Worlds collide

[system]

Ok thanks for telling me.

[GlyphGryph]

Note that it’s specifically actionless psionics I’m against.

Telepathy that is actually “these monsters have an organ that can generate and receive electromagnetic signals (or you mutating the same organ) which allows detection of other such organisms and basic communication through manipulation of these broadcast signals” is okay with me. It can even get a lot weirder than that. But it should at least be explainable with some sort of psuedo-science if not real science, and each instance should be limited in scope and explainable on it’s own without conflicting with anything else. Because an action means we can do interesting stuff like provide the player a way to create a device that can track and intercept these “psychic” powers.

The problem with psionics is that there’s nothing you can do with classic “psionics” psionics that can’t be done better and work more effectively at enhancing the games thematics by replacing it with something that has a legitimate cause-of-action. For ESP, we have a variety of actionful ways to expand the characters sensory range - for most of the energy-based psychic powers, we have plenty of ways to pseudomagically shoot lightning and fire.

If you want to create some extradimensional based psuedoscience reason for something psychic-like, fine, but ensure that it has an actionable element, like all the psionic analogues we have already - if we can avoid taking cheap shortcuts, we should, and if we can’t, we should avoid going there altogether. The key is that we don’t want to make normal “humans” special magical beasts or ascribe some magical power to their soul, which is what most psionics is about doing.

[kilozombie]

I really, really hate this suggestion. Just… all/most of the portals have shut, most nether creatures can’t survive in our plane for more than a few seconds (lore!!!) and it just… doesn’t seem well thought out to me. Those time scales are RIDICULOUS! And how do you expect things to transition into their nether forms? Instantly? Gradually? What if a player’s in a house when it transforms? Or if they destroy the house, what happens?

[woflsipder]

I don’t think the regular world should turn into hell too. Instead portals should work both ways , to hell and from hell , so if you want an end game adventure just hop in a portal and have a ride to your death because nether doesnt contain oxygen and is 1000 degrees hot.

[GlyphGryph]

As Kevin mentions, though, I do want the stuff to expand over time.

kilozombie - actually, it’s different for each creature - many of them can survive at least a few hours, and indefinitely as long as they remain close to an open portal. And some of the creatures, specifically the triffids and fungaloids and the netherum (as long as they have a host) can continue to spread out and expand even without that.

I’d love to see triffids and fungaloids eventually, slowly, take over a town, turning into a fungal/animated plant controlled hellhole.

I’d also like to see the portals that remain open strengthen over time and introduce a variety of other options, but I’d like the changes to the areas they roll over to be an effect of their action rather than a weird transformationy magic thing. A portal to a dry, hot world might tear wider and wider over time, leading the surrounding areas to become barren desert-like wasteland as sand and dry heat constantly blows in from the portals winds… meanwhile, this creates violent storms all around the edge of the area.

[system]

[quote=“GlyphGryph, post:14, topic:2779”]Note that it’s specifically actionless psionics I’m against.

Telepathy that is actually “these monsters have an organ that can generate and receive electromagnetic signals (or you mutating the same organ) which allows detection of other such organisms and basic communication through manipulation of these broadcast signals” is okay with me. It can even get a lot weirder than that. But it should at least be explainable with some sort of psuedo-science if not real science, and each instance should be limited in scope and explainable on it’s own without conflicting with anything else. Because an action means we can do interesting stuff like provide the player a way to create a device that can track and intercept these “psychic” powers.

The problem with psionics is that there’s nothing you can do with classic “psionics” psionics that can’t be done better and work more effectively at enhancing the games thematics by replacing it with something that has a legitimate cause-of-action. For ESP, we have a variety of actionful ways to expand the characters sensory range - for most of the energy-based psychic powers, we have plenty of ways to pseudomagically shoot lightning and fire.

If you want to create some extradimensional based psuedoscience reason for something psychic-like, fine, but ensure that it has an actionable element, like all the psionic analogues we have already - if we can avoid taking cheap shortcuts, we should, and if we can’t, we should avoid going there altogether. The key is that we don’t want to make normal “humans” special magical beasts or ascribe some magical power to their soul, which is what most psionics is about doing.[/quote]
Ok I see, fuck it lets bioshock it Gene-splicing drugs for everyone weee.
But in all seriousness I can see where your coming from it’s a science-fiction game and I some times forget that.

[system]

Ok I figured out how to explain the humming of the generals wear these mouth pieces that amplify their humming noise to the point you take cranial and torso damage. So there’s a greater risk as you can both die or become deaf. When you kill them you butcher their corpse to get their “hum glad” which you can weaponize to create a noise trap that lures zombies to their doom.

[GlyphGryph]

Actually bioshock doesn’t bother having a method of action for many of it’s powers. I think we can do better than that. (But it’s not a bad starting place)

[system]

What about a non-sentient goo that’s contained in a jar or cartridge that you shoot on enemies to deal the damage to them. Say you attach a lighter at the muzzle of the goo launcher so it burns and sticks to enemies or you can make it acidic for a better way of quietly burning through walls.

The goo launcher itself could look like Spider-man’s web shooter only bigger and not so concealed or a gauntlet.

[Zarthull]

[quote=“ajwilli1, post:21, topic:2779”]What about a non-sentient goo that’s contained in a jar or cartridge that you shoot on enemies to deal the damage to them. Say you attach a lighter at the muzzle of the goo launcher so it burns and sticks to enemies or you can make it acidic for a better way of quietly burning through walls.

The goo launcher itself could look like Spider-man’s web shooter only bigger and not so concealed or a gauntlet.[/quote]
So thats basically a flamethrower, not much new there, though I do like acidic goo that can stick to things and melt them. Would be a cool way to get through those metal walls.

[system]

[quote=“Zarthull, post:22, topic:2779”][quote=“ajwilli1, post:21, topic:2779”]What about a non-sentient goo that’s contained in a jar or cartridge that you shoot on enemies to deal the damage to them. Say you attach a lighter at the muzzle of the goo launcher so it burns and sticks to enemies or you can make it acidic for a better way of quietly burning through walls.

The goo launcher itself could look like Spider-man’s web shooter only bigger and not so concealed or a gauntlet.[/quote]
So thats basically a flamethrower, not much new there, though I do like acidic goo that can stick to things and melt them. Would be a cool way to get through those metal walls.[/quote]

Yes but a sticky no-mess flamethrower now only 19.99! I think acid would also work well against zombs melting the corpse so you don’t have to butcher all the time, but the acid would take a while and its a silent killer.

[xLemor]

More importantly who actually gets as far as playing 3 years + of ingame time?
Theres only a few of us that actually made it thru a single year then got bored or had to restart cause of new updates causing compatibility issues in the saves.

[i2amroy]

[quote=“xLemor, post:24, topic:2779”]More importantly who actually gets as far as playing 3 years + of ingame time?
Theres only a few of us that actually made it thru a single year then got bored or had to restart cause of new updates causing compatibility issues in the saves.[/quote]
Actually surviving a year is fairly easy. Surviving without getting bored, on the other hand, is not; and will hopefully be something that is remedied as we add more end-game content.

[woflsipder]

At first i saw this game as a realistic zombie apocalypse simulator with some stuff to spice up the action and make it more fun. The portal stuff should be made really rare , not to destroy the fact that it’s a zombie apocalypse , not a demon invasion.

And all it takes to make the game 10 times harder is to reduce animal spawns to realistic amounts , or make animals static spawned and make them reproduce on their own to increase the population or if you go on nuking the forests , make their populations get destroyed.

[KA101]

Yeah, woflsipder’s onto something there: basic resource scarcity is all that’s really needed to make life much more difficult.

Under the OP framework, I don’t think anyone could make it to year 5 without extensive upgrades and extremely careful/tedious play. Without Rain or rivers, the player’s dependent on bionics and bottled water, for instance.

[system]

Well that’s what the human settlements or Edens are for they still spawn all the earth stuff so you aren’t completely screwed.

[detahramet]

Hey Glyph, if your pretty much against the inexplicable powers and such, then why are artifacts, which are for all intents and purposes, magical by human understanding, then why are they still in the game?

[GlyphGryph]

Artifacts are quite a bit different, and their inscrutability is tightly tied with their thematic role in the game - they aren’t overtly controllable, the player can’t make or seek a specific type or power out, and there’s costs.

They are different because they are intended to be inscrutable, to make the player wonder how they could be and just how different things are in this alien world that they came to be. That they are very much not of this world, and of something beyond it, they (much like the portals themselves, or how the slime makes things mutate the way it does, or where it gets so much energy, or how the necromancer and master powers work) are the kind of “magic” that actually reinforces the feel of the game - the player should be able to eventually understand the action of the things he can control, but the player should never be in control over the forces that are rending the world apart, and the fact that these forces are outside the players understanding is important - it’s not that they are magical, it’s just that they are so alien that they might as well be. The artifacts are the players opportunity to interact with the forces in a more personal way, but it’s hard to say he really controls them even if he possesses them.

[keldoclock]

I really like the idea of fungaloids and similar changing the environment, as long as it is done in a way that is still an ecosystem, just an alien one- like the poison forests in Naussica.

Stuff like giant insects, raining spores, and changed plant life could create something that is just as beautiful as it is hostile.

[GlyphGryph]

Yes, that is exactly the sort of thing I’d like to say as well. Maybe not quite AS overall peaceful as the Nausicaa forest was, but… yeah. Pulling a strong inspiration from that.