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Subscribers and Economics

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:28:12 +0000

I've been working on a small project over the last week or so. I'm really taking a hard look at the mechanics of the in-game economy, and the possibility of enhancements for subscribers.

Essentially, the idea of the game is something of a survival game based on a faraway planet. Economics plays a heavy part in the game, and resource production, aggregation, and sale is going to be where players spend the most time in the game.

One of the ideas I've recently come up with, is static and dynamic economies, and giving players a leg-up for subscribing.

Since the game is based on logical futuristic economics, the cost of moving goods on and off planet is very high. The energy required to move cargo from one solar system to another is much smaller than the energy required to actually get the goods off planet.

I've determined that because of the difficulties of transferring energy on and off planet, moving goods from one terrestrial biome to another would be pretty much useless, so moving matter from one world to another would not be economically viable when there is an effectively infinite amount of matter floating in accretion disks around stars, and just bouncing around in asteroids. The energy required to move from solar system to solar system would be cheaper as well, because energy can be moved across space in wave form without significant loss, and harvested from stars themselves.

So, I've decided that the goods produced on-planet are pretty much going to be consumed on-planet, and only goods that cannot be harvested in a null-g environment would be moved off-planet.

Because of these factors, it is necessary to create three different economy rule-sets.

On-planet value (Factored by shipping cost via terrestrial vehicles)
Off-planet value (Factored by the cost of reaching orbit)
On-planet value to players (players determine shipping cost)

In order for the economy to succeed, there needs to be a static economy (Player-NPC purchase of goods), and a dynamic economy (Player-Player purchase of goods).

I'm considering giving players a leg-up for being subscribers through a system called "branding". This will allow players to gain a reputation for quality/well priced goods. Players earn reputation for the quality of the goods they sell, and at the same time earn reputation for the price of the goods they sell. NPCs are more likely to purchase by product reputation than sheer cost alone, so this will allow players to create a brand if they subscribe, and build brand-loyalty, whereas non-subscribers will only have their products considered based on baseline price and quality.

There will be a certain percentage of NPC buyout that ONLY buy branded goods if they are available, (I'm thinking around 25%), and a certain percentage of NPC buyout that buys based on price alone (Again, thinking around 25%, and the rest of the economy will factor price and quality. (mind you, NPCs purchase goods both on and off planet.)

I'm trying to come up with all the pros and cons of a system like this... Anybody got any other ideas for how I can balance subscribers against non-subscribers without giving too much of an unfair advantage to the subscribers, and without nullifying the purpose of subscription?

I'm considering making sale of goods off-planet a subscriber-only perk, so this will not only allow subscribers access to more of the market, but also allow them to make more in-game money by selling non-subscriber goods off-planet on commission, and taking a share of the profits.

Anybody got any other ways I could throw in subscription benefits that wouldn't affect balance horribly?

Heightmap issue

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:48:30 +0000

Code:

heightmap
    proc
        apply_heights(var/z,var/x,var/y,var/sz)
            var/c
            var/t
            var/c1
            var/c2
            var/c3
            var/c4
            var/h
            var/h1
            var/h2
            var/h3
            var/h4
            var/sx
            var/sy
            var/tx
            var/ty
            var/turf/T
            var/s = (src.size-1)
            var/ss = sz/s
            var/mod = 1/ss
            var/max = 0
            for(c=0;c<s**2;c++)
                c1 = ((round(c/s)*src.size)+c%s)+1
                c2 = c1+1
                c3 = c1+src.size
                c4 = c3+1
                h1 = src.heights[c1]
                h2 = src.heights[c2]
                h3 = src.heights[c3]
                h4 = src.heights[c4]
                sx = (c%s)*ss
                sy = round(c/s)*ss
                max = max(max,round(h1/8192))
                for(t=0;t<ss**2;t++)
                    tx = t%ss
                    ty = round(t/ss)
                    h = round((h1-((((h4-h3)/ss)*tx)-(((h2-h1)/ss)*tx)*ty)+((((h3-h1)/ss)*ty)-(((h4-h2)/ss)*ty)*tx))/8192,1)
                    T = locate(x+sx+tx,y+sy+ty,z)
                    //T.icon_state = "0"
                    T.pixel_z = h*16
                    T.overlays += icon('layers.dmi',"[round(h)]")
                    T.layer = TURF_LAYER+h
                    sleep()

Problem description:

I've been playing with a fractal landscape generator... I've managed it before in 3D, I just don't have all the solvers and tools available in your standard 3D package, and algebra/trig is a subject I never was much good at... I KNOW I've missed something really basic here, but I'm trying to calculate the height on the z-axis for any given point between a quad selected from the heightmap.

For instance, given a heightmap with 2 subdivisions (5 indices, 4 quads squared) I have layered it over an area of 32 tiles, meaning 8 tiles per quad, squared.

For some reason, my calculating the height of the tile comes out all kinds of wrong, as you can see in my screenshot below.

This line is the culprit:

h = round((h1-((((h4-h3)/ss)*tx)-(((h2-h1)/ss)*tx)*ty)+((((h3-h1)/ss)*ty)-(((h4-h2)/ss)*ty)*tx))/8192,1)

I'm finding the endpoints on the x/y axis, and then calculating the slope (rise/run), and then multiplying by the scalar (tx and ty) to return the difference from the lower left hand corner.

Where'd I mess this up? This seems like such a simple problem, but I keep on running into the same snag, and that's when I get one corner to calculate properly, the other two don't.

Language Learning Material and Performance

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 16:56:08 +0000

Edit: Continuation from a topic discussing good/poor documentation of languages and APIs.

Very right. C++, Java, etc. have a lot of good material out there. Java's API is actually so well put together that someone can learn the language after mastering basic programming logic just by looking at it.

As for Java, it's got an excellent tutorial trail, but C++... There's a lot of resources out there, but Microsoft's examples are flat-out terrible.

Let's be honest here, take a look at the MSDN resources and tell me BYOND's are bad, because I've actually had MSDN not only be poorly written, it's led me in the wrong direction pretty often. As for most C++ tutorials, I just wrote a skeletal animation library for a custom file format for my employer, and almost every resource that was out there was incorrect as hell. They were telling me it would be faster to do everything in two recursive loops to simplify the math, but I wrote my own low-level matrix math library and wrote a single iterative loop using look-forward transformations.

According to all the material out there on the internet, my program either A) will give inaccurate numbers, will consume more memory, and consume more CPU, or just plain won't work because it isn't recursive. None of these is the case.

Topic/Export why so slow?

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 05:41:01 +0000

I'm playing around with world.export and world.topic. I've noticed that they take about 2 ticks per call... Why is this? Is there any way to speed it up at all? Setting the connection to remain open doesn't seem to speed it up at all either.

link()/shell() issues...

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 01:28:29 +0000

I'm messing around with an idea I had the other day.

I'm trying to get a client/server system working properly in a way that isn't terribly hacky/breakable.

One of the major problems I have with a system like this, though, is that you will never see players logged into the server if they are all hosting their own "client" and communicating with the actual server.

I'm trying to make it so that a player has to have a dream seeker window open on the "server", and when they log into the server, it will automatically download the client software, and start the installation process.

How do I link a player to their own copy of a world? I.E. I want a player to be linked to a world that they are going to "host" from the remote server.

Also, this is something of an intermediate solution. I'm trying to get the link() to open a new instance of dream seeker with the "client" software on it.

Is there any way to check if the player has installed a BYOND game, and if so run it in a new window?

I'm thinking this would probably involve heavy use of "unsafe" operations and shell() commands.

Right now, though, I'm thinking the best method for this would be to use a batch file to run the game via shell... It would require the user to run in trusted to work properly, though...

I miss Korea

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:18:13 +0000

About three years ago, I moved to South Korea in order to fulfill requirements of my military contract. I am relatively fluent in the language as well as able to understand and converse in most of the languages of that region of the world.

I lived there for a total of two years, and I'm just recently getting settled back into living in the states.

I'm just starting to miss living there for a lot of reasons. I found myself sitting in my little apartment a lot of the time with my girlfriend. I enjoyed a lot of aspects about Korean culture, and the convenience of living in such a small country.

I miss a lot of things, and one of the biggest things that I miss is the food. In South Korea, people don't really cook too often in the larger cities. They tend to eat out pretty often, and everything delivers. Even McDonald's down there has a delivery service. That isn't really what I miss. I got used to it, and now that I've been back, I've been comparing the price difference. In Korea, I could have delivery chinese, Korean, or Japanese every night of the week, and spend somewhere around 40,000 won per person every week. That's about $35 depending on the exchange rate.

In the states, on the other hand, I'd spend an average of $15 per day. That's $105 a week. It costs three times as much to live in the states on just food alone.

I went to a movie last week, and found myself paying $17 for a ticket, and I wanted a beverage (They caught me sipping out of my flask), so I went to the counter... I paid $6.00 for a medium coke. That's the price of FOUR LITERS for 24 ounces of soda. In Korea, a night at the cinema cost 4,000 won ($3.50), and popcorn and soda was free for the first one. If you wanted a refill, it was about $0.80 for soda or popcorn. How is this acceptable?

I also miss the convenience factor. My apartment out here costs me about $400 in rent a month, which is dirt cheap. In Korea, I was paying around 1,000,000 won for a two bedroom, which is around $900 a month. While the price for the apartment was much higher, I found that I got more for what I was paying than I would in the states.

For one thing, I'd have trash pickup service from my front door. I'd have a security guard int he building, and my apartment would come mildly furnished. It came with washers and driers, washing machines, and free gas and water. All I paid for was electric. To top it off, my floors were heated, hardwood flooring. The hot water system in the house piped the hot water through the floor, so I didn't even have to heat the house with gas or electric at all.

One other thing I really miss is the convenience of NOT having a car. I've recently had to purchase a car out here, and I hate it. I hate driving, and I hate people assuming that you have a car. In Korea, I could just hop on the subway, hail a taxi, or catch a city bus. Anything else was in walking distance. There was literally nothing I couldn't do without a car. In the states, you just have to have one.

Overall, I'd say I miss asia. Being the white guy that spoke their language had its advantages. I was treated with respect, and dignity. They understood my level of education put me above everyone else in my age group, and I was always a "favorite" at every restaurant and bar I went to. At stores, I got away with haggling down prices to 50% or less of the asking price, just because I knew the language and the economic system down there.

Life was pretty good out in Korea, I'm not sure I like living in the states too much. It's just too expensive out here.

How does BYOND push single player games?

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:10:22 +0000

Just out of curiosity, how does BYOND funnel players toward single player games?

BYOND can be pretty powerful for developing games to be run on the local machine, so I was wondering, since my only real experience with how BYOND pimps what's out there on the hub these days is occasionally profiling the live games tab.

Let's say a developer creates a single player game that cannot be played online. Is he less likely to get a stumble-upon playerbase than the live multiplayer games out on the hub?

Scripted behavior in BYOND

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:38:57 +0000

I'm wondering if anybody here has thought about scripted behavior in BYOND using something of a bytecode. I understand the potential speed problems for overusing such a system, but here's what I was thinking:

Text file is parsed out of the local machine, boiled down to byte code, then sent to the world as a "master copy".

Then an interpreter object is created for each instance of the object sharing the behavior. The interpreter object runs the script's functions when they are called, and the instance's interpreter starts running down the function's string of byte commands until it reaches the end (or reaches the maximum processing time per tick).

These commands would be translated by a simple function:

interpreter
  var
    atom/instance
    behavior/behavior
  proc
    interpret()
      while(!behavior.eof(src))
        var/cmd = behavior.read(1) //read one byte
        if(cmd==1) //if branch.
          var/val1 = behavior.read(4) //read four bytes
          var/oper = behavior.read(1) //read one byte
          var/val2 = behavior.read(4) //read four bytes
          if(oper==1) //equivalence
            if(val1==val2)
              //read block of code
          else if(oper==2) //non-equivalence
            if(val1!=val2)
              //read block of code

Of course the interpreter would be much longer (Eventually, I'd probably make use of the call() function to sort out each instruction into an internal function.)

Can anybody think of a faster/more efficient way to do this in DM?

Fractal Terrain: Dirting

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:54:01 +0000

I'm working on a bit of a side project at the moment, and it involves 2D fractal terrain similar to Worms/Lemmings generated by a simple fractal noise pattern. This gives me a set of endpoints along a line equal in number to 2^n+1 where n = the number of iterations.

This generates some neat mountains and valleys, but I've got a bit of a conceptual problem. I'm looking for an algorithm to add a layer of dirt to the map. The best way I've figured out, is adding a certain number of pixels to the map, and then letting it "flow" down the slopes based on how steep the edges are until it finds a natural resting level.

Is there some other way of handling this that anyone has come across?

Multi-Z-Layer rendering

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:13:39 +0000

I was wondering if it would be possible to actually render multiple Z-layers through the BYOND engine by default without the need for tricky and often sub-par custom systems.

Perhaps if we had the ability to specify the "z" displacement (z in iso view, y in top-down view) of layers, and a tile type that would be rendered as invisible, or possibly any tile with any alpha transparency as such:

world
  z_format = RENDER_ONE | RENDER_TURF | RENDER_ALPHA
  z_offset = 32

Also, for isometry, I think it would be valuable to rotate on the client side, directional icons' facing directions based on the user's client-dir.

[edit]
Scratch that! You already implemented feature #2!
[/edit]

Thanks!