°° AMAZONAS (beta jungle) °° Bugs and suggestions

News, discussions and gossip around WOK SPECIES.

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Hamster
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Post by Hamster » Wed Mar 24, 2004 10:28 am

Just a small grammar correction request:

You buy 1 skill point. Your species now has ** skill points.
It should say have.

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gm_al
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Post by gm_al » Wed Mar 24, 2004 10:34 am

Err... no. Its ONE species with MANY specimens in it. :wink:

(Beware, we call the grammar chasers "nitpickers" in our community ! I am one too, so I need to know....) 8)

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Post by ThinKing » Wed Mar 24, 2004 10:34 am

Hamster wrote:Just a small grammar correction request:

You buy 1 skill point. Your species now has ** skill points.
It should say have.

I wondered who would be the first to say that. So the booby prize goes to hamster! :wink:

The current word, "has", is correct. This is because species is a singular noun.

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Post by Hamster » Wed Mar 24, 2004 11:38 am

Gone wrote:The current word, "has", is correct. This is because species is a singular noun.
Species is both singular and plural. Check any grammar for plural. There are places where you can find species as "nouns that are traditionally plural, but are also used for singular forms".

But, mea culpa, has is correct.

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Post by Hamster » Wed Mar 24, 2004 3:48 pm

Another sugestion

In the Submit Orders part we have a row for "Repeat action". Instead of 4 radio inputs why don't put a select with X values (1 - X, where X = <empty places in the Order Queue> div <turns for current order>), or even better a text input where we can put whatever number we want as the repetition count?
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Post by Lowebb » Wed Mar 24, 2004 3:59 pm

A Few nice touches.

(I have said this before I think) Is it that much hassle to add a 'up the QC' and 'Down the QC' so orders can be moved when conditions change

andddddddd

It would be good to have a column on the left of the QC indicating what turn each order will start.

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Post by gm_al » Wed Mar 24, 2004 4:04 pm

The upgrade for the OQ is on the list, we just have our hands full atm as you can imagine....

Now when it xomes to repeating orders Id still stick to the radiobuttons, maybe make it "1x 2x 3x 5x 10x" - Players are lazy, they dont wanna type. :roll:

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Post by korexus » Wed Mar 24, 2004 4:33 pm

Order number will come. Turn number will not. For one simple reason. You won't always know how many turns an order will take!! If I try to move East twice but don't know what the terrain 2 to the east of me is, I would be able to work it out by looking at the change in the order queue length. Or at least narrow it down. That is why movement orders show as 1/?? when you add them to the queue.


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Post by Donut » Wed Mar 24, 2004 5:36 pm

Watch out everyone, I got an idea...

So I'm half sleeping through my Dynamics of Systems class when I get this crazy (But I think good) idea. What if each species had the ability to create a den/burrow/shelter. In nature, most species burrow, make a den, live in a cave and whatever. I think it would be nice for each species to have it's own shelter of some sort. I think it could be done several ways in this game.
  • 1. It could be a skill. Pay so many skill points for it.
    2. It could be something that is already in the square you are in and it could be sent in as an order. It could go in the "Buy" section and there could be a command like "Fortify Shelter." Each turn with this command could add points to the shelter.
    3. It could be a mutation. Not sure how this would work but at some point most species "Learn" that a shelter is necessary.
Ok, that's how the shelter would be built. Now, how would the shelter work? Here's a couple of ideas.
  • 1. Shelters are hidden from other players. Only through spying can a player find another's Shelter. When a player finds anothers shelter, they will instinctively know where it is.
    2. When a player finds anothers shelter, they can attack it. The shelter would stand until it's life is diminished. This life can be set as if they buy it using option 1 or 3 above, or depending on how much the player fortifys it using option 2.
    3. If a player(Predator) hunts another player (Prey) in a square where the prey has a shelter, the predators gains/preys losses are diminished, depending on how smart the prey is to get back to the shelter(Instinct).
Obviousely there is more thinking to do for this but I think it would be a good addition to the game. But, as I said, I was half asleep in a very boring, but apparently important class.

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Post by gm_al » Wed Mar 24, 2004 5:45 pm

I kinda like the overall idea.

Two things bugger me about it though:
* its a defensive measure purely - and every bonus you give to defenders slows up the game or makes it less interesting for players
* when placing my shelter I would mostly try to stay around it, not looking to move if I dont need to

Ive taken note of the idea, and maybe we will be able to implement it in one way or another. Lets try to get a good balance first, and we also have a few new skills in the pipeline we will throw for you.

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Post by Donut » Wed Mar 24, 2004 7:10 pm

Obviously I'm gonna defend my idea :P

First, you make a good point, the shelter does seem to be purely defensive. I agree that this isn't a good idea. Maybe there could be bonuses for fertility (Can't make baby's if your off wondering the wilderness). I'm not sure on how to make this better, but I'm sure someone can come up with a bonus aside from the defense it provides.

Second, I think that in the beginning parts of the game most people will try to stick to their home as it is. Until you get legs it isn't really feasible to start moving around a whole lot. So... providing shelter in your home would be beneficial to speeding up the game because we won't have to worry about some stoopid spiders coming along and gobbeling(SP?) you up. Also, I know I wrote that each players starts with a shelter but I think I would rather that you can build one, which means that you can build one whenever and whereever you please. This will however create "Bases" but I think that many players would much rather that their species Hibernate while they themselves sleep, that way that don't get eaten by the afore mentioned spiders.

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Post by Saladin » Wed Mar 24, 2004 7:51 pm

I like Donut's idea.

Though instead of a shelter it could be a skill...burrowing. :)

A player could buy the burrowing skill and if he has it he could burrow in to the ground, which would take X number of turns to do.

When a player is burrowed:

1. He can't attack or hunt. You could also make it so that he can't do anything except his default order.

2. His defense gets much stronger so it's much harder to kill him.

3. His stealth' increases, which could for instance mean that a player will have to spy a square in order to see if somebody is there who has burrowed himself a little hole in the ground. :)

4. If a player wants to do any other others he would first have to 'unburrow' which would take 1 turn.

What do you think Al?
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Post by Underdog » Wed Mar 24, 2004 8:59 pm

Not to change the sunject but are we stuck again?
either this computer doesn' like me, or turn 287, which should have run about 13 minutes ago, didn't run.
Did we stop this game? or is it just this darn computer that doesn't want to refresh right.
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Post by yngvarr » Wed Mar 24, 2004 9:48 pm

I noticed that, too. It seems that app has been stopped and guys are preparing server for Outback. Or something along these lines.

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Post by yngvarr » Wed Mar 24, 2004 10:13 pm

Nope. It works.

To this one:
gm_al wrote:(let me add that Hamster is one of the Siemens dev guys that will do the mobile version of Species. I suspect "Yngvarr" is the other one ?)
Darn. My carefully planned disguise just vanished. :D

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Post by gm_al » Wed Mar 24, 2004 10:48 pm

Rune had stopped the cron-job to prepare for OUTBACK.

I can manually trigger to run a turn (did that), so it should act as kind of "re-start" to keep on running new turns (if timer on bottom points to the future).

@Yngvarr: your email in the database (.hr) uncovered your disguise 8)

We have a slightly new hiscore formula and a slightly different attack handling when you are against another player. More typos fixed. Rune broke down then, give him a few hours of rest now.... :twisted:

19 species in OUTBACK....

PS: species ID# cannot be changed. Its "unique" and continuous, so we will soon see species #1402 etc.
Last edited by gm_al on Wed Mar 24, 2004 10:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by yngvarr » Wed Mar 24, 2004 10:49 pm

One idea:

Have you ever thought about each player starting as same simple creature (like amoeba, but not necessarily that simple) that in course of time develops in some of the exact species. In what it develops is influenced by different factors like terrain/environment, user actions, random mutations, etc. but in what it will develop actually player doesn't know in the beginning and can't choose directly. That initial development should be fast, not longer than day or two. User could have some additional actions to do while waiting for transformation, which can influence outcome. From that point it can go as it is now. This will put players into equal position in the begining and will give each one enough time to decide which tactic to use and to try to prepare themselves for whatever might come.

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Post by gm_al » Wed Mar 24, 2004 10:52 pm

Glad we work for the same company, Yng ! :P

Brilliant idea, give me some time to ponder it out... come in chat, will you ? We talk about lots of ideas there.


PS: AMAZONAS didnt restart. I wont push turns manually, you gotta wait until Rune wakes up again, sorry. :cry:

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Post by Saladin » Wed Mar 24, 2004 11:07 pm

KICK!
Saladin wrote:I like Donut's idea.

Though instead of a shelter it could be a skill...burrowing. :)

A player could buy the burrowing skill and if he has it he could burrow in to the ground, which would take X number of turns to do.

When a player is burrowed:

1. He can't attack or hunt. You could also make it so that he can't do anything except his default order.

2. His defense gets much stronger so it's much harder to kill him.

3. His stealth' increases, which could for instance mean that a player will have to spy a square in order to see if somebody is there who has burrowed himself a little hole in the ground. :)

4. If a player wants to do any other others he would first have to 'unburrow' which would take 1 turn.

What do you think Al?
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Post by korexus » Thu Mar 25, 2004 12:12 am

Al, if I point out that Donut's idea of a "burrow skill" is all but identical to your idea of a "hide reaction" will you like it?

It would need a bit of balancing, but something along these lines could be the thing we've been looking for so that species don't die out when their players go to sleep...

As for amoeba, you start out with no legs, no arms, a tiny body and virtually no brain. What exactly did you think you were? :P


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