Team play.

[lostprophet]

Drilixer, I\'m not sure you could build a house by yourself in real life. Moving large objects would be pretty hard, for one thing. You\'d be able to put up a tent, sure, but even if you could build a house it would take hours of real time.

[Isgrimnur]

Your forgeting that Drill is a kran so it would probably be quite easy for him to build a house especially if you didn\'t mind it made out of very large bricks!

[lostprophet]

Ah yeah sorry about that. Maybe different races could do certain tasks alone, but others would need help. Shortarse gnomes would definitely need some help, for example, and agile enkidukais could jump up and do the roof.

[Moogie]

Originally posted by derwoodly
ahhh, give it a chance Drilixer.

What is the difference between pressing the auto attack button and pressing the auto brick lay button.  When your character is buffed with the \"Skill of Free Mason\" spell he could laybricks 50% faster. If it stacked with a \" Haste of Management\" spell and a \"Strenght of Working class\" spell, the castle could be built over night!

-- you successfully set a brick.
-- you successfully set a brick.
-- you successfully set a brick.
-- you drop a brick!
-- you successfully set a brick!
-- you have built a wall!
-- you have increased your skill! (248)
-- your castle is done!

Sorry, but I just don\'t see anything even remotely similar to this will be happening any time soon. Areas, rooms or levels [Edit: sorry, not levels, not in this context anyway.] need to be constructed as an \'object\' with transitions into an interior/exterior cell (i.e. a new area or level), or a hollowed building object with texture-mapped walls both inside and out, within the current cell. The latter would require some pretty heavy atmosphere code, i.e. making sure rain does not fall through the house object and in the interior, keeping sunlight from casting shadows within the building object, etc etc.

Unless graphics technology greatly improves during the development of PS, I doubt we will be able to build things \'brick by brick\' like that. You also have to keep textures in mind... building a house or castle with correctly textured sides would be like constructing a giant jigsaw puzzle and would require hundreds, maybe thousands of texture files for each puzzle piece (brick).

Sorry to bust the bubble.

[Drilixer]

Originally posted by Mogura

Originally posted by derwoodly
ahhh, give it a chance Drilixer.

What is the difference between pressing the auto attack button and pressing the auto brick lay button.  When your character is buffed with the \"Skill of Free Mason\" spell he could laybricks 50% faster. If it stacked with a \" Haste of Management\" spell and a \"Strenght of Working class\" spell, the castle could be built over night!

-- you successfully set a brick.
-- you successfully set a brick.
-- you successfully set a brick.
-- you drop a brick!
-- you successfully set a brick!
-- you have built a wall!
-- you have increased your skill! (248)
-- your castle is done!

Sorry, but I just don\'t see anything even remotely similar to this will be happening any time soon. Areas, rooms or levels [Edit: sorry, not levels, not in this context anyway.] need to be constructed as an \'object\' with transitions into an interior/exterior cell (i.e. a new area or level), or a hollowed building object with texture-mapped walls both inside and out, within the current cell. The latter would require some pretty heavy atmosphere code, i.e. making sure rain does not fall through the house object and in the interior, keeping sunlight from casting shadows within the building object, etc etc.

Unless graphics technology greatly improves during the development of PS, I doubt we will be able to build things \'brick by brick\' like that. You also have to keep textures in mind... building a house or castle with correctly textured sides would be like constructing a giant jigsaw puzzle and would require hundreds, maybe thousands of texture files for each puzzle piece (brick).

Sorry to bust the bubble.

yeap if we are to have house building.. it will have to be done in \'large parts\' like how buildings slowly pop up in RTS games... and they will probably be predesigned from a list for a long time... don\'t expect custom designed houses for a long time... (unless if you force a dev to implement something you want designed...)

(but none of these things will come soon... the building skill will probably be one of the last to be implemented solely due to the complexity involved in creating it)

[Fish]

While I didn?t know a thread on a team building a project was going to wind up being a thread on building design but oh well I?ll go with it.

When it comes to how building project is produced I have this suggestion.

First you have to get the raw materials to the building site.  They?ll be a standard object that will look like raw materials at a building site.  Somebody might wanna mix it up and have several different objects but they?re all the same thing.  That object represents the storage space, kind of  a bank where all the raw materials go.  

Second the ground has to be prepped, digging a seller hole putting up pilings building a footing or something like that.  At that point there is another object which is the base.  The look of the base never really changes until its complete when the next stage is started.  To build the base you would grab oh say a brick from the raw materials pile and put it on the base.  Some processes might require no raw materials at all like digging.  Neither object would change form however at some point the raw materials pile might run out of bricks or the base gets completed.  At that point the base is done.

Third you have to frame it.  Pretty much the same is step two except now you?re getting wood for a wood structure stone for stone structure brick for brick structure and so on.

Fourth you finish it.  Same rules apply.  The roof goes on and the inside get completed.

You can only build buildings from plans.  This limits the number of styles of buildings to the ones that are actually available.  They can also only be built on a suitable piece of ground.  What is a suitable piece I ground is predetermined by the people running the game.  

Each set of plans has the amount of raw materials required to build a particular building on them.  If you fail to set a brick, a piece of timber, a chunk of stucco or whatever, that raw material is trash.  When buying the raw materials you have to consider the skill of the artisan placing the material and buy more.  A more complex set of plans requires better artisans or you will go throw a lot more material.

This approach solves a lot of problems.  Instead of having thousands of little objects you really only have two at one time.  Since there is only for versions of the building it cuts down on the number of objects that need to be designed.  Since your only working with approved building plans and a approved building site you won?t see buildings and a weird spots that look out of place with other buildings.  There would be some flexibility however.  There might be several acceptable buildings available for a particular spot.  New spots might be opened up at the request of players by the people running the game.

I really don?t think we?ll ever have custom-designed buildings.  But it might be possible to build them in a modular style with several buildings attached together to form one building.  But I wouldn?t expect that one real soon either.

I fully realizes this solution is not perfect.  However in gaming there are no perfect solutions only acceptable ones.  This one has the advantage of at least being reasonably simple to implement.

[Vengeance]

I like this way of doing this a lot.  Good thinking, both about fun and about us poor programmers who not only have to make this work, but have to make it work over everyone\'s modems, etc.

- Venge

[Drilixer]

yeap - good post I was actually interested enough to read the whole thing after Vengeance replied

[derwoodly]

I had intended the \"you lay a brick\"post to be funny.  I never thought you would actually see the bricks layed.

Building a castle could be done a lot like killing a mob, only the object would be stationary.  The castle would grow in steps like previous post suggested.  I agree, Mogura, it is not practical to build it brick by brick.

Just like in Warcraft, the more people in the group the faster the castle would be built.  Adding specialized characters could increase the rate. For example:

    Having a forman class character in the group might
    speed up building 25%.  

    Having a union rep character could add 25% to the
    cost and slow the building down by 25%, but give
    every one 50% more experience.

[Fish]

I kinda figured that.  But I didn?t just want to contradict  Mogura because she?s essentially correct.

Back to Team playing which is the real point of this thread.  You brought out a pretty good point, maybe by accident, in a previous post.  Magical spell?s too buff individuals or a billed team.  Before you come up with spells and names it?s a good idea to scope out what affects you want.

I?ve got a few ideas on categories, there has got to be more out there.
1. Increases speed of building.
2.  Temporarily races level of builder.
3.   Create a pet that will help you.  Essentially an NPC that helps out in one task.
4.  Summons raw material.  The developers might not want to do this.  It could upset the economic balance of the game.
5.    Extend raw material.  Gets twice as much done with the same piece of wood.

I really think the developer should stay away from spells that accomplish tasks outright.  For instance a spell that would build a seller hole with no work at all.  Those spells would completely defeat the purpose of people building things.  Poof you have a house, and you might as well not have trade skills at all.

And then there is having magical equipment.  For instance ? Great shovel of the big dig? a shovel the digs twice as much material if you could with a normal shovel.  The very best to shovel can be.

Then there is normal equipment that makes the job much easier.  Something as simple as a wheelbarrow can have major implications.  It?s the difference between hauling dirt on your back or being able to haul five to ten times that.  Believe it or not the wheelbarrow is a major advancement in human history.

So the advantage of having a team instead of an individual is that two people can do the work of three.  Some tasks like moving large blocks of stones cannot be accomplished by one person.  Another point is that nobody can do everything well.  You have to have other talents on site even though it?s a good idea to have several skills.  In some cases you might want to have the ultimate mason.  The greatest bricklayer there ever was.  In other cases all you really need is an adequate mason.  It all depends on the job.  It should be possible to hire an NPC but they should be really expensive.

Of course there is a lot of solitary skill building like making furniture for carpenter or building swords as a weapon smith but large projects require people.  And anybody who thinks that building a house is not a group event obviously hasn?t built one or is incredibly patient.

[sal]

Hello everybody,
  I have recently downloaded PS client had a look to it. It looks promising really. And the best as long as i read thru the forums(and interviews at several web sites), i have rising hopes for this game. I like the idea of this game being(in some ways) the \"linux\" of the mmorpg world. So here is my contribution for the topic, about teaming:

  I think that the game mechanics \"forcing\" teaming up would be a bad idea. There are people out there who performs best when working alone not in a team. The game mechanics shouldnt force these people to a situation which they think is boring, inefficient etc.

  But I also think that there should be a limit to what one person can do. To be able to build a house/tent but not a castle is one example.

  I am not an American but I have been in US for more than 2 years and I had the time to observe that Americans(at least the instructors) are quite fond of group study as a learning method. But this is not a method that everyone(I, for one) embraces. Some people think that learning is a lonely process most of the time. So I think in terms of progressing through the game(I dont know how that will exactly be... lvls, skills or both maybe) average player should not be forced to group with others.
 
  Of course a group of people will kill a monster or build a house faster than a single guy but there should be a balance to it(I mean if you build a house with 5 people you should, roughly speaking, get x/4 experience or skill in house building where x stands for the experience you would gain by building the house alone). And the time required to build 5 houses with 5 people should be equal to the time one person builds one house. So experience/skill/lvl-wise a group of 5 people is better of like, 20% than working alone, but not more than that.
   
  I have played a couple of mmorpgs, mostly DAOC. Things were just opposite to what i said above, and that bothered me a lot( and i know  a lot of people who are bothered with this also). To be able to progress with a decent pace you have to group in DAOC( I am not taking into account a couple of particular class/specs). Not only that but you also have to form the group with correct combination of classes. This takes a lot of time because even if you are a part of a community it is hard to bring together all the correct people. So you end up spending most of your time( I had a lot of occasions where I had to wait more than 1 hour to make a group) trying to gather a good group whereas I would personally like to adventure in that time.
 
  So my final word is do not reward grouping too much that the solo player is unable to compete progression/achievement-wise with the groups.