Website listing different ONI designs

[dawkirst]

(x-post from here)

I thought of a fun hobby project. Imagine a website where you can upload a screenshot of a specific ONI "design" (e.g. the way your bathroom works, or the way your power plant works) and tag it with a set of categories (e.g. "bathroom", "mid-game"). The website will then allow you to browse and vote for other users' designs, and it could link back to posts on this sub to discuss a particular design.

What do you think, would this be useful / fun to anyone?

[beowulf2010]

It could definitely be useful, but until the game is "finished" there will be a lot of outdated designs to wade through. 

It'd definitely be easier than keeping a manual list of which forum post Neotuck's posted his Meat Farm in versus QuQuasar's SPOM MkII, etc. 

[Yoma_Nosme]

Idk if this site would be a good idea right now. Game is still in early development and things will change. So designs will become obsolete. 

Further I think this could prevent people in one way or the other to use their Gray matter and fantasy. 

Third. How would designs be rated? One would have to build it and then rate it to be objective. Ofc 5/5 points because it works, duh...But who would tear down everything just to build another design to see if it's as good or worse. And worst case tear it down again because the first one was better. Or it's just as good and you give it 5/5 points, meaning there would be like 20 almost identical bathrooms with no real distinction which is better...

[clickrush]

Neat Idea but I would rather enrich/update this wiki: https://oxygennotincluded.gamepedia.com/

instead of making a new site. You can post your designs in the form of guides there and update outdated info along the way.

[dawkirst]

1 hour ago, beowulf2010 said:

It could definitely be useful, but until the game is "finished" there will be a lot of outdated designs to wade through. 

It'd definitely be easier than keeping a manual list of which forum post Neotuck's posted his Meat Farm in versus QuQuasar's SPOM MkII, etc. 

Hi, thanks for responding! As I mentioned in a similar comment here, it is possible to include a build number with each design submission, making it later possible to filter out outdated versions.

1 hour ago, Yoma_Nosme said:

Idk if this site would be a good idea right now. Game is still in early development and things will change. So designs will become obsolete. 

Further I think this could prevent people in one way or the other to use their Gray matter and fantasy. 

Third. How would designs be rated? One would have to build it and then rate it to be objective. Ofc 5/5 points because it works, duh...But who would tear down everything just to build another design to see if it's as good or worse. And worst case tear it down again because the first one was better. Or it's just as good and you give it 5/5 points, meaning there would be like 20 almost identical bathrooms with no real distinction which is better...

Thanks for responding! Similar to what clickrush said, as I mentioned in a similar comment here, it is possible to include a build number with each design submission, making it later possible to filter out outdated versions.

It might prevent them from using their grey matter, but it might also inspire them to try out new ideas! What do you think?

About rating the designs: that's a good question. I agree with you that a simple 5-star rating system would be too simple. Maybe something a bit more nuanced. Any ideas?

1 hour ago, clickrush said:

Neat Idea but I would rather enrich/update this wiki: https://oxygennotincluded.gamepedia.com/

instead of making a new site. You can post your designs in the form of guides there and update outdated info along the way.

Very valid observation. Do you know if Gamepedia makes it possible to "filter by tags", so that users can easily browse the designs they're interested in?

[beowulf2010]

Maybe having an officially curated robust tagging system instead of numerical ratings would be better. It's be easier to search for "self powered" "oxygen" than to look through all oxygen plants with arbitrary ratings numbers. 

[dawkirst]

22 minutes ago, beowulf2010 said:

Maybe having an officially curated robust tagging system instead of numerical ratings would be better. It's be easier to search for "self powered" "oxygen" than to look through all oxygen plants with arbitrary ratings numbers. 

Could be a solution. Thanks!

[Yoma_Nosme]

@dawkirst

First let me thank you for taking my criticism for positive critique since I'm not against your suggestion but I express myself sometimes a bit to direct and people understand it sometimes as negative response. and for asking for further input from my side. 

Now. What I would understand as an ideal systems when it comes to sharing builds, since it would have to be kind of that, otherwise rating would only be by the looks, would be a blueprint system similar to mods in steam workbench or what's the name where people could download the blueprint and lay out the blueprint and let dupes build it.

This would insure consistency of the design and prevent missed wires, wrong materials etc. Thus making a fair rating possible at all.

Unfortunately the game does not incorporate such a blueprint mechanic yet outside of debug. Btw. For normal game the blueprint would have to be "sliced" in stages. Because dupes just build what they want first and not what should come first.

Sure it would be possible to share designs with pictures but for more complex builds I predict alterations in the design or materials automation or sensors etc making the original design just a sketch so to say. 

This brings me to my conclusion on the rating system that it would be inconsistent right now anyway. 

To conclude. TLDR I think a "showing off" design page sorted by rooms (creating a misc category for what can not be described as part of a room) and sorted by date and sorted by build in debug/survival would be possible but without a rating system since it would be inconsistent.

 

[dawkirst]

9 hours ago, Yoma_Nosme said:

First let me thank you for taking my criticism for positive critique since I'm not against your suggestion but I express myself sometimes a bit to direct and people understand it sometimes as negative response. and for asking for further input from my side. 

It's okay, I'm Dutch - I'm always direct

9 hours ago, Yoma_Nosme said:

Unfortunately the game does not incorporate such a blueprint mechanic yet outside of debug. Btw. For normal game the blueprint would have to be "sliced" in stages. Because dupes just build what they want first and not what should come first.

The "slices" idea is a very good one.

9 hours ago, Yoma_Nosme said:

To conclude. TLDR I think a "showing off" design page sorted by rooms (creating a misc category for what can not be described as part of a room) and sorted by date and sorted by build in debug/survival would be possible but without a rating system since it would be inconsistent.

You might be right here. Let me think it over some more.

[Cataca]

10 hours ago, Yoma_Nosme said:

To conclude. TLDR I think a "showing off" design page sorted by rooms (creating a misc category for what can not be described as part of a room) and sorted by date and sorted by build in debug/survival would be possible but without a rating system since it would be inconsistent.

I dont think the ONI community is that bad, but keep in mind that a rating system has more uses than just sorting by popularity, it also enables the person taking care of the site to easily filter out and delete posts that are potentially using the site for... unintended purposes. I'd at the very least add a "report abuse" button on there.

That said, i personally think that is way too much effort for too little gain. You could just as easily make a forum post (just like this one), where a dedicated archiver prowls the forums, and links to forum posts and edits a OP which is organized in subcategories. Other people likewise can post in  that thread to show of their builds, and since the OP is getting edited anyhow, people find everything they need right away. I think people are more likely to search the forums for solutions to their problems either way.

[BlueLance]

I think it would be a great idea, but a design could be tagged with the update it was made for, and if it is still viable in the most current patch it can be re tagged etc.

[dawkirst]

11 hours ago, Cataca said:

 

21 hours ago, Yoma_Nosme said:

To conclude. TLDR I think a "showing off" design page sorted by rooms (creating a misc category for what can not be described as part of a room) and sorted by date and sorted by build in debug/survival would be possible but without a rating system since it would be inconsistent.

I dont think the ONI community is that bad, but keep in mind that a rating system has more uses than just sorting by popularity, it also enables the person taking care of the site to easily filter out and delete posts that are potentially using the site for... unintended purposes. I'd at the very least add a "report abuse" button on there.

 

For sure.

 

11 hours ago, Cataca said:

That said, i personally think that is way too much effort for too little gain. You could just as easily make a forum post (just like this one), where a dedicated archiver prowls the forums, and links to forum posts and edits a OP which is organized in subcategories. Other people likewise can post in  that thread to show of their builds, and since the OP is getting edited anyhow, people find everything they need right away. I think people are more likely to search the forums for solutions to their problems either way.

Yes, you might be right.

[blash365]

A page like this stands and falls with the quality of its searchfunction. Adding a relevant game-version to each build would suffice to make it viable in the current EA-phase. But finding good qualifiers to identify different builds is the main difficulty.

[Seeker89]

I'm going to go into a bunny trail here... But there is a point... 

I played a lot of kerbal space program more so when it was an alpha. So I compare most gaming to that, and how the forums acted too. 

Most can post crafts on the forums or mods. But someone made Kerbal X to share crafts easier and find them. 

If you can make something like that for this game. I think that would be good.