SBURBDEV Forum

[perplexingTheorist]

This just dawned on me, but remember in act 1 and two where the main focus was building up the user's house so he/she could reach the first gate? How would we manage to do that? I'm just throwing this out there so we can talk about it, and I'll add my own input later after I think for a bit.

[demosthenes2k8]

This is building off a post I made in the 2d/3d debate, but I'll repost most of it here:

What about two major map styles? The first view would be what the players see in the House, the Land, and Skaia - an isometric grid-style view where they walk along the grid. When they're at a location that they like (they have to have opened up a path to it from another square though) they can hit a button to "enter" it, which will turn it into a 2d platforming region. That region's "randomly" generated based on the XYZ coordinates of it, as well as where it is (Land, House, Skaia) and the Land aspects (if it's the Land). At different locations in the square, there will be doors or something similar that act as waypoints to unlock an adjacent square. Players can only move to squares on the grid that they've unlocked in this way.

Doing this would greatly simplify storing the layouts of everything - just save the types of each square on the grid, and whether they've been unlocked or not, and any square-specific data (who is in a village, etc), and the game will convert its position and type into the same "map" each time.

How would this affect multiple players? Simple. When more than one player is in the same place (for the rest of this post I'll assume Skaia, just for ease of typing), they'll see each others' locations ON THE GRID. If they go to the same square, and "enter", then they can meet up with the other player(s) in that square, because they'll have the same platform "map" and each other players' "map" position.

By the way, this would play VERY nicely with the "chessboard" theme of Skaia, and modular house creation, for obvious reasons. It would also do somewhat well with Lands, since it would still allow platforming, rapid movement around an area, and themed zones, without forcing the game to pregenerate a huge world, and ease travel across the Lands so that players don't have to grind just to make it back to a village.

What would this mean for visuals? Well, it would probably be best defined as "3d models on a pseudo-3d isometric grid, then the same 3d models but larger on 2d", so basically 2d gameplay.

This method would define the entire style of the game - a house is just a Stack of floors, right? A floor is just a grid of rooms, and each room has properties including spawn rate, whether there are holes in the floor, affected by weather or not, etc, and when you "enter" a room, which you must do at least once to move on to another room, it generates the "platforming" level based on the XY(Z)&Attributes of the room.
When a server is using a computer (which would likely allow them to use Pesterchum, etc as well) they can access their client's grid to change, add, or remove a room. If a room is changed at any point, though, the client HAS to go through them at least once.

[Legendary]

A platforming level for every room? That seems rather inconvenient. It would be much easier to just have an isometric grid set-up (ala the Sims) from the Server's perspective, with which they can build. Each of the seven gates, and thus Skaia, are located at a particular floor. The Client and their enemies move about as seen in Homestuck.

[immortius]

I would suggest a rather granular grid-based system where the server places entire rooms on a grid for each floor, and some items in the rooms if they desire - later on they'ld just be plonking down whole floors anyhow. Messing with individual walls/floors/etc is just messy and unnecessary.

[demosthenes2k8]

I dunno, either way is feasable. The main point was that there would be an isometric grid (I just realized I didn't mention isometric <_<) that the players navigate in SOME WAY (I just happened to choose 2d platformer), and that houses can be built be placing rooms onto that grid. The same overall concept can be used for Skaia and the Planets, and it simplifies storing all the data since you only need to save a list of arrays of data for each room, probably within a finite size (9 by 9?) (That sounds much more complex than it really is...)
Walls, floors, etc aren't really needed individually, except maybe a way to say "this room opens up into that room". Gate rooms would be automatically placed, and there would most likely be "stair rooms" just for traveling up/down. (You can only build on something that's horizontally adjacent to another room, but stair rooms can be built vertically adjacent to other stair rooms.)

[Legendary]

I think my main problems with it are two-fold:

1) It won't end up looking a lot like Homestuck. I really think that whatever graphical style we choose, the game should end up looking like Homestuck, not something else.

2) This makes each room much bigger than it actually would be. A platforming level needs to be more than just "Walk in -> Two feet -> Kill imp -> Two feet -> Walk out", so each room increases in size horribly and the player will waste a lot of time climbing that they won't end up doing in a simple, grid system that both myself and immortius have proposed.

As for immortius's "messing with individual whatever's is unnecessary", I'd like to note that what I see happening is very much like how Rose set up John's house and Vriska set up Tavros's:

Adding a floor area to an indoor region extends the walls automatically.
Outdoor regions can be created and later walled off if necessary.
Strange supports like chimneys are temporarily usable for the player in a hurry, but will need changing later.
Stairs, ramps and walkways can be arranged in a ridiculous manner.

As an aside, House location should probably be something that overrides procedural generation: Each house needs to arrive on an isolated island, plateau, or other structure so as to force each player to reach their First Gate to be able to get anywhere else.

[immortius]

As for immortius's "messing with individual whatever's is unnecessary", I'd like to note that what I see happening is very much like how Rose set up John's house and Vriska set up Tavros's:

Adding a floor area to an indoor region extends the walls automatically.
Outdoor regions can be created and later walled off if necessary.
Strange supports like chimneys are temporarily usable for the player in a hurry, but will need changing later.
Stairs, ramps and walkways can be arranged in a ridiculous manner.

Actually, you're right. As long as we keep things locked to an isometric grid we don't really need prefab rooms and can achieve all that. Extending the rooms would be Dungeon Keeper-esque I guess. I was more intending to say we should avoid trying to allow players to place arbitrary sized stuff as it would be difficult to manage - or replicate over the network.

I wonder how best to handle structural integrity - both in calculating it, communicating it to the player, and reacting when it is breached. Thoughts?

[Legendary]

I think a very simple set-up works:

If it is above NOTHING, it will hold if there are no items on it. Like the walkways or stairs Rose and Vriska made.
If it is above CHIMNEYS or a similar VERTICAL PLATFORM, it will hold on the first level. A second level of such constructions has a chance of knocking the player to the ground, which will be almost fatal. A third level will immediately collapse.
If it is above WALLS, it will hold perfectly, no matter how high it is.

[Oxide]

Quite frankly, you probably shouldn't be doing house construction at all. Think about it: you're not playing the Sims and you don't want to either.

This is one of the mechanics in the comic's version of Sburb that really doesn't translate well into an actual game. The reason for this is simple: it's boring. Even in the comic the characters don't like building the houses and just copy-paste big chunks.
From a game design point of view, it's very simple: if it isn't fun, don't do it. It doesn't even fit with the rest of the game and just adds boring filler time. Furthermore, you'll have to actually walk up that house. So what are you going to do? Have your characters walk up a hundred staircases before they get flying items? Sure, you could fill that hundred levels with randomly generated mob, but even then, it will get old fast, especially if they have to do it multiple times, or even walk back down.

Here is my suggested solution:
1. Begin with a randomly generated house with preset build spots (for alchemization furniture). The server is free to add whatever in those spots, but their size and quantity are limited.
2. When you need to add more levels, the server player has a set amount of grist (possible increasing) required to add each level. The level is then randomly generated and added to the existing house.
3. The client player can walk around each house level, and has mobs to kill in each. However, when he clears a level (which shouldn't take very long considering each will only be a few rooms), he can fast-travel to that level from any other clear level.
4. The portals appear on preset levels.

This saves the server players from having to do Sims house-building, and saves the client player from having to walk the equivalent of the CN Tower's worth of stairs every time they want to go somewhere.

[The Cool]

So, post entry, a Server Player's job is basically to spam the Buy New Floor button?