Climate and Survival
mcmanusaur
REGISTERED Posts: 141
There is a range of biomes already present in TUG, but many of the game's mechanics systems (including the survival elements) have not been implemented quite yet. As with many things TUG, Minecraft is the obvious comparison, and I think that there are many ways that a survival experience can be made richer than that of Minecraft. To be more specific, Minecraft's biomes add little nuance to the otherwise barebones system that comprises the game's survival aspects, and this thread is for the discussion of how TUG can perform better in this regard.
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Someone else mentioned this possibility recently, but to summarize this would generally entail the simulation of temperature based on altitude and "latitude" (leading to bands of deserts and cold polar regions), and the simulation of precipitation based on how elevation affects wind (i.e. rain shadow). Indeed, these few simple "mechanics" explain most of our planet's climatic variance, but how would they contribute to gameplay?
Consider a scenario in which you are spawned into an unfamiliar desert; night time is approaching and your increasingly urgent survival needs dictate that you find somewhere more hospitable. How do you proceed? Do you wander around aimlessly? Or do you look to the sky for navigational help? Well, unless the biomes are placed in some meaningful pattern, the latter is futile; the best that you can do is move in a random direction, knowing that this desert biome ends eventually but without any clue of which biome you'll run into next. With realistically oriented biomes, however, this could be a much more effective strategy; to exit a band of deserts, you would have to travel perpendicular to the movement of the sun.
Once you find the in-world equivalent of Polaris (or craft a compass if this stargazing jazz isn't your thing), you would be able to reasonably predict what kind of biomes you'd run into by moving in each direction. As a tangentially related side note, in case the sky navigation thing appeals to anyone else, it would be cool if each world seed had its own unique starscape.
Back on-topic, on a broad level more nuanced biome placement would remove a bit of the randomness that accompanies the possibility of having deserts adjacent to tundra and other nonsense, and that ultimately detracts from the strategic nature of survival. In the next post, ways in which climate and geography can affect survival within biomes.
Deserts (hot and cold) and mountain ranges should represent significant obstacles to movement and should impose significant risks for survival. This can be a tricky thing to implement, however, without veering into the tedium of micromanagement (though it should be noted that what constitutes this varies from player to player), so I'm hoping we can come up with some viable ideas for such mechanics in this thread.
One thing that I consider important is that the biomes vary not only in their "natural" state (i.e. before the player has modified them in any way), but also in their potential. Minecraft's implementation of this is very minimal, but flora and fauna shouldn't be able to be effortlessly transplanted by the player between radical biomes. Allowing players to put all resources in a single biome enables extremely static behavior and ultimately de-incentivizes trade and interaction in a multiplayer setting.
Anyway, does anyone have any opinions about what survival mechanics are the minimum, and what is going too far with it to the point of tedium?
I am a big fan of the biomes as obstacles thing. It should definitely be much more difficult to survive in a desert than a nice temperate forest. Considering eating will be a thing, there should also be drinking. Taking this into account, I think if you can only carry a limited supply of food and water, than biome and seasonal dependence should be apart of this system. For instance, in a desert you need to drink more water because it's so hot, therefore if you didn't bring enough water, you're pretty screwed. With colder climates, you need to eat more to stay warm etc.
Some of these effects could be offset by clothing, so if you rug up in a cold climate, you can stay warmer, and need to eat a bit less.
Another thing that I would like to see implemented in relation to biomes is seeds adapting to there favoured biome. So Seeds who spend most of there time in a desert might be darker and need to drink less than a seed who lives in a forest.
Anyway my thoughts on the subject :P
While I do understand the exploration appeal of the infinite world, I think there is a lot of potential for exploring environmentalist themes in finite procedurally generated worlds (as long as you can tolerate slightly political undertones), and you could also make the argument that survival is more challenging in finite worlds due to resource scarcity. I think you could probably have a world that's big enough for a lot of fun exploring, but still limited to introduce sustainability concerns of how one's actions are affecting the in-game environment, which should especially add some nuance to the "endgame" (which in Minecraft is simply hoarding resources without any fears of consequence). So far in my very limited knowledge my two concerns have been regarding how sense of place is created in TUG, and whether the game will tackle any deep/profound/mature issues, so for me this is an opportunity to do both.
I think all of these are really good ideas; thanks for sharing.
This is the first thing that stands out to me. This suggestion is also tangential to the environmental concerns but I would absolutely love having to become familiar with a new starscape. Perhaps the time a seed spends studying the stars could attribute to a knowledge of the arcane, or improve the construction of optics based tools like the 3rd person cameras and surveyors equipment, better telescopes or even creating more accurate maps (which gives another level of dimension to creating maps: their quality).
I think the middle ground between an engaging and tedious survival system is found between the necessity of engaging in the system and the frequency with which you need to engage with it in order to procure a desired payoff.
Lets use crossing a mountain pass for example: The seed will be hungry, since we know food and nutrition is already a factor in the seeds growth and appearance, so let us say that there is a base hunger consideration, and that satiated hunger prevents fatigue (speed of travel, environmental interaction). The seed will be affected by the climate of the cold mountain pass, but the mountain (by way of its climate and rough terrain) is acting as the impediment. A seed without weather appropriate clothing will be affected by the cold with a fatigue modifier until they have reached a level of movement that is, while not entirely impossible, discouraging to traverse the entire terrain. This can be overcome by simply wearing appropriately crafted clothing, and it has the added advantage of limiting those environmental factors to specific biomes or climate types (I hope for the seasonal aspect to bring snow to, say, a native forest biome. The detriment to the players productivity would not be as great as the passing of the mountain, but will push them in that particular direction if they have yet to explore a climatological situation that demands the consideration of clothing), as well promoting exploration through innovation by having the player explore the crafting system to find a solution. The drinking of extra water in a desert fits in with the hunger requirement, as well as the fatigue for sun exposure or excess clothing (an interesting element to balance if the biome placement system is implemented in the way suggested where deserts occur on the other sides of mountain ranges).
I think this ties in nicely with the character development aspect. Certain classes of seeds would emerge, and the only way to become one would be to have the seed actually choose where to live and adapt. Great idea.
This doesn't require the constant monitoring of temperature and would create natural boundaries to exploration before certain solutions had been investigated. I don't see it needing to be any more complicated than that.
As a side note, I'd also like to see convoys of players preparing those kinds of pack animals hinted at with different clothing and supplies as a cooperative venture when crossing these kinds of terrain. I'd imagine there would also be caves worth exploring, resources worth exploiting, and enemies needing fending off along the way. The potential for cooperative venture here is exciting.
Great summary, and I'd love to see something like what you have suggested.
I hadn't even thought of it in that regard, but you're right that it really fits in with other elements of TUG in that regard.
Indeed. One of my biggest game design dreams has long been a 3D multiplayer Oregon Trail, and anything that TUG can do in that regard would be a win in my book.
I'd like to make the one observation, however, that the very existence of seasons implies a latitudinally-oriented climate pattern as I discussed in one of the first posts. In fact, without that, the presence of seasons makes little physical sense; although I suppose there could always be lore for them, I'd love to have concrete justification for their inclusion, and as such this is another reason why I favor a pseudo-planet climate layout.
About temperature, I think temperature is a good idea, if you are in a desert you shouldn't be able to constantly sprint around. Travelling during night time could lessen this effect, if day lengths are of a good length, eg a full day being say 4-5 in game hours, travelling at night would be a viable solution.
I like the idea of a finite world, in Minecraft I can just run a few thousand blocks and find more iron to mine, or more trees to chop, there is no consequence to destroying everything. Minecraft servers such as Civcraft have this kind of limitation, Civcrafts map is a 15kx15k if I remember correctly, and this very obvious control of territory has been built up. Because everyone owns their own little bit of the map, players have constructed trains and boat tunnels to connect cities and resources. I can imagine in TUG, when we have possibly hundreds/thousands of players in a map, tensions would build over land and resource control, and players would also be close enough to have an active economy and wars.
Bye!
Firstly I'd like to point out that biomes in TUG currently follow an unbroken linear progression from Polar all the way down to Mesa. It's following a heat scale/humidity scale. Now if I had my way this would be far from complete. There should be some wiggle room when it comes to connectivity as well as other variations.
You brought up some interesting things about food and drink. Food is necessary, and I believe drink is a valid possibly. We run into two problems. one inventory space, and the other is annoyance of repetitive tasks.
I believe if there is a nice balance between how active a player is any how much they need to stay at top shape would be good.
But it's possibly to take this further. for example consider the town well. A town is formed. the locals want an easy source of water. The well comes with a bucket, which is filled when empty automatically by animation when the player uses it. Walk up, drink. Done. This could be done a number of different ways. For example drinking from a river. From a dining table flagon and keg combo.
The same could be done with food. A community based pantry or dining hall with it's own inventory gui. walk in. Pick you food. watch a quick animation, and if you want to take some into your inventory and for an adventure you can.
The point is it's easy and adds nice environment.
Additionally things like Cold, hunger, thirst, heat, or sickness, should be shown through visual and audible cues. for example the player could shiver in cold weather and walk slowly or stumble. The sound of stomach grumble for hunger. greenish skin or a cough you are sick.
Those stats might be readable with the hand gem. but ideally they would not have to be.
Bye!
That's good, but I was think more subtle then that.
Somehow I missed your reply until now. :?
I agree that you don't want to burden the player with tasks that are too repetitive, but I think that as you point out there are ways to make it simple and easy enough to not be too much of a chore. Furthermore, if it varies across biomes, there's always the option of "not living in a desert" if you don't want to deal with the logical consequences of dehydration and greater need for water, etc. In some ways choosing where to settle down would be a function of matching your playstyle; i.e., do you want a challenging survival game where resources are scarce?
[strike]The Long Dark was a Kickstarter project that some people here shared if I recall correctly, and it's another survival-oriented game. It looked quite promising, but my one reservation was that they seemed to be very heavy-handed with the audible indications for things like hunger and exhaustion. It's definitely a good thing to provide players with that feedback, but subtle is the way to go.[/strike]
Never mind, just realized the next couple posts after the one I'm responding to covered this exact issue.
If there's some way it can focus more on making sure you have a source of water, rather than focusing on having you use that source of water every X minutes or whatever, that would probably be a good thing, but I can't really think of a system for that off the top of my head.
So, what if, rather than an assortment of ways to refill your water, there are just canteen items you carry with you, when you step into water or up to a well, and stop for a second, it will automatically refill. Maybe play a little hand animation. Then when you walk around your seed just takes a drink now and then. That seems non-intrusive.
Also probably put limits on when. like not when taking damage or swinging a weapon, but if you hold still there and do nothing then ok.
The same might be used for standard food (non-buffing), or if you're starving, then special food as well.
I'd love to craft a belt, then choose what I attach to my belt space. A flask, two pouches and a Scabbard, for example.
Same with Bandoleers, backpacks, etc... Just have extra little slots to place little pouches and bigger items. Sure, i could place that fryingpan in my backpack, or, I can hang it off the hook on the side. Lanterns hanging from you backpack as you slowly walk through the forest, would be awesome!
We should need food and drinks, like in dayz, and get affected by weather, humidity and of course cold. That can actually lower our capabilities.