My Ideas

[tangmcgame]

I've been playing and loving this game so far. I had a few ideas I thought I'd just toss out there.

Slingshot

Crafted out of rope and sticks. It hits about as hard as a spear, but does so from range. There's a catch, though: it uses rocks as ammo.

Lasso, Hay, and a Beefalo Pasture

Craft the lasso out of rope. Hay is grass that's dried on a fire. You feed hay to a beefalo until you get a speech cue that it's ready to be domesticated, then you use the lasso to lead it back to your pasture. Once inside, it can be fed hay to produce manure as usual, and every so often can be milked. Beefalo Milk can be used in cooking recipes and to make cheese and butter (maybe a new tool would be needed).

Petification Station

Any captured animal (one that shows up in your inventory) can be placed in this structure. That creature becomes your pet. It will stay leashed to the structure, but it should have a wide enough range that it can wander around your base camp. If the programmers can swing it, you could teach it behaviors by scolding it when it does something you don't like or feeding it when it does something good.

Super Secret Pet: A pet rock that inexplicably grows over time into a boulder. Of course, when you mine it, it will rumble sadly with every swing of your pick. Additional Change: Hounds and Spiders hit by a sleep dart may be picked up in your inventory (and therefore placed in the Petification Station).

Beneficent Transmogrifier

It functions like a crock pot, but the recipes are more precise. It essentially allows you to convert certain kinds of resources into another kind. For instance, two sticks and two grass might get you one rock. A stick, a flower, a pine cone and a grass will get you three rocks. The only problem with this is that it'd essentially just be used to make rocks.

An alternative would be to give Transmogrifier a single slot and you can put any one item inside. Every item has a list of other items it could be transmogrified into with their own probabilities. For instance, Grass could end up as a Stick (70%), a Carrot (20%), a Pumpkin (9%) or Gold (1%).

Improbable Juicing Contraption

Another item that functions like a crock pot, but you can put any items into it. The recipes are fairly precise. The results, instead of food, are tonics which are essentially potions. There would be no healing tonics (for health or hunger), but instead tonics would give you some benefit that lasts for a day (or night). Examples:

Elixir of Curiosity - When you reveal new areas on the map, more is revealed than would ordinarily be. A regular Louis or Clark.

Hyper Tonic - You walk faster for the rest of the day. Run along.

Cat's Eye Philter - You can see in the dark for a whole night. Now you can see what's eating you!

Flying Balloon and Tethers

Essentially, this would be a fast travel system. You have to research the balloon and tether separately. The balloon would have some pretty steep material costs. Tethers can be built anywhere on the map and would have a moderate resource cost. Once the balloon is constructed (it must be constructed at a tether) and you have at least two tethers built, you can fuel the balloon (exactly how you would a regular fire) until you get the prompt that it's ready to fly. Then you climb on board and select one of your tethers and the balloon will fly there.

Edited December 18, 2012 by tangmcgame

[mobius187]

I think it's all too common for a new member to create a thread that's a "wall of text". Of course they always learn too late this often intimidates other forum members from responding. I mean, it takes a long time to properly respond. Ah well... I'll respond because I would hate to let all this hard work go to waste.

Slingshot

Crafted out of rope and sticks. It hits about as hard as a spear, but does so from range. There's a catch, though: it uses rocks as ammo.

The slingshot is a fairly common idea that has appeared before on the forums. As it's a slingshot you usually need a rubber component for it to work, in comparison to a sling. To this end the common solution has been to suggest that the spikey tree in the swamp could be a rubber tree, and by using a new invention, the rubber could be drained from it and used as a component in the slingshot. However, I would say it does less damage than a spear, I mean what would you want, to be impaled by a spear or hit with a rock? Using stones is a trade-off for the fact that it's a ranged weapon, while the spear is melee. By simply running and firing you can try to stay away from enemies, and for this reason the slingshot should deal less damage.

Lasso, Hay, and a Beefalo Pasture

Craft the lasso out of rope. Hay is grass that's dried on a fire. You feed hay to a beefalo until you get a speech cue that it's ready to be domesticated, then you use the lasso to lead it back to your pasture. Once inside, it can be fed hay to produce manure as usual, and every so often can be milked. Beefalo Milk can be used in cooking recipes and to make cheese and butter (maybe a new tool would be needed).

Well I'm not overtly fond of "easy domestication" as it smacks too much of Minecraft. In similar suggestion threads the idea was that eventually the Devs will add baby beefalo and make adult beefalo hostile to players who get too close to them. The player should be able to use the beefalo hat though to pretend they're a baby beefalo too and then use grass to lure the baby beefalo away. From here there are two camps on how the baby beefalo could be contained. One group is waiting for walls to be implemented, which the Devs have told us will be on the way (once AI pathfinding is upgraded), the otehr camp wants a tethered rope/spike to which the baby beefalo could be tied. Then you have to keep feeding the baby beefalo grass (3-4 per day) until it grows into an adult (~30 days). After that the beefalo will produce milk and so on, similar to what you suggested.

On a side note, some player believe the beefalo hat would allow players, pretending to be a baby beefalo, to harvest milk to adult beefalo.

Petification Station

Any captured animal (one that shows up in your inventory) can be placed in this structure. That creature becomes your pet. It will stay leashed to the structure, but it should have a wide enough range that it can wander around your base camp. If the programmers can swing it, you could teach it behaviors by scolding it when it does something you don't like or feeding it when it does something good.

Right now we have the bird cage, for birds. And we know that rabbits can also be caught alive... and maybe fish (they stay alive for 1-2 seconds on the ground after all). Odds are the Devs may allow us to keep them as pet, either for breeding/eating purposes or as pets. However if I was trying to survive, I'm not sure how many "pets" I would need.

Super Secret Pet: A pet rock that inexplicably grows over time into a boulder. Of course, when you mine it, it will rumble sadly with every swing of your pick. Additional Change: Hounds and Spiders hit by a sleep dart may be picked up in your inventory (and therefore placed in the Petification Station).

Strange.

Beneficent Transmogrifier

It functions like a crock pot, but the recipes are more precise. It essentially allows you to convert certain kinds of resources into another kind. For instance, two sticks and two grass might get you one rock. A stick, a flower, a pine cone and a grass will get you three rocks. The only problem with this is that it'd essentially just be used to make rocks.

An alternative would be to give Transmogrifier a single slot and you can put any one item inside. Every item has a list of other items it could be transmogrified into with their own probabilities. For instance, Grass could end up as a Stick (70%), a Carrot (20%), a Pumpkin (9%) or Gold (1%).

While I could see this as solving the issue with finite flint and stones, I think resource management is an aspect of the game the player needs to handle on their own and not benefit from a device that simplifies the whole process. So I would say I'm against this idea.

Improbable Juicing Contraption

Another item that functions like a crock pot, but you can put any items into it. The recipes are fairly precise. The results, instead of food, are tonics which are essentially potions. There would be no healing tonics (for health or hunger), but instead tonics would give you some benefit that lasts for a day (or night). Examples:

Elixir of Curiosity - When you reveal new areas on the map, more is revealed than would ordinarily be. A regular Louis or Clark.

Hyper Tonic - You walk faster for the rest of the day. Run along.

Cat's Eye Philter - You can see in the dark for a whole night. Now you can see what's eating you!

Well I'm against potions on principal, but I'm not against the idea of crafting tonics and juices to drink. I don't know if we need boosts to speed and we certainly don't need nightvision (as that would spoil the game). I'm also curious whether we need a special invention to create these tonics and drinks... or whether we can just use the crock pot. I know, it's a crock pot and not a juicer... but it would allow for multi-purpose functionality (i.e. less stuff to build/place).

Flying Balloon and Tethers

Essentially, this would be a fast travel system. You have to research the balloon and tether separately. The balloon would have some pretty steep material costs. Tethers can be built anywhere on the map and would have a moderate resource cost. Once the balloon is constructed (it must be constructed at a tether) and you have at least two tethers built, you can fuel the balloon (exactly how you would a regular fire) until you get the prompt that it's ready to fly. Then you climb on board and select one of your tethers and the balloon will fly there.

Nah, I don't need a fast travel system as I think the characters move fast enough for me in teh game.