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Colony Ship update #30 - There Be Monsters

undecaf

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
Not sure if calibers and ammo are a good area to show one's creativity.

...

It's not really about that, but rather about creating a specific feel and authenticity for the setting through little things. But your explanation is good enough for me.
 

ghostdog

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Plz consider adding something similar to this:

9egsUjj.jpg


thanks
 

Kem0sabe

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That jellyfish doesn't look at all like a man of War. That Portuguese fucker floats above water on a weird sack of gas that looks somewhat like a sail, while that design is based off an underwater jellyfish.

BTW I have been stung by a man of War and that shit not only hurts but literally burns your skin and leaves long lasting scars, sea here is full of them. The tiny bit above water is nothing to be scared of, it's the hidden up to 50 meters of tentacles of death that you have to be worried about.

bc573595ef8348906e68aed2ccd2211e.jpg
80bd0183edf019db937ab80223f765fa.jpg
 

Commissar Draco

Codexia Comrade Colonel Commissar
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Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
you could implement 6.5 mm for rifles since this has optimal trade of between ballistics and shock force and go for 10mm for pistols since for them flat ballistic trajectory is not that important and bigger caliber equals more impact. Funny trivia 6mm for riffles was to be adopted by Keiserreich before WWI but it was stopped after Germans realized how much will cost to retool all riffle and ammunition factories once again this time from not 10 mm to 8 but from 8 to 6. Of course you could go all wild west and give colonists revolvers and repeaters all chambered to .357 and .44. and using much easier to make black powder in place of smokeless one. Shame there will be no crafting in game cause nothing beats making your own hand crafted bullets. Its strange that no rats managed to sneak on board of colony ship though.
 

Mr. Hiver

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That jellyfish doesn't look at all like a man of War. That Portuguese fucker floats above water on a weird sack of gas that looks somewhat like a sail, while that design is based off an underwater jellyfish.

Realism wasnt really a concern in the design, but neither plausibility or taking inspiration from efficient and evolutionary proven abilities to create something really interesting.
 

Deleted Member 22431

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Maybe some of you will find interesting Nick posts about Torque, in this thread. This one caught my attention:

You have to explain more what you have in mind, what exactly disgusted you, what kind of control over a program code you want. Do you mean something like Irrlicht API, where you just plug in subsystems and build the game from scratch?
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/docu/index.html

I do feel nostalgic about that, but again, that's a thing of the past or for one-man team projects. While you can start right away and get to coding and enjoying yourself, your whole team is disabled for indefinite time. How long would it take a programmer to write animation viewer tool, so your animator can import his models and animations to check how they look in the game (which can be ranging from "different" to "horrible lovecraftian mess of moving vertices and bones"). How long would it take a programmer to write functional world editor, with thousands of big and small features like "Importing terrain heightmaps" or "Drop object to the ground"? Particle editor, where you let designer choose what looks best, instead of a programmer changing parameter values and recompiling? Cutscene editor? VR support? Your team would just sit and wait for months and years while you prepare the toolkit. That's partially what I did for AoD, but there wasn't much choice in 2004, when we started. If you want all of that out of the box, you have to have an existing code architecture. The more features the engine has, the more complex the default architecture becomes. You can't just have an empty main() and add "new ParticleEffectsEditor()" and another million of declarations. Features and subsystems are often intertwined - something needs to be called before the tick, something after. Something needs to be rendered at one layer, something at another. One feature works on platform X, another doesn't. So add the platform layer, ticks, messages, timers, rendering pipeline, thread communications, input handling, plugins, editors etc - and your main() is buried and you have to inject your gameplay code "where you are allowed to". Which is where you start at with UE/Unity. Looks like it's an unavoidable trade-off, Torque was halfway down this road. I would be curious to learn about an engine that combines best of two worlds, but I haven't heard of any like that.
 

Ibn Sina

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Strap Yourselves In
A generation ship must have been carrying livestock and poultry. A ship like that must have also had some fish farms (Carp for example) All mass immigration movements through history was accompanied by domesticated animals wether they are simple livestock or farmhand animals like horses, donkeys, oxens etc.. What happened to all the livestock? I want my Polo diablo.
 

Haba

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Codex 2012 MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
They lifted all designs from the databanks so they didn't start from scratch and the variety of designs you'll see in the game reflect the skills and tools of the maker, not the knowledge about firearms (same way the makeshift weapons used in modern conflicts reflect the makers' skills not mankind's knowledge).

Yeah, so they might as well be shooting muskets.

You are making a sci-fi game. The implication is that there will be future development between now and the fantasy laser guns. If you put in AK-47's in the game, it will imply that no history existed between our time-line and the fantastic fancy space! future.

Just make the guns fire 6.5 mm cased telescoped (lighter polymer bullets). Or caseless 4.73mm.

Big boys fire .50 Beowulf, just because their military exoskeletons/modified bodies allow them to handle them.

And for something more exotic, gyrojets and flechettes could make a comeback.

You have the wonderful opportunity to write lore for the 100 years of military shenanigans behind ammo type choices for future wars. Those are all plausible future developments, and make much more sense than having the same ammo types for hundreds of years.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
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You are making a sci-fi game. The implication is that there will be future development between now and the fantasy laser guns.
Based on what? As mentioned previously, Colt 1911 (a pistol invented in 1890a) and its derivatives are still very popular today, 120+ years later. Same goes for revolvers which simply refuse to go out of style. So I doubt that firearms will see any meaningful development in the future, before being replaced by energy weapons.

Anyway, for guidelines and inspiration we used makeshift weapons from various conflict zones. They represent very accurately what kind of weapons one can create with limited tools:

a59d6e7d6f7193468c17eb59e3eb5205.jpg
 

HeatEXTEND

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I've wondered more than once if we will see the next step in personal arms in our lifetime, for general use that is. Highly doubt it.
 

Haba

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Based on what?

History? Politics? Because it is great for business?

https://www.popularmechanics.com/mi...-round-special-ops-getting-new-sniper-bullet/
https://www.military.com/kitup/2018/04/11/marines-working-army-556mm-rifle-round-replacement.html

There is a very clear drive for caseless/polymer casing ammo. Simply because it is lighter. And those rounds will most likely come with a caliber change.

Things like smart munitions are not that far in the future either.

When we can download ready-made schematics for assault rifles to print out of our 3d printers today, I find it highly unlikely that in the far future anyone would opt for a zip gun instead. Or Colt 1911. Unless they are some kind of a space-hipster.
 

Deleted Member 22431

Guest
I'm just going to leave this here:

Pillars of Eternity is a terrific CRPG, but very linear compared to AoE, there's no no cause and effect, no main plotline branching. Some moral choices and endgame options - that's it.
But the narrative is immaculate in Pillars, it's something that Iron Tower can employ in Colony ship.
 

Eyestabber

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Cool update. I'm glad CSG is going for "weirder" monsters. It is true that DR/AoD monsters didn't feel that special since they essentially whacked you, knocked you down and poisoned you. Kinda like the player himself. In the spirit of giving monsters some REALLY unique abilities, here are my suggestions.

WARNING: I'm not an artist nor a biologist, so don't ask me what these creatures would look like or how they fit into the setting or whatever. I'm just suggesting some mechanics that COULD be interesting if implemented. So here we go:

  • A puppeteer creature. The puppeteer has only one attack: a leap that (if not dodged/somehow defended) will result in him landing on your dude's head and ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL of the victims muscles. Your guy remains fully aware of wtf is going on (so you don't lose vision), but can't resist the creature's commands. The puppeteer can't be pushed away, only killed. Any attacks aimed at the creature have a chance of hitting your guy by mistake. Stunning the victim allows for easier focusing the creature (0% fail chance @ melee, reduced chance @ range). Being "puppeteered" is also quite painful, with damage per turn + MAYBE lasting effects if it took the party way too long to kill the creature.
  • An illusionist creature. At first glance you see a bunch of thugs with guns and melee weapons. But during the fight you'll quickly notice something is off: shots to the head/arms/legs go right through, without harming the creature in any way. You'll also notice that whenver you get "shot" or "slashed/hammered" you feel DoT/some other negative effect except you DON'T feel the usual effect of being shot/slashed. Upon death the creture reverts to its true form, thus revealing it's weird shape and spines/claws/whatever it used to mimick human weapons
  • A "pet" type of creature used by a small group of enemies that figured out how to domesticate this...thing. The creature pukes/spits stuff that doesn't do much by itself, but when an affected target is hit by the bandits energy/whatever weapons, he bursts in flames at almost explosion-like speed. YEAH it's just another "grease & fire" sthick, but those are fun, so sue me.
So yeah. Those are kinda different from the usual knockdown/poison/grapple you USUALLY see monsters using in RPGs.
 

HeatEXTEND

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I've wondered more than once if we will see the next step in personal arms in our lifetime, for general use that is. Highly doubt it.

Lasers are for wusses, real men want to shoot bolters
Bolters can run out of ammo, true men face everything head on with chainswords at hands

pfff Chainswords are weak, do you even Power Weapon?
Lame, do you even betcher's gland?
 

HeatEXTEND

Prophet
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An illusionist creature. At first glance you see a bunch of thugs with guns and melee weapons. But during the fight you'll quickly notice something is off: shots to the head/arms/legs go right through, without harming the creature in any way. You'll also notice that whenver you get "shot" or "slashed/hammered" you feel DoT/some other negative effect except you DON'T feel the usual effect of being shot/slashed. Upon death the creture reverts to its true form, thus revealing it's weird shape and spines/claws/whatever it used to mimick human weapons
:shredder:
 

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