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MailBag Thursday: Economic Exclamations
Posted by Data in Cortex Command - December 3rd, 2009

Q: In Skirmish play, will there be any goals implemented in it soon? Examples: Survive for X minutes, obtain X kills, collect X% gold, etc? – FrogFreak
A: There’s going to be two major game modes: Metagame/Campaign and the Scenarios/Skirmish (we’re still deciding on the final names..). The Scenarios basically offer any compatible combo of a Scene and an Activity (usually Lua script-driven). We’re working on having the Activities have a special Lua function that can test if a Scene has the required and properly named Areas and other placements needed for that Activity. That way each Scene can be re-used for many different types of Activities. For example, think of home base Areas and flag placements needed for a CTF Activity. As long as they’re in a Scene, that scene supports CTF games. – Data

Q: Will making money ever be anything more than collecting gold? – Garrett
A: Yup! There will be precious stones and artifacts buried in the ground. They have to dug out and brought up to the surface, tossed into a landing craft, and flown off the top of the screen for a big payoff. Also, we are working on animal fossils that have to be ‘revealed’ (but not dug out or destroyed) from the unexplored areas of every Scene, with an x-ray type tool. The fossil science data rewards are then given to teh team who first claimed that new site. – Data

Q: Can I have a dollar? – Jesse
A: You can have many dollars – if you earn them first! – Data

Q: How much micromanaging will there be in the metagame? Will it be like the total war series where structures can be bought in certain cities or bunkers? Or where generals could develop, fight battles and increase statistics? – The Pub
A: Once a site on the planet has been claimed by one of the teams, it can be built upon. It will be an important part of the game to invest resources into your money-making bases, so they can be defended against attack. You’ll have to place all bunker modules, defensive installations and personnel before an attack happens, or it’ll be that much harder to defend when the enemies start landing! – Data

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32 Responses to “MailBag Thursday: Economic Exclamations”

  1. AtomicTroop - # December 3rd, 2009 at 4:14 am

    So gamemode “templates”, eh? Sounds good for the lazy ones 😉

  2. Louis - # December 3rd, 2009 at 6:12 am

    Sounds great! Any big surprises coming for X-mas?

  3. Lizard - # December 3rd, 2009 at 6:47 am

    So basicly the whole metagame will be like playing CC but with a risk-like management structure?

  4. Geti - # December 3rd, 2009 at 6:48 am

    Very much liking the responses to 1 and 4, 2 is good too.
    Bring on the metagame, and the fun of scripting gamemodes and having them usable always.

  5. Ch33n - # December 3rd, 2009 at 6:59 am

    First!

    Wait, shit.

  6. w33n - # December 3rd, 2009 at 7:03 am

    @ Ch33n
    What a ripoff of my name.
    :3

    What about proper physics, Data?
    Like, if a bunker module doesn’t have enough structural support it will fall down and squish whatevers underneath it.

  7. Yay - # December 3rd, 2009 at 7:05 am

    I LOVE how the metagame will come out. Freaking awesome!

    <3

    Also (not) FIRST!!!!1111

  8. Natti - # December 3rd, 2009 at 7:19 am

    W33N, haven’t you tried the Obelisk? It works like that. But it isn’t possible to make a bunker, there was a reason that i don’t remember…

  9. Pyrokinesis1019 - # December 3rd, 2009 at 7:44 am

    7th!
    >>>money-making bases
    Is that implying that they generate money on their own, or do I have to go down there and mine them all myself?

  10. Louis - # December 3rd, 2009 at 7:55 am

    Gravity effecting scenery/bunker stuff would be awesome

  11. 3POK_PHALE - # December 3rd, 2009 at 8:01 am

    Teh?

    Nice post. Quite luciferous.

  12. ndisplay - # December 3rd, 2009 at 8:34 am

    Great!

    Hope Data will respond to my question about improving climbing next time :3

  13. Metalray - # December 3rd, 2009 at 8:50 am

    Last answer is very interesting.
    But I wish “I can had a cheezburger” AND CC build now 🙁

  14. ZevN47 - # December 3rd, 2009 at 8:55 am

    YES! its a first: Thursday Mailbag!

    Also 1 and 4 sound cool 🙂

    @Metalray: Patience young grasshopper

  15. ZevN47 - # December 3rd, 2009 at 8:57 am

    @PyroKinesis1019: Didn’t he say eariler that you would have a turn based economy? (I.E. +500 gold per base per turn)

  16. Faram45 - # December 3rd, 2009 at 9:22 am

    When will you start doing speed optimizing?

  17. StoneCrow - # December 3rd, 2009 at 10:30 am

    not asking any questions, just saying loving the game, i bought the game, love it more now, i modded the game love it more again.
    this is the buy that just keeps on giving, campaign aswell 😀

  18. Duh102 - # December 3rd, 2009 at 11:45 am

    lol@ the fact that Data is updating more than his paid community manager
    <3 you weasel, just saying XD

    Serious: Entirely digging generics for maps. Make map, place area, use in CTF.

  19. Metal Chao - # December 3rd, 2009 at 12:45 pm

    Great job Jesse for wasting one of our precious question time questions 😮

    Other stuff was nice to know

  20. cipher - # December 3rd, 2009 at 2:30 pm

    @w33n

    If CC struggles now with all the calculations involved, I don’t think adding more would be beneficial.
    While it would make it funner, but more restricting to build, I don’t see it happening.

  21. ZevN47 - # December 3rd, 2009 at 4:08 pm

    @W33n I think DeathBringer made some kind of building like that.

  22. airburst - # December 3rd, 2009 at 5:05 pm

    Whoever this Jesse person is, they had better stay away from me.
    I have a loaded uber cannon waiting just for them.

    Moral of this story: don’t ask bad questions.

  23. robolee - # December 3rd, 2009 at 5:09 pm

    terrain crumbling would not work as all the terrain pixels would have to be active and have checks to see if they are stable, that’s like over a million checks per frame. My guess is that currently the terrain is treated as one object, and when something hits a pixel of it with enough force it, that pixel then gets removed from the terrain which is substantially less cpu intensive. so basically what you are asking is pretty much impossible, and also what about tunnels and stuff? If you wanted it to just affect bunkers then there would be a hell of a lot less calculations but still way to many to run at any decent speed.

    It sounds like current skirmish is being replaced with the current campaign style missions and the campaign will be totally different, am I right?

    Q2 sounds interesting, sounds like you’re saying there’d be a way of extracting artifacts without damaging them as the current diggers would… but then you say fossils must be scanned “but not dug out or destroyed”. I hope that there is some new digging mechanic such as them not affecting actors or something like that.

  24. enessi1 - # December 3rd, 2009 at 5:31 pm

    @Faram45 i believe he said hes working on trying to speed that up w/ lua idk

    anyway data your amazing and we all thank you for releasing newer and newer builds so we can become more in love with it and allowing us to get used to the scripting and yadda yadda yadda
    so thanks bunches as i asume everyone believes

  25. Footkerchief - # December 3rd, 2009 at 5:52 pm

    robolee: “terrain crumbling would not work as all the terrain pixels would have to be active and have checks to see if they are stable, that’s like over a million checks per frame.”

    Nope. You need 0 checks in each frame when the terrain doesn’t change. When the terrain DOES change, you’ll generally be able to restrict the checks to small areas of the map.

    It’s still totally unfeasible though.

  26. Data - # December 3rd, 2009 at 6:24 pm

    Not totally unfeasible.. I’ve poked the problem several times. The trick is to combine an efficient scanning of recently changed terrain areas for chunks that are now not structurally supported enough, and turn them into movable objects on the fly, letting them settle, and then they will be copied back to the terrain. It would just take a lot of time to implement, test, and optimize, and is pretty low on the priority scale right now.

  27. The Man - # December 3rd, 2009 at 6:35 pm

    First!

    Wait What!?!?!

  28. Boba_Fett - # December 3rd, 2009 at 7:21 pm

    How much of the Metagame is done? Is it actually in development, or is it all just plans?

  29. CrazyMLC - # December 3rd, 2009 at 9:24 pm

    Goddamnit I love this.

    RELEASE THIS SOON!

  30. Kzerog - # December 4th, 2009 at 9:54 am

    Omg datacomment! :O
    I’d also like to know how much of the metagame/campaing has been completed and most importantly: Where’s mah new build!?

  31. robolee - # December 4th, 2009 at 10:30 am

    I meant per frame that the terrain changes, which is still almost every frame anyway. the problem is that you don’t know how much could technically be unstable, so how much do you limit the check region to?

    What you could do is have two terrain maps, one for original terrain & bunkers and the second being a grid based terrain map thing for any new additional terrain (rubble and scrap). when the round starts check each tile of the grid against the first terrain map, if it contains terrain and non terrain flag the tile, on those tiles run a scan that plots a small one/two pixel line across the terrain edge, this will basically be an invincible line that settling terrain piles up on. when an object settles check in the tiles on the grid that it’s in that the pixels connect to the edge of the terrain. when a piece of terrain is removed, update the terrain edge.
    http://filesmelt.com/downloader/terrain_check_idea.png

  32. Lizard - # December 4th, 2009 at 2:46 pm

    That actually looks like a good idea, but what if we want the whole cliff to fall then?