I-Aryn-I's site

Opening the Lost Worlds source back up...

Wed, 23 May 2012 18:08:37 +0000

...and I noticed that one thing on my to-do list has been there for far too long and is far too easy to do: breaking windows with hammers.

The game has been inactive for quite some time, long enough that I no longer recognize the site, and apparently now all blog posts are forum posts, so yeah.

New Year's Lighting Systems

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 06:35:37 +0000

So I recently stumbled on some cool stuff while browsing around the dev resources, namely, Forum_account's dynamic lighting system. It's ridiculously pretty when you get it to work.

Problem is, it doesn't play well with BYOND's built in LoS. So, in traditional Aryn style, I examined what the code was trying to accomplish, and built a lighting system myself from the ground up using the same principles. It's not super-efficient by any means (that'll have to wait for my optimization) but it's good enough to light up the airship like I've never seen it done before.

Do you see any of that weird blocky shading anywhere in this picture? Neither do I! It looks like it's light and darkness, not randomly placed blocks of alpha-black.

It gives everything the right atmosphere, too.

So I'm giving back-to-back updates this holiday season, just to point out how awesome this is.

I Like Your Style, Kid.

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 00:55:46 +0000

If this screenshot looks familiar, it's because this area has been used to show off the graphical style before.

Note that the walls and floor are now far less saturated and orange-y, which was distracting and drew attention from the items on the floor and tables. I didn't want to desaturate them too much, as I still want the background set to retain some color to it. It is wood, after all. Even on metal floors, there's a bit of blue thrown in for color, and to contrast with the orange-brown of the wood tiles.

I also reduced the bright red highlights on some of the items, which makes them also considerably less orange, but most of the palette of the wooden items is kept, so that they stand out a bit against the less red tables and floor tiles. The new tile palette is designed to distinguish objects the player can interact with (and characters themselves) from the background.

Meanwhile, I'm working on how to maintain a persistent ship, since adding new rooms and re-purposing old ones is a central game element. This being the case, I've seen the way structural damage in SS13 can screw up a round entirely, since so much of a critical area can be destabilized by explosions, meteors and air loss. At a certain point, there's just so much metal, girders, broken floors and torn up wiring that even restoring a room seems impossible, let alone all its unbuildable specialty equipment. This is usually when the emergency shuttle is called, and the map resets itself.

Granted, Lost Worlds doesn't depressurize damaged rooms, meaning nobody needs EVA suits and airlocks to go repair it, and explosions are a pretty rare occurrence, so causing enough damage to warrant a map reset is difficult. Fire would probably be the best way to deny a large area to the crew, and it's far more limited than the last version due to CPU issues.

I'm not about to say anything about release just yet, so as not to fall into the trap of vaporware games, but progress is being made.

Soyeah

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 05:18:58 +0000

As far as Lost Worlds goes, a lot of it is playable. Unfortunately, I'm still working on how to get a job system to work with persistent characters. If you only have one captain, you have no captain when he's not on, etc. En masse jobs like technicians or scientists are generally immune to this, but high command gets weird.

Adding to this is that the map of the ship still has big unused sections to it, and the ship itself still has no actual method of propulsion, nor anywhere to propel itself to or from.

Finally, technicians need stuff to build and tinker with.

So those are the PROBLEMS THREEFOLD that I am currently facing.

This May Or May Not Be A Problem...

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 01:00:31 +0000

Corrupted map saves are always kinda cool looking, if nothing else.

{LW3} Gratuitous Screenshot Time!

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 03:41:16 +0000

I just finished rearranging the interface, giving a lot more room for the actual map screen, and condensing the equipment area into a small, neatly organized space. In addition, this screenshot shows off the new character icons.

It was loaded from a map saved in a previous session, in which I installed a window into the post office manually. The idea is to ensure that in the event that the server needs to be restarted or shut down, the map does not revert and cause players to lose progress on construction. Of course, in the event that the airship suffers catastrophic damage, it is still possible for an admin to revert the map save to a previous, undestroyed airship from within the game.

Lost Worlds is no longer lost!

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 22:03:47 +0000

Just recently, we've expanded the devteam for Lost Worlds to three people. Productivity should be high, and we may be seeing a release version yet. In addition, new character icons have been drawn, with a good amount of room for items. They're probably not going to have directional states, so players are able to see worn and carried items better. Nevertheless, they're a bit more refined than the old SS13 icons people are reminded of when they think of directionless, overlayed characters, and special attention is being given so that things look right in all combinations.

One of the things this gave me the oppurtunity for is to make the characters and accessories look a little more steampunk, and you can have a fairly awesome looking character with any number of combinations of hair, beards, accessories and clothing. The different hairstyles and clothes also vary a lot, so each character is recognizable by sight.

Lost Worlds Needs Code Badly

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 22:38:13 +0000

The reason I have been so absent is because I've been slogging painfully through how to make combat balanced and enjoyable in more ways than just pwning the other guy.

In specific, I'm trying to figure out whether I should go with SS13-style health, a complex, DFlike wound system, or a combination of both. If the latter is included, how can I make sure it won't send players into a death spiral, where wounds make it unplayably difficult to avoid taking more damage?

So far, it's worked like this: All toxic damage, and minor damage in other categories, reduces your HP bar a la SS13, where Health is a function of your maximum health, minus the damage you've taken in various ways. This is a simple way to both have a health indicator and have damage healed in different ways.

Every so often, taking a major bit of damage, or being in combat in general, will give you a wound. The effects of this, besides blood loss, are delayed for about 30-45 seconds to prevent it from seriously affecting the combat or other situation you received it in, much like the grace period after hitting an enemy in a platformer. After the delay, the damage and pain of the wound rise to reach the base values for the wound type (These are already determined when you receive the wound, and have a bit of randomness thrown in, but for the same type of wound, the values will be similar.)

To heal one of these, you first need to remove any objects in the wound, like a bullet, stray rivet, or chunk of material that broke off inside. Wounds that heal with an object in them, even properly healed, will require surgery later if you don't want a small chunk off your health bar for as long as your body has the object in it. Then, apply the item or items that will treat the wound itself. For things like a gash or bullet wound, these will usually be stitches. Burns require ointment in this step.

Next, apply disinfectant. This is currently abstracted in the form of a disinfecting cloth, but later I might make it a chemical effect. The disinfectant stage could be considered optional, as could the treatment itself since wounds heal on their own after a bit, but untreated wounds hurt and bleed, and wounds without antiseptic applied have a significant chance of infection, making that two times worse. The last step is to apply a bandage. This step on its own reduces the chance of infection, and with antiseptic, the chance becomes almost zero. After all this, the wound is now greatly reduced in severity, and won't get worse when it finally does heal. Note that all these steps are modified by the healer's medical skill, especially removing objects from a wound.

So in conclusion, yay for updates.

Embric of Wulfhammer's Castle

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 08:40:22 +0000

I got sidetracked by this game's awesomeness and multiple endings.
Get it now. I command you.
(Yes, I'm a yuri fan. Moving on...)

{LW3} Shifting Foundations

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 23:58:45 +0000

Despite my infrequent activity on BYOND proper, Lost Worlds is still going strong. Mostly, what I've been doing is remaking various important things, such as steam pipes, which now hold any chemical, and serve as a shipwide delivery service a la SS13's mailboxes.

Speaking of chemicals, the more simplistic, procedural chemicals have been around for a while now, though I forgot to spread news, and are now working their way into the medical system. Wounds have been improved to work with the current skill system, and medicine now resembles the kind you'd find in Dwarf Fortress almost. Both of these will also give meaning to the Science and Medical specializations, which is a boon to people who were tired of learning how to do complex things OOCly in SS13, and has far-reaching detriments to people who try to do jobs that their characters know nothing about.

Wounds still work in conjunction with a five-type numerical damage system like SS13 uses, but this might change, especially since I have wounds defined for severe burns, foreign objects (like bullets) and bruises among others, so it could very well replace standard damage, pending a bit more variation in severity. Right now, a wound has a chance of appearing for many actions which would also cause standard damage such as combat, falling from one level to another, or standing in the middle of a blazing inferno like an idiot.

Speaking of blazing infernos, fire works much better than it did in the previous version, and will not burn down large areas of the ship in record time. It's still quite dangerous though, as it still spreads quickly, especially if not responded to, and while it won't usually spread across the whole ship due to gameplay considerations, it can still fill an entire room with death and destruction, and it can do this without generating nearly as much lag as it used to.

After I finish wounds and attaching skills to medical and scientific activities, I'll figure out what I'm doing with machine crafting and give mechanics something to do, then I'll move on to the actual positions characters can hold on the ship, and making a better postal system, which will ease communication and shipments between ranks and make the ship much easier to run for everyone, regardless of access levels. In fact, I'm doing a lot of interesting stuff regarding the heirarchy on the ship and off, so I might as well call this the Command Arc.