Late-game IMG sinks: clothes and recipes

I've been thinking about ways that high-level players could add items to the game without needing someone to design a new art asset for the new item, which seems to me to be the most obvious bottleneck. I've thought of a couple of ways that item creation might be automated, with a one-time investment of art and code.

One easy thing might be to create a set of clothing elements that could be combined into new garments, in much the way that the butlers are built from a finite pool of parts. So, for example, a player who wanted to create a new shirt design could choose from a couple of body designs (v-neck, turtleneck, peasant blouse, etc), a couple of sleeve types, and a couple of decorative elements (pocket, long tails, ruffled front, emblem, etc). All the elements would be available in a range of colors and/or patterns, which you could mix and match to create a finite but very large set of new clothing items.

To design a wardrobe item, let's say a player needs both a new level of Fiber Arts and a single-use card from the upgrade deck. The cards would be expensive in IMG and sufficiently rare that players might have to wait a while for one to come up; this would slow down the creation of new items. When you spend the card, you go to a design menu, select the garment type (shirt, coat, shoes-- it's possible that these would all need different upgrade cards), select the elements and colors you want, and name the resulting garment. That combination of elements now can't be designed by other players, but it goes into the wardrobe menu and can be acquired and worn. (Or, possibly, if you have Fiber Arts III you can make a garment just for yourself, and if you have IV you can make one everyone can wear.)

Recipes would be more complicated, because you'd have to have a pretty simple algorithm to decide how much energy they were worth as well as a more complicated one to match the recipe with appropriate art assets. From the player's side, though, they'd work similarly-- you'd spend your card, and be taken to a menu where you would choose the tool to use (saucepan, knife and board, etc), the type of recipe (sammich, salad, stew, etc), and then specify the ingredients. There would need to a set of art elements for each recipe type, which could be combined with designs for garnishes and serving dishes-- that last would probably be the biggest category, since if you had a few shapes of plate and bowl available in a wide range of colors, you could get a lot of unique looks for the same type of food item.

Serving dishes would probably be assigned automatically according to what's available, but the choice of other assets could be dependent on the ingredients. So, for a new pasta recipe, the same bowl of noodles could be shown in red if the recipe contains tomatoes, green if it has spinach, yellow if it has curry, and brown if it has mushrooms. Pickles in a sammich recipe could trigger one of a couple pickle garnishes-- left side of plate, right side, speared through top.

Both of these would take a little work to implement, but they'd run by themselves until the combinations of art elements ran out.

Thoughts? I'd love for there to be ways to create new thing in the game, and these seem like comparatively simple ways to do that.

Comments

  • I was thinking more along the lines of Rook attacks, Group Homes, and Giant Temples, as img sinks. Community focused activities, but could also add high cost img options for Home Streets.

    If submissions for various items does happen, it should be accessible to all lvls, and not take parts of the game to add.
    And its easiest if its items that do not change gameplay or affect balance, which food, drink, potions & powders, do. Adding new functional items is not as simple as just adding the item

    If we are going to create stuff i think it should stick to deco and clothing items, since they are appearance only, the balance issues are minimal, and as long as the item is not offensive, and is voted in (or something simmilar) , it should be fairly simple to maintain / monitor / and edit
  • I was also thinking along the lines of a customizable flag you could put in your yard.
  • I do like these ideas. Players like myself didn't engage in many iMG sink activities often, preferring to casually explore the world and meet new faces. I didn't deal with Rook attacks often, having never really been caught up in any. I would love to be able to create the orange-suit blue-tie combo I tend to represent myself in, with an orange top hat with a blue band to match.
  • I like the clothing design idea. I'm not so sure about making it available to everybody but it would be fun to make my own shirt or pants with different patterns. Using a large amount of img to do it is also a good idea.
  • @"Lyrical Dejavu"-- I want rook attacks and temples/guildhalls too; it's not a contest. There's room for a lot of new content, and I think it's good to have a lot of ideas on the table.

    I agree that new items, at least at first, should not affect gameplay balance-- that's why I suggested designing new food, not drinks, since most food doesn't have buffs. It has energy costs to make and energy rewards for consumption, but those could be determined by a fairly simple formula-- add up the energy values of the ingredients and assign a multiplier determined by the tool used.

    And while I am thinking in terms of IMG sinks, I don't think new item design should be restricted by level, but by skill attainment, which is not the same thing. But it makes sense from a player standpoint to unlock recipe design after unlocking all the available recipes, as part of one skill tree. (There'd have to be a method for determining when player-created recipes are unlocked-- possibly that's the first new Cheffery level, and recipe creation is the next one?)

    Décor items and furniture could certainly work on the same mix-and-match principle as clothing design-- I'd really love to be able to design furniture, too! But when you say new decorations should be "not offensive, and [...] voted in," that sounds to me like you're thinking of having people submit their own artwork to the game? That to me sounds much more complicated and less fair than what I was suggesting-- more complicated because there'd have to be a curation process to make sure that user-submitted art assets match the tone of the game, and are available at the right sizes/scales/formats; less fair, because then you're not restricting item creation by skill attainment in the game, but in RL-- players would need to have not just the artistic skill to draw or render a new item, but the software to do so in a format compatible with the game. I feel strongly that if there's going to be a way for players to design new items, there should be at least one pathway to doing so that doesn't depend on out-of-game technical skills.

    @Arkrider-- ooh, I like the flag idea! Maybe that could be the first new fiber arts skill-- first flags (and maybe rugs), then clothes.

    @Seeen-- Yeah, I never got far enough in the game for IMG sinks to be an issue for me personally, but the longer the game goes on the more players will hit level 60 and need some new way to keep growing; it's a thing to start thinking about.
  • I like the clothing design idea, a bit like the furniture upgrades we had, but more personal and varied. I am not so keen on increasing Rook attacks, maybe I am a wuss but they sometimes seemed like the fighting and violence I came to Glitch to avoid. Not that I would do away with them, I know others enjoyed them and I helped when possible. I would also like things to do that did not involve always being in Glitch at the busiest times.

    Community projects are great for those who enjoy them, but I think we also need things for people who come to Glitch for a rest from the stress of real world communities, those who want to interact with just a few friends quite often, rather than cope with the demands of lots of other people.
  • I love the idea of player-created food recipes; I suspect it'd be hard to code. But it'd make a wonderful IMG sink--in order to keep the game from being flooded with thousands of recipes, it might cost a lot of IMG to create one. 50k IMG would keep it limited... 500k would mean most players would work toward maybe one recipe to be added, and most wouldn't bother but would know the option was there.

    It'd probably either need an approval process or a complex building method... or we just cope with some recipes being very, very silly. Onion sno cones. Pizza daquiris. Salmon ice cream with cheesy sauce. And so on. (I'm assuming the recipe builder won't let you put Fertilidust Lite in a food.)

    I also like the flag idea--while it's probably a bad idea to allow people to upload their own art, there could be a "flag builder" program, like the apparel program, that lets you customize one, with various features costing currents or credits (if we have those) to unlock, and some only being unlockable by achievements. Maybe you only get a flag when you've maxed out your homestreet size and have a tower, or when your house/tower has reached a certain size.

    I agree that increasing rook attacks could be problematic. Rook attacks are a terrific diversion for higher-level players; for lower-level and casual players, they're a frustrating distraction. I'm not sure increasing the number or ferocity of rook attacks would help the game as a whole, as opposed to driving off players before they get to a point of saying "I will throw fifteen music-boxes into the shrine now." Also, they're a resource sink but not an IMG sink.
  • Recipe and design development could be made a resource sink as well as an IMG sink-- maybe to unlock it you'd need to complete a quest to donate some huge amount of meals or food resources to Pot, or to donate general fabric to whoever the patron of Fiber Arts is. (Humbaba?)
  • Humbaba or Alph, as the patron of making things. I like the idea of donating lots of resources to unlock it, not just as a resource sink but to prevent players who haven't figured out the game balance yet from disrupting it. (We don't need three dozen more recipes worth 40 energy.)

    Maybe player-created recipes require rent--you have to keep paying for them to keep them in the recipe books, so that we don't wind up getting overloaded with them over time; as players' interests change, they can let them lapse. Or maybe anyone can pay the tithe to keep them available--after making a certain number of them--and a lapse shows a lack of interest.

    I could also see player recipes having a limited set of images to choose from, rather than a fully-customizable picture.
  • edited April 2015
    Anything that is created would need some sort of approval process, which is why i suggested voting. However i did not mean voting with names attached to the item. On top of that any item to be added would need to be allowed or not by the devs before it even got to that point. Yes it is unlikely offensive items would be submitted but from time to time it would happen. Any item added to the game would need to be reviewed somehow first. For food, drink, potions, powders, it has more to do with game balance. For deco and furniture it has more to do with possibly being offensive or simply not fitting with the game. In either case the items would need to be reviewed.

    Having it be a new skill to make whatever item is fine. I do not think img on top of this is necessary but that is just me. But the item would still need to be made, and this is more of a problem for food since it can be a million different shapes. Potions tend to be a bottle, so do powders, drinks are a typical shape as well,so is furniture, but food is many. Clothing you have typical shapes too, for most of it. In any case someone making an item would need some artistic skill, otherwise its "Police - Sketch - Artist - land " and by that i mean it would be people with ideas but someone else would need to guess what they actually meant.

    So that would mean only a few ways it could be done, only certain basic shaped items would be the only ones you can submit to be made, say T-shirts, Pants, Skirts, Shoes, Hats, Tables, Chairs, Couches, Cabinets, SDB'S, Wallpaper, Flooring, Ceilings, Potions, Powders, Drinks, ...whereas items that vary a lot, Lamps, Floor Deco, Table Deco, Food, Jackets, Dresses, might not be ones you could submit ideas for. Another option would be a plug and play type of submission but while that would open it up to people less artistically inclined, it would also severely limit what one could create

    You would still have a basic template of some sort given to you for the item but it would need to be a set shape.
  • @Lyrical-- Yes. That's why I suggested that player-designed items should be constructed from a set of component parts the way butlers and tower designs are.

    But you are right that there'd need to be, if not an approval process, then at least an appeal process for object names and designs. How did the old game deal with offensive names given to animals? That must have been a thing that happened.
  • edited April 2015
    When people gave animals offensive names, others could come along and change the names. Would be harder to do if it's something manufactured. I don't remember if there was a reporting function in the game if the offensive animal naming was repetitive. I know we could report certain players, and block them from our homestreets if necessary.

    I frankly would just be happy if we could start with changing the colors of the pieces (even if it was a specific set of color schemes) or some very basic, changing the pictures/patterns on the Tshirts, options to be able to modify clothing Iike we can do with hair and skin. Although over time (a few years from now), I'd love the chance to do some revision/redesign of some of the items; so many of the shirts and dresses were bulky looking to me and not flattering at all. And the shoes left a lot to be desired, which is why I mostly stuck to flip flops.
  • edited April 2015
    You could report offensive names, a dev could look and see who last named them. I think some people got warnings?

    And, I think I'm in agreement with b3achy. I'd love to recolour stuff in the wardrobe, and I think drawing new t shirt designs might be doable.

    I think the big issue I see here in general is bloat. Yeah, we could charge rent or iMG to keep a recipe or design in existence, but I kind of see it getting unmanageable, it's like the real estate issue. But I think both ideas would be really interesting if the design or recipe was restricted to the creator or one gift recipient. It seems like it could be manageable because the devs don't have to roll out dozens, hundreds, of new recipes to everyone who is eligible to make them. And there'd be some great emergent gameplay around players sharing unique food and clothing items, recipes, and patterns.

    I see this possibility working more like this:
    For clothing:
    Fibre arts skills, I like the idea of buying upgrade cards to customize the type of garment you want, but they'd be the type of card you get in inventory. I think you'd make a blank garment of the type you want out of an obscene amount of fabric and thread. You would spend the card to create a custom pattern, that you'd get to customize the garment the way Ellen imagined. You would apply the pattern to the garment, along with a few other elements (e.g., jellisacs for a green garment, sparkly for a glittery one) to create the custom wardrobe item. You can gift or sell patterns, but they get destroyed when you construct the garment. Maybe garment construction needs the use of a new machine - the sewing machine. I'd set it up next to the block maker ;). But, one pattern, one garment, and a huge sink for resources and iMG.

    For recipes:
    I think maybe you could build custom recipes as suggested but they are restricted to you, and you can make only one or a few stacks per day. But perhaps with a higher level of penpersonship you could make copies of the recipes for friends that, like patterns, would be destroyed on use.

  • edited April 2015
    I can see something along the lines of the most basic items for deco and clothing being able to be designed by players. In particular the most basic ones. T-shirts, pants, shoes, skirts, wallpaper, floors, doors, ceilings, but as a whole i think most items to be added to the game should only be added by the devs, ecspeically any kind of consumable. For one thing, bloat, as stated above, and that is would be very hard to monitor/keep track of, and game balance as well, all become factors when adding anything new. I dont want a plug - and - play type of design personally, because it limits creativity a lot. Id be more in favor of getting a template, with a color code grid, and basic shape options, with the option of drawing included, or something like that, so that both those that cant draw and those that can both have a decent amount of options. And being able to change the colors of clothing or furniture would be a really nice thing to have. As for offensive names people just tended to change the names when they saw them, no idea if anything was ever done if it was offensive enough to be against game rules. However there is a difference between offensive animal or things in notes, ( unofficial offensive ) vs. offensive in items added to the game items itself (official offensive ), but it depends on how it would be set up as to how things would need to be reviewed
  • edited April 2015
    Perhaps Eleven could have a feature for a "Review Team" of volunteer players who are sent an image of designed items and rate whether it is offensive and lewd or something. Each design could get sent to five people... or maybe seven if that's deemed better. Definitely a prime number. It could possibly prioritize online review team members as well, to expedite the process.
  • To me any item to be added would be reviewed by the devs first. After it received a yes or a no, then it would be voted in somehow. With no name attached as to who made it. It could either go to a type of volunteer group, along the lines of what was said above, or to everyone, i do think 5 is much to small of a group though, and voting something in, whterh public or private group the amount of ppl voting something in should be a large % of the population, so that is shows better what the community wants added as a whole
  • I'd rather see a trusted group of volunteers that is selected by the devs. I've often found that vocal 'majorities' can often just be a minority of a group who happens to be squeekiest and loudest but doesn't really represent everyone in the group (even though they will claim that they do). I've noticed that often the majority of the players just want to play the game and not be involved in the politics of the game. Requiring the vote to go to 'everyone' doesn't mean that everyone is going to be truly represented since everyone isn't going to vote. And even if they did, one group of people may find that something is 'inoffensive' when it is really offensive to another group of people. If you want to do it right, there needs to be rubric established for voting requirements, and it needs to be pretty black/white.

    I personally find the idea of having to vote things in to be a PiTA, and the more people you get involved the more likely you are going to offend a certain set of players because the vocal 'majority' will instill their will on others, and potentially drive away a solid chunk of good players. There are already offensive things in the game...but I think a team that has been dubed by the devs as the review board would know better how to differentiate between what is acceptably offensive and what goes against the grain of the gameplay. Whereas leaving it to a popular vote opens the door for a lot more offensive things to get put into the game rather than trusting a body of selected personal with the responsibility to review the items.
  • edited April 2015
    I dont necessarily mean everyone, but 5 or something small like that is way too small to me, Its also likely when items are submitted if its a small group it will be know who they are and therefore who to go to to get your stuff added in. But a small group is not a good sampling of the community as a whole, with a larger group its more likely the vote would be more fair when it comes to what the community might want. Im thinking something more along the lines of 20- 50 people, also with a larger group if some ppl cant vote, drop out or are absent for whatever reason, missing some is not a big deal, a small group it would cripple the group. As an example when it came to running routes often ppl would burn out because it would need to be updated a lot, and that was a small # of ppl, people leaving or not showing up etc etc and putting too much responsibilty on a few ppl is likely to have simmilar results. I cant remember how much greeters turned over, or other volunteer things happened though

    The only way i can see not voting in some manner is simply to put anything the devs approve of in game. But if the game allows submissions that will be too many things to add. Unless the selection process becomes extremely picky. Which if it does Im not sure people will want to submit stuff to begin with. In either case any item would need to be approved of by the devs before a vote would even take place, and that alone should make adding anything offensive null and void

    However the idea of rent with img as suggested above might work, otherwise bloat, and way too many items to look at to approve, and then later way to many items in game is likely to happen. But all items would still need to be approved of in some manner. I see it being too problematic to actually add to be honest. But some way to change the color of items we already have, clothing and deco, and possibly something like a picture frame, would both be more plausible. Being able to actually add items to the game, nomatter how its done, while being very nice to have also creates a huge workload with it
  • edited April 2015
    You misunderstand. The idea is that the review team can have any number of players in it, but the game would just choose 5-7 of them at random to ask.

    It would give them a set time limit–two or three days, maybe–and if any of them don't vote in that time, it replaces them with a few new ones. If they don't vote soon enough, it just uses the vote ratio of the players that did.
  • That might work, i dont think a set team would though, but i still think its too small a group, but thats me
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