Guest
11/27/2014
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Hullo lovely Failbetter folks,
I've been playing SS more consistently these couple of days, and there's been a lot of nifty new stuff from when I last played a couple releases ago. I really like the new combat, and the new islands are stunning (especially the Dawn Machine! Literal shivers when I first saw it). I do have a couple questions though:
1) Could we have an option to store stuff in London? A bank or safe, whatever. For example, the Merchant Venturer wants love stories, but so far I've only got one, which means I have to keep hauling that thing around. Can we buy or rent space to put away stuff until they're needed? (Or is there an option like that and I've just completely ignored it thus far. I know that there's Secure Storage but I have no idea what it actually does.)
2) Story-wise: are we going to get a story that involves NORTH and Mr. Eaten and fun shenanigans with space-bats being drowned in wells? I've always been fascinated by the Seeking storyline even though I didn't get to participate in it before it was yoinked, and having an equally self-destructive quest in SS would be fun. (Fun. Heh.) I know there are some murmurs here and there in various northern ports, but will there be a lengthier story option to explore?
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+1
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fortluna
Posts: 306
11/27/2014
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I would also love having a warehouse in London! Give them the possibility of getting looted, whatever, but my sensible merchant captain with tens of thousands of echoes would much rather invest in storage before splurging on fancy homes. (do houses let you store things in them?)
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zwol
Posts: 40
11/27/2014
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Thirding the option to store stuff in London.
Regarding NORTH and Mr. Eaten, there are some things already that relate, although the connection is not spelled out. Have you found Void's Approach yet?
EDIT: Perhaps that's what you meant by "murmurs here and there in various northern ports", which I managed to read right past (sorry!) ... in which case I'll say that opening the gate has now been implemented (as of Carnelian, I think).
edited by zwol on 11/27/2014
edited by zwol on 11/27/2014
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Bluebeard
Posts: 25
11/27/2014
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I don't know what NORTH is, but I would love a Warehouse. Perhaps it could be an extension of your Lodgings, like "Buy storage room" and then you have your personal warehouse.
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Dark Blot - A not very gentlemanly gentlething
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Nenjin
Posts: 171
11/27/2014
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The request for additional off-ship storage has been made several times now, going back several updates. I don't recall if they've explicitly said yes or no to it.
If it was done, I think it would work best as a service you pay for on a regular basis. Perhaps you pay more, the more you're storing. Perhaps you pay every time you make port at FL. The scales have been tipping toward "regular money in" with the last few updates I feel, and storage would be a good place to optionally tip it toward money out.
edited by Nenjin on 11/27/2014
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Sam Powick
Posts: 28
11/27/2014
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I still think this is a good idea, but I'm starting to lean towards the idea that the different ship types are designed to allow for more storage if you so desire. For example, I upgraded to the merchant ship, which has a hold of 100, and lugging items for the venturer around for long periods of time became less of a problem. I realise its a later-game thing, but maybe this is intended.
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Sides with them at any opportunity. Studies them. Waits for the opportune time.
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Sam~Powick
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cyberpunkdreams
Posts: 527
11/28/2014
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I'd like to see storage too, but you have to remember that in many ways Sunless Sea is essentially a skinned version of StoryNexus (at least in the way that qualities, stories and physical objects work - not the real time elements), so I think something such as that would be almost impossible to implement.
So far in my own StoryNexus game, the player can buy a safe and store money in there (and yes, it can get stolen), and I have plans for storing other things too, but it'll be a lot of work to implement.
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Seeking alpha testers for a new StoryNexus cyberpunk RPG.
Welcoming friends, rivals, sightseers; a life of some importance in the Neath.
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Guest
11/28/2014
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cyberpunkdreams wrote:
I'd like to see storage too, but you have to remember that in many ways Sunless Sea is essentially a skinned version of StoryNexus (at least in the way that qualities, stories and physical objects work - not the real time elements), so I think something such as that would be almost impossible to implement.
Hmm. I haven't messed with SN much, but off the top of my head, one fairly hack-y way that you could do it is to implement a storylet that takes items from your hold and gives you a quality in return (i.e. "store one love story in the bank" -> "quality x: 1 love story in bank!"). That then opens up another storylet that requires quality x and gives you a love story while erasing the quality. I mean, it's rather gimmicky and I'm sure there's loads of better ways to do it, but you could effectively "fake" storage in the SN framework this way.
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cyberpunkdreams
Posts: 527
11/28/2014
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nightday wrote:
Hmm. I haven't messed with SN much, but off the top of my head, one fairly hack-y way that you could do it is to implement a storylet that takes items from your hold and gives you a quality in return (i.e. "store one love story in the bank" -> "quality x: 1 love story in bank!"). That then opens up another storylet that requires quality x and gives you a love story while erasing the quality. I mean, it's rather gimmicky and I'm sure there's loads of better ways to do it, but you could effectively "fake" storage in the SN framework this way.
Yes, that's the way you'd do it. The trouble is you'd need to duplicate that functionality for every single storable item - that would be tedious for the player and for the developers  . But if you were just to do it with a few key items that would work.
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Seeking alpha testers for a new StoryNexus cyberpunk RPG.
Welcoming friends, rivals, sightseers; a life of some importance in the Neath.
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Spacemarine9
Posts: 2234
11/28/2014
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That would require a quality for every item you could feasibly store in the game, though. And also branches to convert all those items into stored items, and branches to remove those items (which would probably have to be selective because you don't want to take everything out all of the time.) This wouldn't be impossible to implement, but it would probably take an incredibly long time and would also be pretty awkward to actually use ingame.
That is probably the best way to do it in the Storynexus framework, but it should probably be possible to hardcode something in, maybe. The question is, of course, if it's even something they want to do. It's an often requested feature, and it would be kinda nice, but it would also sort of trivialize some things (like the Merchant Venturer's hefty cargo, which could be shelved until you actually want to finish his quest)
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my rats will blot out the sun
Ratgames
FL lore/mechanics questions and answers
#FallenLondon IRC (irc.synirc.net) Channel! Click to join via Mibbit.
#SunlessSea IRC channel! Like the above, but zee-ier.
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Rocket Heeled Jack
Posts: 311
11/30/2014
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I'd like to have not only a warehouse option, but also a dock option, because while I'm now in a dreadnought, I sometimes have jobs that I want to do in another ship (Dreads are all well and good, but for doing runs around the far side of the world, they're more than a bit expensive), it just makes more sense to have the option to rent or buy space in London where you can hold things over, which would then possibly lead to options like people raiding your warehouse and other things. I had the same problem of carrying around useless stuff for a while, then just gave up on carrying it around and gave up on the story that went with it, instead doing it a different way.
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Rocket~Heeled~Jack
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Nenjin
Posts: 171
11/30/2014
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I too really wanted a way to own multiple ships, but the design has been seemingly tipping away from that option. (What with automatically trading in your old ship when you buy a new one.) I believe one reason it hasn't happened is this: we don't have storage. In old updates, all ships had the same # of slots and the game simply moved guns and your engine ect....between the slots of two ships. This is no longer the case, which means it would dump the items to your hold if it couldn't equip them. But what happens when you are at hull capacity....? Lots of unresolved questions about how that stuff would work. But it does seem like they originally wanted to go this way, because there are some ships that simply cannot reach the deeper parts of the Zee, and I don't think they intended for players who picked those ships to simply not play half the game.
Re: Storage. I don't think that would be so hard. Sunless Sea isn't built off the StoryNexus to my knowledge. (I think it's Unity?) There is already an interface for moving cargo from your Hull to somewhere else (currently overboard.) I don't think it would be so difficult to create a container for things moved from Cargo to this container, and back again. The logic for figuring out hull capacity and moving multiple quantities is already there and works. It just needs the logic for storing a specific set of items and recalling them correctly created. (And the mechanics to balance such a feature, as well.)
edited by Nenjin on 11/30/2014
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cyberpunkdreams
Posts: 527
11/30/2014
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Nenjin wrote:
Re: Storage. I don't think that would be so hard. Sunless Sea isn't built off the StoryNexus to my knowledge. (I think it's Unity?) There is already an interface for moving cargo from your Hull to somewhere else (currently overboard.) I don't think it would be so difficult to create a container for things moved from Cargo to this container, and back again. The logic for figuring out hull capacity and moving multiple quantities is already there and works. It just needs the logic for storing a specific set of items and recalling them correctly created. (And the mechanics to balance such a feature, as well.)
The engine is Unity and that's what the game is built in, but all the story design, etc., is done in StoryNexus and then imported across. This is why everything is done with storylets, qualities, etc. So there's no connection with storynexus.com itself when it's running (as far as I know!). It's more that it's kind of running a version of StoryNexus within Unity.
Anyway, dumping stuff is easy in StoryNexus - just remove the quality. Storing is hard as you'd need a "Stored" version of every quality. That's possible, just cumbersome. As noted above, I do it with my own StoryNexus game, but only for one quality so far.
That said, doing it with ships would be much easier, as there are less ships to handle and you only have one of each. Dealing with your ship's equipment would require a bit of thought but it would be possible. And I agree, it seems very limiting only to have one ship! but I must admit that although I backed Sunless Sea to a relatively high level on Kickstarter, I've not played it in months...
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edited by cyberpunkdreams on 12/1/2014
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Seeking alpha testers for a new StoryNexus cyberpunk RPG.
Welcoming friends, rivals, sightseers; a life of some importance in the Neath.
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Nenjin
Posts: 171
11/30/2014
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Ah, well that explains quite a bit. I imagine importing data from Storynexus into Unity is cause for a lot of bugs.
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Rocket Heeled Jack
Posts: 311
12/1/2014
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Maybe, but if you're going to have a game that's perfect for people when it actually gets released, best to address things now while there's something to be spoken about and not complained about...
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Rocket~Heeled~Jack
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KatarinaNavane
Posts: 462
12/1/2014
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Another idea that might help-- if your hold is full and you receive a reward while on an island that would fill up your hold, maybe they could say something like "come back later when you have room"? Not sure if that would be easier or harder, but it might work with some things, like the Island of Cats rewards.
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Storynexus sn Katarina Navane.
My art page (much of which is dark, Victorian, and/or full of tentacles): http://www.facebook.com/demonkittydesigns
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+1
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Rocket Heeled Jack
Posts: 311
12/1/2014
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KatarinaNavane wrote:
Another idea that might help-- if your hold is full and you receive a reward while on an island that would fill up your hold, maybe they could say something like "come back later when you have room"? Not sure if that would be easier or harder, but it might work with some things, like the Island of Cats rewards.
Now that's an excellent idea...
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Rocket~Heeled~Jack
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Nocculi
Posts: 22
12/3/2014
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I don't think item storage necessarily needs to be Storynexus compatible? Plenty of things in the game don't seem to be - like fuel consumption, NPC spawning, and combat!
So if you want to store 10 Nonsensical Esotericas, you'd remove that much of the quality and note that value on a Unity object. And vice versa for retrieving it.
This would happen in a Unity interface and outside of any storylets, and thus not need to interact with Storynexus stuff at all. Yes, this means that stored items would be invisible to other storylets, but that seems fairly sensical! The narrative doesn't necessarily need to know that you have 3 Acadian Peppermints or 23 Skipping Stones from the Shores of the Lethe stashed in your warehouse.
. . .
And yeah: generally, any programming task that "looks pretty easy!" from the outside tends to be vastly more complicated in practice. But the claim that it can't be done "because Storynexus!" doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
It's just something that requires a reasonable amount of work. Which includes sorting out all the fiddly little details, like all the warehouse management GUI, and defining/handling for items that *shouldn't* be storable, and script hooks for if they do end up wanting to add a "Stowed: Nonsensical Esotericas" quality for purposes of your Esotericas combusting while you're at sea or something, and doing up art assets, and probably a half dozen other facets of implementation.
And this is all programming work that's been going into combat and NPCs and legacies potentially other, more pressing stuff that *also* requires a ton of work. So it's likely a priorities thing, as development often is.
(It is a feature I'd quite like to see, though. Just...adding another +1)
edited by Nocculi on 12/3/2014
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merusdraconis
Posts: 52
12/6/2014
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I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to create a 'warehouse' 'player', which can take qualities, and use the functionality StoryNexus has for storylines involving two players. That'd also mean that the warehouse can have its own qualities, like 'on fire' or 'carefully guarded', but it would also mean that players wouldn't have visibility into what was in the warehouse through StoryNexus, which while interesting - inventory would be an action - goes against the design principles of StoryNexus.
Edit: it would also open the possibility of an easter egg where you play as a warehouse.
edited by merusdraconis on 12/6/2014
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treichle
Posts: 57
12/6/2014
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Warehouse Simulator 2015.
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/treichle
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