beyondwudge's Recent Posts

I have been pondering the pathfinding issue for a while.

The simplest thought I've had, which also fits with the aesthetics of a city-builder, is to make rovers only travel over roads, bridges or other surfaces specifically designed for transporting them. The data structures involved would be much smaller and simpler. Most of the time a path would be created from long line segments, joined together at the intersection points, removing the need to explicitly check many of the inbetween nodes. Even complicated networks of roads (like an American city grid) or multilane highways would still be much simpler to work with, relatively speaking, than the MC1 pathfinding map. The most time expensive action that might result would be from merging two complicated networks into a single network, assuming that you don't use a cheat to just jump the solver from one data structure to another.

From a game experience perspective, I think players could accept that cars need roads to travel on and that the performance increases justify a minor loss in freedom. From the games I've played, it was rare that it _mattered_ that I could send my rovers where I wanted to send them and if I really want to create a car park, I can under the new system just lay out a decent sized square of road to leave my vehicles. In fact, you could even create a "car park" tile for players that want to do this.

However, being mindful that this is "My" Colony and its important to respect how players feel, the above suggestion involving hover rovers or hover drones could also be implemented, perhaps with some gameplay difference from the road bound rovers (like they aren't as good for intense resource gathering), to let a player feel some sense of immersion, especially in the early game, before their city really gets going.

If I was the include my preference on the gameplay difference, I'd love the idea that my construction rovers/drones could fly around the map and my mining rovers were road bound. It makes sense to me that I'd be free to build where I want but needed to create paths between my city, my mining buildings and my mineable resources.
3y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOhE_Iw21rA

Haha makes me want to get Mario 64 out again. I remember that star. That level is a good one.
4y ago
I tried the game out on Steam as well. Zoolarg, local game, population resetting after payroll if the count is 100 or more.
4y ago
Happens when the payroll window appears. I can see the colonist count has reset prior to paying.
4y ago
I did a little test. It seems my population resets only when I have 100 or more colonists. 99 or less is fine.

I also tried with 100 colonists but only 99 housing. Still reset. It's linked to the actual colonist count.
4y ago
A quick update. I had a second city started before I got the bug. I built it up to 31 pops with a residential complex and checked for the bug. It hasn't triggered for the new city yet.

It still triggers for my original city though, even after multiple normal payrolls for the new city.
4y ago
I had a bot mining problem tonight. I have about 37 regolith miners grouped together in a single stack. I couldn't seem to mine enough regolith to feed my usage. After ungrouping them into 37 individual rovers I suddenly had no problem feeding my usage (as in, I built a stockpile of thousands in a matter of seconds). If I can reproduce the issue I'll write up how.

Right now I have the population reset bug which is a bit more pressing to deal with.
4y ago
Hi,

I am having the same payroll population reset bug.

I'm on Android, I just updated and started a new game an hour ago. I first experienced the bug after building my first residential complex. However, my brother updated and started a new game at the same time, using the same race (LIS), same map (asteroid), same basic strategy, same platform (android), same tablet (Samsung S6), both local games without cloud sync. He isn't getting the bug.

I've tried building a lot of utilities including medical and it hasn't made a difference. I checked the population statistics, the lost individuals don't get counted as 'dead.'
4y ago
Unfortunately, due to consuming an amount of 'valuable rum', a certain detail in this discussion is unclear.

Would adopting a database necessitate using the cloud?

I very much appreciate being able to play offline and by that, I mean, completely and totally without internet. I have a partial IT background so I understand how useful the structure you propose can be. However, how compact could such an implementation be and could a modern RDBMS be used on a tablet?

I understand that my needs might be very different to most other people's needs, but on a recent holiday the internet was patchy at best (I'm in Australia) and playing offline was a lifesaver.
4y ago
I'm from Australia. Scotch is quite affordable, once you scale for the expensiveness of everything.

However, most games aren't affordable. They are a lot of money for, usually, a enforced waste of time followed by a massive letdown.

There was a puzzle game on the PS4. It supposedly was about surviving on mars. It advertised an interesting story told without words. Like many games these days the first few levels seemed interesting. However, by the mid-point the logic of the mechanics had broken down in relation to the setting of the story. I hoped the story would be worth it. After completing all the secrets, I was treated to what I considered a massive "troll" where a bunch of nonsense was depicted on the screen in lieu of "art".

Being someone who thinks Shakespeare and the Berlin Philharmoniker is a reasonable way to spend one's afternoon, but also grew up playing video games, I was sincerely unimpressed. If the PS4 offered a way to remove a game purchase permanently like with Steam, I would get rid of said puzzle game simply to reflect my disdain for being lied to.

I don't mind when a game is silly and is honest about it. Like anyone else, the absurdity of life isn't lost on me. The Forest Rover is a perfectly sensible notion, in the context of a futuristic space colony where you build a motel for space tourists. A found that quite a laugh. But I dislike it when I'm told that I'm buying one thing and I end up receiving another.
4y ago

beyondwudge

Member
Member Since
December 4th, 2019
Welcome
Ape Apps, LLC is an independent software development company founded in 2010 by Brandon Stecklein. Over the years, Ape Apps has published over 400 apps and games across various platforms. You can get in touch with Brandon on Twitter or by leaving a post on his wall @bastecklein
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