Maps and what follows

[waveney]

One player has just reached the end of the discoveries and has 146 Maps. There will be more discoveries between the current end of discoveries and T\ **D, but not enough to get to 200 Maps. (For comparisonI am nearly up to 100).

1) The 200 Maps is too much on what we have now. Even 100 Is pushing it. Should the number be changed or the formula for how to get them be changed? To be honest I have had litle to do for the last ~50 maps other than raise AC and CDSP, and PR levels.

2) The 200 Maps are needed for the dragon nesting site, the Dragon nest and Dragon Queen and Dragon Eggs are then effectively free. Then we run out of game. ED has mentioned some of his ideas to me for what follows but nothing has happened for many months. ED will you take the storey forward, or give directions to one of us, or just let us dream something up?

3) We do have the option after T\ **D to branch out and followup the TaT images, which are in keeping with the game so far (some of them are mine I will do more in the future, but the Mysterongs look like having a long way to run at the moment). Should this be done?

4) Develop other threads such as the raftcastle idea (or anything else that seems appropriate)?

Discuss, and ED please provide some direction.

[MichealRein]

What are TaT and T\ **D.

[MichealRein]

Wait nevermind the second is probably 'The End' right?

[waveney]

Another player has just reached T\ **D.

[eternaldensity]

There's not enough discoveries for monuments to get all the maps? I thought the math checked out... perhaps I changed something without thinking it through.

Yeah the map requirement sure does vastly overshadow the nest/queen requirements. Stuff there needs balancing.

I'm not sure about putting TaT in next. Maybe? Maybe have it user-selectable? This needs further discussion, possibly on the OTT.

I don't currently expect to have time to work on the dragon breeding -> dragon vs. knight battle -> diamonds as rewards -> diamond memorial gameplay arc, and I don't know if that's what people actually want, but I'm available to provide details/suggestions/directions/advice/etc on an ad hoc basis.

Also it's about time I...

[eternaldensity]

There we go, waveney you're now a collaborator.

[eternaldensity]

Idea for Time after Time: Once players get to the stock-cat-ONGs, have some tricky thing unlock to provide a way to jump to NP 0, which then serves as a hub to allow access to TaT and such.

[MichealRein]

I don't think you'd find many complains as to what gameplay elements are added.

[eternaldensity]

True, so long as some are added!

Okay so the current gameplay issues are:

1. People have run out of newpix (which has the side effect of running out of discoveries and thus causing issues for maps) - this could be fixed via Time After Time as noted already.
2. Maps take so long to get that the subsequent dragon queen requirements are already long since negligable
3. Prizes still need optimising as noted elsewhere
4. Dragon queen does nothing yet, and no way to get diamonds for diamond memorials (these two issues are meant to solve each other

[LucidCrux]

Would you mind sharing with us what your ideas where for the dragon/diamond stuff?

[waveney]

I will take up EDs issues 1,2 and 4 - who would like to look at the prizes?

[LucidCrux]

I kind of have way too much on my plate at the moment. I'm sort of sticking to back end stuff for the most part until some of the big funtionality issues are at least dented a bit. They just bug me way too much, and have been around for quite a long time. :P

On a side note, I like the NP 0 idea. It brought to mind other possibilities like alternate time lines, upside down frames, or whatever else. It could also be an interesting place to introduce the raft castles as a "meanwhile" type thing as I think I once mistakenly called it. Though, maybe that would be too restrictive on when it is introduced.

The alternates for the above idea obviously don't exist anywhere, but what if they drown when trying to cross the river for example? Or just got bored making castles and didn't notice the water rising when they did. You could add a lot more pix by tacking on some timeline prefix and it would just require a few new (or just one?) end frames where the timeline stops or changes or whatever. Everything before then would be identical, but be a new pix since it's from a different time line.

[waveney]

The TaT sequences are sets of images that relate to the original. They are:

1) Latent22's Prickly and Lucky series (After T\ **D), his other series probably does not fit.

2) My Amtoo's adventures branch off after Cuegan depart the castle - 2 chapters so far, more eventually.

3) SilentTimers Mystery ONGs start near T\ **D and follow on beyond. (Series ongoing)

What is needed is: 1) Fill in the discoveries until the end. Done 2) Work out the NP0 trigger(s), perhaps multiple triggers enabling different TaT series. 3) Rebalance Nests and Queens and start dragon breeding - I have some clues from messages from ED about part of what was planned. 4) A way of numbering NPs for TaT serieses,,that allows for more series and their relationships to where they break off from the main story. 4a) The TaTs have generally been 4 hourly, this may be too slow for SCB, but may be "interesting" 5) Rebalance Prizes 6) Refactor and improve the basic engine 7) Think up some new puzzles and things to do and resolve 8) Upside down frames are a possibilty - There has also been intermitent discussion about use of complex numbers, which could be introduced by something taking the sqrt of the NP when negative. 9) Everything else.

[subanark]

The problem with getting to complex NPs, is that you pretty much have to railroad taking the sqrt of a negative number that won't lead to a fractional NP, which would seem to be forced in that case.

For fractional NPs I see that you either: A: Support it. If your at a fractional NP, then image is a composite of both ones it is between. B. Round down and provide a fractional NP currency that sums up the extra NP fragments (the sqr root of a number > 1 is also > 1)

A sneaky way to allow square roots is to start by having:

1. Increases your time travel power by currency X
2. Your time travel power is raised by currency Y
3. Find a way for currency X to go negative.
4. Now you have square root time travel.

As far as displaying complex NPs:

1. 'i' is upside down.
2. '-i' is upside down and reversed.
3. a + bi shows the NP that is the abs(a + bi) with the left part of the NP being the real part, and part of the NP being the imaginary part. It would work like a box that you view on the side. With 1 being the front, i being the side, -1 being the back, and -i being the other side. When you are part real part imaginary, you see the corner of the box, so some of the real and some of the imaginary.

[eternaldensity]

While I think complex-numbered resources could be quite interesting, I think a complex (or imaginary) NP is just gonna confuse things a bit much.

I'll try to take some time soon to develop the dragon-breeding mechanic ideas better. I'd hoped that it would involve adding various amounts of different resources to the next during incubation. I think it'll be more about the mixtures and proportions than the amounts since by the time players are up to that, there won't really be any resource limitations.

[subanark]

What are you thinking of for incubation times? Can we still consider this to be an idle game when the player reaches this point of gameplay?

[waveney]

Many things could confuse, but I don't think we should do complex numbers next.

As for the dragon breeding, assuming we start that at a lower Map threshold 50? (200 maps can still enable something else). Not all reources will be infinite. We can then make the follow on boosts more expensive and/or time consuming. It is not unreasonable for the Dragon Queen to take Billions of FA runs to make.

Sand/Castles Infinite, infiniately often Chips/Blocks infinite, at most once per mnp Blackprints, infinite, many times/mnp with void vault and Mario Flux Crystals infinite - once per NP Goats fnite, small Bonemeal finite, larger Mustard finite, small? Vacuums finite, few M per NP Logicat Levels finite, larger QQs finite larger

Currently I don't see any new resources getting infinite, the largest (for me) is QQs I have peta QQs. Bonemeal could get that far, though it gets used.

[MichealRein]

At the moment I think the only thing that the ONG has relevance to is flux crystals, and that goes away when you get to the very large TL levels.

A 4-hour ONG would be fine then off of that, assuming more ONG-dependent things aren't added.

[eternaldensity]

Okay, lower map threshhold is good.

If the nest is constantly (slowly) producing dragons, and player intervention is to adjust production ratios and choose how to deploy them, it should hopefully be able to keep a fairly idle mechanic. And while we're at it, Glass Saw seriously needs to be more idle friendly.

BTW this http://www.reddit.com/r/SandcastleBuilder/comments/207krd/midgame_review_postmortem_come_laugh_at_the_newb/ has some good info about playability of the early-mid game which make help us adjust some stuff.

Will write more later...

[eternaldensity]

btw I'd prefer we get the various bugs/glitches/major usability issues sorted before adding major new content.

As for NP 0, it'll be a place where time doesn't move in any direction, and timetravel of all sorts is disabled and instead of displaying a comic it displays the first comic of the various time-streams that are available.

[waveney]

ED, could you give more details of what you had planned for the rest of the Dragon Saga. I know we need to line nests and fight knghts, but some more of your thoughts would enable one to make a start.

[eternaldensity]

Hopefully I'll get a chance this weekend...

[waveney]

Waiting for it...

[eternaldensity]

I had a cold. And then 2048.

[MichealRein]

I've seen like six versions of that by now.

[eternaldensity]

That's like less than a quarter of them!