Surround base with "burned" terrain to make it easier to see

[xsebek]

Currently every robot that looks down is shown as Ω, which is confusing and hard to see.

We could fix this by simply changing the default char for robots (say x), but I propose a bolder solution, making base bigger:

┌───┐
│ Ω │
└───┘

First of all, it is cute to have a little person inside, and secondly we can show base with treads:

╓───╖
║ Ω ║
╙───╜

This would clearly show why small robot treads are not enough to drive the base around!

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EDIT: On second thought, I guess this is actually reasonable if paired with structures (#112).

• If the base was not a robot, but a structure, then it could take whatever weird shape we like.
• If we add #115, then base could have its own inventory.
• It would solve the #92 since base would only be used to check that we are still inside (outside is blocked toxic)
• Moving it around on giant treads would be cool.

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The current idea (see discussion below) is to just make some special "burned" terrain spawn around the base. This would involve creating a new kind of terrain with its own (dark brown?) color, and editing the world generation function to generate that terrain near the base.

[byorgey]

There are definitely things about this idea that I like. On the other hand I do like the simplicity (both conceptual simplicity and code simplicity) we gain by having the base be "just another (special) robot".

[byorgey]

Also, when talking about "structures" in #112 , I did not actually have in mind some new kind of entity that spans multiple grid cells, at least not one that we could manipulate or represent in the code. I simply had in mind the idea of spawning a "structure" by having terrain/entities generate in a block together. Kind of like how houses in a village can spawn in Minecraft, but once they have spawned the "house" does not really exist except in our minds; it is simply a collection of blocks that can be manipulated individually.

[xsebek]

I would still like to make the base easier to spot when it starts near a forest. Sometimes when I open a Creative world it takes me a while to find it.

At least for the background, I would like to have some structure that would highlight the base, like some flying saucer.

Maybe some debris near the starting zone like in Factorio would work? But that is not very original.

Or just "burned ground" terrain, to mark where you landed? That could be nice when visually looking for the starting point once the base gets tank treads and drives away.

[byorgey]

I like the "burned ground" idea, that should be pretty easy to add.

[xsebek]

@byorgey I was looking at this just yesterday, thanks for updating this :+1:

Should be really easy to add another world function modifier when starting the game. We already have the findGoodOffset.

It might be a good idea to make it configurable, not just for scenarios but also for iterating on a nice style without recompiling:

starting_patch:  # default null
  terrain: burned
  radius: 3

[byorgey]

Also related: #29.

[xsebek]

I suppose this could be done with the new World DSL.

@byorgey can we get coordinates relative to starting location? 🤔 If not, maybe we could add the features we are looking for using the DSL instead of searching the world for it. Kind of like Factorio adds starting patches around the base.

[byorgey]

Hmm, good question. The coordinates are always adjusted so the base starts at (0,0), but if you describe something at (0,0) using the DSL it will not end up there, since shifting the origin to find a good start location happens after interpreting the world DSL code. There is currently no way to use the world DSL to describe something that should be "wherever the base ends up". Potential solutions off the top of my head include:

• As you mention, instead of shifting the world to find a "good" start location, we could add "starting patches" near the base. Using the world DSL we could make them somewhat random so it the starting patches don't look the same every time. This is probably the simplest solution, but note it wouldn't really be possible to get things to match up in terms of biomes. That is, the starting patches would just be drawn on top of whatever happened to be there.
• Alternatively, we could add the "world shifting" as a primitive to the DSL, allowing us to control when the shifting happens and to continue to draw additional stuff on top of the shifted world.