Ape Apps

I was thinking about the abandoned planet for LIS and I thought of a brilliant idea. This idea was also inspired by the Protoss dessert planet Shakuras, which hangs forever between night and day. Of course, Blizzard didn't invent the word or meaning of twilight so their shouldn't be any worries of copywrite infringement. But the idea is to turn the abandoned world into a twilight world. It would give off a more mystic vibe that would go well with the abandoned world theme.

To pull off this effect, I would make the default settings for this planet a brightness that is neither as bright as day nor as dark as night, but forever in-between. I would also add a pinkish hue to simulate an eternal sunset, where pinkish, redish, and orangish colors abound and reflect off of every surface.

The never-ending twilight can drive your colonists insane and completely knock their internal clocks out of whack. A new unhappiness reason called "twilight sickness" could be added to the pie chart and would be one of the main setbacks for colonizing this planet. It could also be damaging to the colonists. To combat this, the player will have to build structures that combat this new type of threat. These structures include clock towers to help colonists tell time, solar chambers, which help colonists experience light levels similar to a day on earth while providing some entertainment, and sensory deprivation chambers, which simulate night time and increase the colonists IQ(as they have plenty of time to meditate on their thoughts.)

I would keep the earth-like atmosphere level, but I would change the color of sugarcanes to be black and call them shadowstalks(plants on a twilight planet need to be black to absorb as much light as possible in a dimly lit world). you would still get sugar from them though, but they would spread at a much slower pace. The ground would be a bit darker, but still maintain it's texture.

The abandoned buildings could play a helping role in staving off twilight sickness aside from some tourism and entertainment. Once the player reaches a certain tech, they could unlock upgrades to the abandoned buildings that would turn them into fully restored, newer-looking buildings that would function as they once did, staving off twilight sickness.

Of course, there is always the possibility of turning one of the other planets into a twilight planet, or just making a brand new planet for the twilight theme, but I think that the abandoned world could be drastically improved with the ideas that I described above, and it wouldn't take that much to implement either since you already have all of the engine functions and resource images to pull it off.

@GammaJack, please explain why you voted no.

A lot of ram using only to make a hard effect is not rrly necesary but the concept is cool just think in big colonies 100k population

GammaJack said:A lot of ram using only to make a hard effect is not rrly necesary but the concept is cool just think in big colonies 100k population

Actually, from the perspective of someone who fixes computers and knows how to program games, the twilight effect would not take up ram. We already have day and night, and that doesn't affect ram. In fact, when the map is in the process of switching from day to night, you already experience twilight, but this planet would just stay at that light level forever, which really wouldn't take up any ram at all, or at least any more ram than the day/night feature is already using.

changing the sugarcanes into shadowstalks only requires causing the map to generate shadowstalks instead of sugarcames, so that doesn't take up any more ram than it already does when generating sugarcanes. In fact, having 100 sugarcanes or 100 shadowstalks would take up the same amount of ram, and these shadowstalks would even grow much slower, which would actually reduce the amount of ram and cpu usage needed for the abandoned world.

Now I admit, adding more buildings and another unhappiness and unhealthiness reason would take up more ram, so maybe that aspect could be left out. But I still think that the twilight theme is more than feasible to pull off, and aside from the twilight sickness feature, no extra ram would really be used in order to make this feature a real part of the game, since as I said above, all of the features that would be utilized are already in the game and already taking up their portions of ram.

You have to realize that more changes and features doesn't always mean more ram usage, you could add another element to the game just by using the features that the game is already using, and the resulting ram usage would always be the same. It's when you make changes to the game engine to include more features that the game starts to take up more ram.

That maybe rigth still is a nice idea

I like this idea, very original. It would be very different in terms of gameplay from the map types already in the game though, but it's not a concern.
Also, might want to think of an advantage of playing this map, like a resource, or more powerful buildings... I don't know, but for now there's no interest apart from diversity and challenge (which is already great).

I suggest a little thing : solar panels wouldn't work as well as in normal worlds

GammaJack said:That maybe rigth still is a nice idea

Thanks :)

Sobeirannovaocc said:I like this idea, very original. It would be very different in terms of gameplay from the map types already in the game though, but it's not a concern.
Also, might want to think of an advantage of playing this map, like a resource, or more powerful buildings... I don't know, but for now there's no interest apart from diversity and challenge (which is already great).

I suggest a little thing : solar panels wouldn't work as well as in normal worlds

Solar panels not working well is a great idea. This is not a suggestion for a new planet, it was meant to be a suggestion to give the abandoned world a twilight theme with a few new challenges. The abandoned world gives LIS players earlier access to sugar via sugarcane that any other human world, and tourism via the abandoned buildings, and it needs no terraforming.

But I also said that the abandoned buildings could be upgraded to become fully restored versions of themselves that would function as they once did. They don't have to be strictly for staving off twilight sickness, they could provide any number of advantages once fully restored. I'd like to think that the abandoned buildings could act as healing towers that employ nanobots to heal people as the go about their day. The colonists won't have to go up to the tower, they will just heal as they do their regular routine. These towers should have a reasonable range and I wouldn't make the healing rate too quick or colonists would never starve, even if there was no food or water. I also wouldn't let the effects stack if a colonist is in the range of more than one tower. You could also cause the towers to stop the aging process or even cause older colonists to de-age towards a certain prime age, which would be a specific number in the 20's. If that's not an advantage, then I don't know what is. I know that there is more than one type of abandoned building, so the statue could do something else. Maybe the statue could act as an "ethical" mind control tower that makes colonists think of work as fun and makes them get happier the more they work.

I would think that the tech to unlock these buildings should be the "ancient alien language" tech that already exists in the game. This makes sense, because if you know the language of the people that built the abandoned structures, you will know what that structure was used for and how to restore it. Once a player unlocks this tech, they would be able to build more of these towers on their planet to make sure that they fully cover their colonists. But this should only be a feature for this planet type, and they shouldn't be able to build these on other planets.

This would give the twilight abandoned world a big advantage, because players that colonize this world would have an easier time dealing with things that regularly damage colonists, like fatique, and they would never have to deal with age as long as they've made sure that the towers' ranges cover the entire map. If my idea for the abandoned statue is used, the player would have an easier time providing entertainment. and keeping the colonists happy.

Let me know what you think of that idea.

Yes, that's a good advantage :) Not too big, neither negligable.
I find the first usage of the statue as a healing tower better than mind control. I would keep that for reptilians, which already have the propaganda screen.

The tech to unlock it makes sense of course. However it will take a long time to reach it so all in all, such a world would be harder early game but easier end-game. As at first you have to deal with the twilight sickness but when you're developped enough you can deal with it and get the healing stations.

I really like the idea of restoring the abandoned buildings once the tech is unlocked. And make it unique buildings and reproducible of course.

Sobeirannovaocc said:Yes, that's a good advantage :) Not too big, neither negligable.
I find the first usage of the statue as a healing tower better than mind control. I would keep that for reptilians, which already have the propaganda screen.

The tech to unlock it makes sense of course. However it will take a long time to reach it so all in all, such a world would be harder early game but easier end-game. As at first you have to deal with the twilight sickness but when you're developped enough you can deal with it and get the healing stations.

I really like the idea of restoring the abandoned buildings once the tech is unlocked. And make it unique buildings and reproducible of course.

I'm glad you like it. I think that this is a totally feasible feature to add, but it's up to bast of course to decide whether to implement features like this.