Towns V12 Bury System explanation

[Burningpet]

From Towns v12 onwards, we are going to have a buried towns system.

The bury system is a way to have much more interesting dungeons, to be able to dig through other people towns, marvel at their building skills and organisation methods and stumble on the riches they fought and bled over.

Here how it works:
Player A build and manage a town. if he lose it or decide to abandon it, he bury it. the town then get sent to a server.

Player B generate a new world, on the surface he sees nothing but as he dig down he reveal Player A town that has now transformed a bit: Player A grave yard is now a deadly Player B zombie infested grave yard, the kitchen is infested by ogres, some items gets broken and change their appearance, traps againt enemies are now traps against the player and the heroes.

When player B bury his town, Player C will have Player B buried town and underneath it and Player A buried town.

The game shuffle through buried towns maps so it will be completely random which buried town map you get.

Although all will start with Player A towns, If player B and C generate a world before anyone bury his town, They both will branch to a different Buried towns layers, so player X and Z may receive different dungeons that share only some parts.

This way the player generated content is emergent, meaning, the players don't design the content for it to be a content, they design it as an organic and natural part of their game, that later become another player content.

where can it also lead? special weapons only found in buried towns, Special items with global benefits that player will struggle to preserve for future players and much more.

[mr bigdad]

This sounds great, but I guess it will be a long ways before we get it. I sure like the idea!

[Cyborgt]

Originally posted by mr bigdad:

This sounds great, but I guess it will be a long ways before we get it. I sure like the idea!

I'd say it sounds interesting, but potentially problematic.

For one, how will this whole server system function? Is it going to turn Towns into an always-on type of game to support the buried town function? Is it just going to be an opt-in opt-out sort of thing where you choose whether to use a buried town when you start a new game at which point the game will access the server to find one? Will this server be an official one maintained by SMP or is it a function being added to the game for the community to set up/use?

Almost more important than the answer to any of those questions though is the potential for abuse. I could see people intentionally filling the entire map with nothing but traps before burying their town so you won't be able to go anywhere in the dungeons. They might even just fill the entire map with blocks so the map generated with their buried town practically doesn't have a dungeon.

I certainly hope it all goes well and becomes an interesting new feature for the game. Only time will tell I guess.

[76561198069409126]

Its a optional thing, you can play with it, or disable it and play with normal dungeons.
LOL for the always online thing for even thinking something like that.

For more details read this thread:
{LINK REMOVED}http://www.townsgame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9396

It can be interesting also because now people can make dungeons for other people that will later explore.

[Cyborgt]

Originally posted by ragnar119:

Its a optional thing, you can play with it, or disable it and play with normal dungeons.

Well, that's one question answered.

Originally posted by ragnar119:

LOL for the always online thing for even thinking something like that.

Yeah, I tend to see the darker side of things so the mention of a server required for a feature of the game made my mind go there. I figured it was rather unlikely but then I would have said the same thing for a SimCity game until recently...

Originally posted by ragnar119:

For more details read this thread:
http://www.townsgame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9396

Good to know, though nothing in the thread addresses my concern for the potential of trolling towns. In fact, most of the comments in that thread that are actually talking about making a town for that system are effectively talking about how horribly their town is going to troll other people.

There is one question that comes to mind that noone in that thread bothered to ask. How does the bury mechanic handle entire containers full of items? Can you dig your way into the storage area of your previous town and get barrels worth of free materials/weapons/armor or does it just destroy containers and everything in them? Do you have to have items laying out on the ground when you bury your town for them to have the possibility of appearing in someone's dungeon?

Originally posted by ragnar119:

It can be interesting also because now people can make dungeons for other people that will later explore.

I hope that's all it ends up being used for. If the server gets flooded with nothing but troll towns it could effectively kill the feature.

[Burningpet]

Yeah, those are legit concerns.

First things first, its already mostly done, so we expect to release it with the new patch coming pretty soon.

Servers will work like in minecraft players can set up servers. we chose this option because this way it can continue as long as people want it to continue and it as the benefits of enabling theme related servers - IE - a server aimed to challenge players, a server aimed at creating only ancient structures from real life, a server aimed at preserving a unique item. etc..

containers do not get bury with all their items inside, instead they have a slight chance of spawning as a trophy chest containing a nice weapon. items lying around will have a chance to spawn monsters at burying them, so there's two concerns here - it might prove benefical, ie, finding a good weapon earlier than possible now, or it might prove to be somewhat of a con - said weapon spawns a monster that is stronger than what the town can handle. Both are equally interesting and we will have to test it at larger scale to see how they really play.

yes, people trolling is a "problem" it can happen to a degree but i suspect we are not going to suffer too much from it. aside the obvious certain male shaped structures people tend to build if they know others can see them.. we are dynamic, if a problem arise to be a true problem, we will deal with it.

our aim is to have the player the option to update his library of buried towns any time he wish with a one time connection to a server, so having a constant connection will not be needed.

[SparkleBee]

*excited* Any ETA?

Will only 0-14 be the ruin or will underground structures make it in too?

Slightly unrelated, will archers be able to shoot mobs in a more intelligent way in v12. It drives me crazy how a townie with a golden bow is standing one lava block away from a mob and not shoot it.

[mr bigdad]

well we will have to wait and see how soon it comes!

[Burningpet]

Well, we cant tell exactly because now we are entering an unknown area of us (the server side) other than that, its 95% complete so we could have just released it for people to swap bury files between them manually, but we prefer it to be much easier to do via the servers.

[Nanostrike]

This is nice and all.

But any idea when some of the more basic problems will be fixed and other features added? Like...

-No stores to sell anything to Heroes with.
-Roof building being a huge pain without laying an inconvenient amount of Scaffolds.
-Townies routinely running so far away from town that they starve before they can get back.
-Townies enjoying drowning themselves in water when trying to build anything water-related near it.
-Animations for combat, baking, crafting, ect
-A day/night system
-Weather


I mean, I'm happy the game is expending, but the core gameplay needs some major work to become a really refined game.

[Burningpet]

Well, stores for heroes as well as hero groupings and hero gold loot and more different hero behaviour is planned right after we finish with the bury system, probably next patch after.

Roof building so you could designate a large rectangle and they will do it gradually from start to finish? will have to see. this is really really not as simple as it sounds. but i don't disregard this.

Townies starving on the lower levels, yes, its an issue. honestly, not a huge one and somewhat realistic, we could solve it yesterday by extending all hunger fill PCT, food preparation time and the hunger turns townies need before getting hungry, thus transforming the entire food production into a slower process that allows for much more free time in between, by doing so we will lose the importance of smart town design (because the walk time factor will be far less important). - we will try to see if we can solve it differently and without taking up too much computer resources. again, like the roof building, it will be worked on but i cant promise it will be for the next patch.

Townies drowning themselves? how so, why so? what do you build? what exactly happen?

Animations - further along the line. i don't consider it crucial to the gameplay, but its something i would personally love as well.

Day/night - maybe never.

Weather - To some degree, we would do it, but not a normal seasons cycle. more like in the theme of Extreme weather events (flood, asteroid, volcano, drought). it is planned toward the end of the development.

[bryced]

Sounds interesting, kinda like what Spore did. But, it would HAVE TO be optional and not forced on Players.

[76561198069409126]

Originally posted by Burningpet:

Well, we cant tell exactly because now we are entering an unknown area of us (the server side) other than that, its 95% complete so we could have just released it for people to swap bury files between them manually, but we prefer it to be much easier to do via the servers.

Release the kraken now, worry about servers later

[Nanostrike]

Pretty much building anything near water makes my Townies wall themselves in and/or plop down into a lower, water-filled area and get stuck/drowned. It doesn't always happen, but it's really common.

I can see how the roof thing might be complicated to do, but having the townies build a roof starting from the outside and getting to the middle last, so they don't try to place roof pieces in mid-air and drop them. They do now, though, and it makes you have to micromanage roof or second-story-floor building to a frustrating degree.

Can't wait to see the stores and hero groups, though. It'd be nice to be able to gear up rookies so they don't run into the dungeon near-naked and die. And it'd be useful to be able to pair up heroes so squishy ones don't run off solo and die.

[SullyArt]

I was wondering if a town created before this coming patch could still profit from the bury system, because the world would have already been generated?

[Burningpet]

you wont be able to see buried towns on an already existent and generated saved map because the reason you mentioned. the buried town was just never buried there.