SkArcher on 24 Dec 2003 22:49:02 -0000


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Re: [spoon-discuss] Junk


On Wed, 24 Dec 2003 17:35:26 -0500, Daniel Lepage <dpl33@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


On Wednesday, December 24, 2003, at 05:03 PM, SkArcher wrote:

1) make the grid Toroid. moving off the left side makes you enter from the right, likewise with top/bottom. This is to give us a continual world surface and do away with the need for 'falling off' rules.

That's a good point... Of course, on a torus, going around the outer circle should take longer than going around the inside...

in reality yes, care to cite an instance to me where the grid was a good model of reality?

Well, the real world has sticks, and so did we.... I can't come up with something better than that.

Quite :)

plus, you have obviously never played Torus Chess.

This is true.

You should, actually, its an interesting variation on the idea of chess.

there is a java applet at http://www.geometrygames.org/TorusGames/html/Chess.html



2) start with just a 2D surface and make the possible operations 'Gathering RUs' 'collecting power' and 'moving 1 square'. Don't yet bother with terrain, just assume that the robots are scavenging RUs on the surface.

This I disagree with. The way I've got junk mining set up would make it rather ugly to try to add it later. Besides which, where are they getting RUs, otherwise?

Actually, I think you have it rather ugly in setup right now anyway.

Well, I'm working on that.

I'd also like to start with something more than the old Grid; if we just say, "everyone has a robot, go find Shiny Things", it's exactly the same as when the first Grid started, except we call them Robots. I'd prefer something different, at the beginning, and we can take it from there.

I just want a basic framework, without even any shiny or scary things. IMO its in how we advance from there that counts.

I can assure you that the garbage heaps will be among the first advancements I propose, in this case.

That is fine, but I think it can be a LOT better worded than the way you have it already.


Sounds good... the actions have to happen in order, though - if I tell my robot "move to (3,3), move to (3,4), dig into (3,5)", having a high precedence dig shouldn't help if somebody's standing at (4,5) digging in while I move.


I don't quite understand you. Please clarify with diagrams :P

What I mean is that you can't base it just on power - I could give my robot many commands for the next checkpoint, like "move up, then move up, then move up, then dig left"; somebody else could give their robot just one: "dig right". If both digs try to move to the same place, obviously both cannot happen. Even if I paid more energy for mine, though, the other's move should happen, since they'll be digging right before I've even reached the space. Unless you think I should be able to push them out of the way...

Ahhh, perhaps I wasn't clear enough, I meant to specify 1 move per checkpoint, but you specify an entire nweeks worth in advance. It might even be possible to have 1 move per nday.


I definitely prefer the idea that all of the upgrades and so on have to be produced by the robots on the grid - if we made it so that it was a closed system and released the bots in there to co-exist in whatever way happens. Its a bit Von Neuman machine-like, isn't it?

Well, I'd planned to have many upgrades that are just found - you dig through the junk, and sometimes you find lumps of metal or whatnot for RUs, but sometimes you'll find an almost-working Laser Cannon from some ancient speeder, and with a small energy expenditure you can wield it onto yourself.

much more fun to have to find the RUs and make them into a laser cannon - possibly the 'Laser Cannon builder' would itself be an upgrade? That way each of us could specialise eir own robot for a task and we can start trading things between us. Hence what I said about von Neumann. It tickles my fancy to have an environment where only ideas can go in and out, resources and items all have to be obtained inside.

I take it you don't like the Junk digging, then?

I like it as a framework - the way I see it the junk RUs allready exist inside the glass box - but i want a mechanism for turning them into something else. I suppose, to put it in nomic terms, the glass box is the procedural universe. We, outside, legislate that procedure - I.E. we write rules to describe how to turn RU's into... well, anything really.


Also, I think some things shouldn't be buildable. For example we might want artifacts that can be found, but that we no longer have the means to create (like the Improbability Drive on the Baron's old speeder).

I've got to disagree. I'd much prefer to have the grid like a glass box, where the players can only indirectly affect the action inside, and the inhabitants (the robots) have to evolve and build everything inside themselves. It would be different than the old grid, and a little more entertaining.

That's not incompatible with unbuildable upgrades; I'm just talking about the possibility of finding random items that can't be obtained any other way. Or would you prefer a strictly deterministic grid? There's something to be said for that, too...



Yes, I would prefer to go that route. I would find it a)refreshingly different, and b)very interesting



SkArcher
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