer, either by laptop computer or assembling a collection of parts
  2. Install a set of spotlights around the base
  3. Program the computer so that it turns the spotlights on at dusk and off at dawn

I would imagine that it would only require wiring to officially connect from power to the computer and the lights, and the connections from the computers to the lights could be abstracted away or require n units of cable when settings up the connection in the computer.

More advanced recipes could involve electronics and fabrication to create things like motion sensor and pressure plate switches, and could trigger things like locking and unlocking doors, simple automated crafting (with other equipment), or triggering alarms.

18

[quote=“vache, post:17, topic:11338”]I think upgrading/changing parts in computers would be pure fluff. It doesn’t seem like it would serve enough gameplay purpose to be worthwhile. However, having the ability to set up a static computer to do various things (would have to be greatly expanded from what we have now) would be useful. One of my pie in the sky ideas that I haven’t been able to deliver on so far would be to create custom options for computers that are compositions of a variety of actions, so that people can add custom computers to json mapgen. Something that I think could be extended to what you’re saying might be to have those actions available to the user to program computers that they build. These actions could be tied to the player’s computer skill level, so that they can be used to train, and that higher level computer skill allows more advanced or more useful actions.

So here’s an example of something that it could be used for:

  1. Install a static computer, either by laptop computer or assembling a collection of parts
  2. Install a set of spotlights around the base
  3. Program the computer so that it turns the spotlights on at dusk and off at dawn

I would imagine that it would only require wiring to officially connect from power to the computer and the lights, and the connections from the computers to the lights could be abstracted away or require n units of cable when settings up the connection in the computer.

More advanced recipes could involve electronics and fabrication to create things like motion sensor and pressure plate switches, and could trigger things like locking and unlocking doors, simple automated crafting (with other equipment), or triggering alarms.[/quote]

I like your idea, but my problem is being able to find some laptop in a dumpster and using it to run complex simulations, comms, and base utilities seems a bit silly.

19

That’s where the computer skill comes in, all of that is player created based on their programming skill. It could be that the controllable items require wireless sensors to be toggled. There’s nothing really too advanced going on there that a consumer grade laptop couldn’t handle.

20

I’m not sure where you’re getting “complex simulations”, that’s not going to be feasible anyway, that sort of thing is going to take months to write for a single coder, and there’s not a payoff in the entire game that would make that level of investment worthwhile.
Communication and automation though, those you can easily run from whatever working computers you stumble across.