QQuix

Repeating myself (for the ??th time), I won't give my opinion on particular ideas, mostly because I don't have one. But I am very glad to quote myself from my previous post: I guys just proved me right, as your suggestions carried concepts that I am adding to my list of 'potential features' for the mod. 1) beneath henrydossle's pirates I see the concept of an event that randomizes the initial resources the player starts with. Like the [variable] remaining crew and cargo after an attack, or something similar applied to one of the other starts suggested previously. 2) apocalypse1138's zones are also a nice concept. With some pre-req to move in. Maybe just the player scouting the area, maybe building a road, or maybe a more violent conquest may be acceptable for the initial taming of the island. I will keep them in mind. Thanks. And, Danuve_Coil, thanks for the offer. When the time comes, I will post here and make sure I let you know.

Yeah. To me, writing any text takes forever. The result is usually decent, but the price in time and stress is kind of high. When I need a break from The Evolving Society, I work on a series of flight scripts. When I release them, you may use them to make your cheese fly. Lol But, to the point. . . Thanks for the offer. I am the only one working on this mod, for the time being. I have not asked anybody to do any work on this mod, except, of course, adding suggestions to the threads. The main reason is that I must, first, be sure the mod is feasible, both technically and practically (balanceable?). Only when I finish developing what I call 'the engine', I will be comfortable asking others to spend their time and effort on this mod. Another reason is that the features implemented in the engine will/may limit the boundaries of the storyline somehow. They will also affect other aspects of the mod, like the shape and initial landscape of the island, the NPCs etc I still need a few months to finish the engine. If you are still interested by then, I sure will welcome you to the team. In the meantime, I would appreciate if you added ideas and suggestions to the thread. Although I will think about and decide the main storyline and side quests only when I finish the engine, most of the ideas presented in the thread so far, helped me determining 'features' for the engine.

Not only plays Oblivion. He is an active member of a mod team (which I will not name because I don't know his feelings about privacy) And thanks for asking about the mod and for the supporting words. It is always encouraging to know that there is still people interested.

The main engine is still on hold, waiting for the new OBSE. Meanwhile, I am working on two building blocks in parallel: - a way to determine the size of the buildings (a building 'scanner', actually). - a way to give some 'color' to one of the last planned advancements: constructing ships and the establishing a trade route with mainland. The idea is to have actually moving ships arriving and leaving the docks. An early stage of this can be seen in . You may notice that the ships do carry some cargo, so it will be possible to make the ships leave loaded with crates and return with a cargo of barrels (or whatever). I think these moving ships will be a cool addition to the mod. PS. I noticed Terry Pratchett (now, Sir Terry Pratchett) in your signature. Did you know that he plays Oblivion?

I started the project last December and, so far, I have scripted the basic structure of the engine, the building upgrade process, the production process and the prototype/test environment released a few weeks back. These parts will have to be recoded to use the new OBSE arrays. While I wait for the new version of OBSE, I am working on a way to determine the size of the buildings. Then, I am planning on working on the NPC leveling process, the satisfaction algorithms, the NPC hiring process and, of course, a few specialized processes that may be required/desired/selected (like the guards leveling we just discussed, pirate raids, foreign trade, etc) . The following task would be the major challenge of balancing the game with all these processes interacting with each other. If it looks good and we have a go, then comes the hard work of creating the landscape, NPCs, selecting resources to use and, in parallel, decide and implement the quests and dialogs for the main storyline and side quests. Bottom-line: after a few prototypes and Beta vesrions along the way, with luck, a decent Version 1 sometime first semester next year, I guess.

ZyniX69 and madman123456 Your suggestions are possible to implement in the engine. Just brainstorming on your ideas, here: Instead of upgrading the Police/Guards/Security building as it is now, the player would have to do something to improve the weapons and armor of the guards. The player could ask/order the smith to produce them, at the expense of producing other equally important materials. Depending on how this will affect the balance of the game, a specialized smith might be necessary, instead. The security force using weapons and armor the player brought from elsewhere would also be possible to implement. Maybe, even, a delivery system from mainland, so the player would not have to carry each and every piece all the way to the island. Having both alternatives would be nice, as the player would have to decide whether to sacrifice other productions to improve the guards, or sacrifice some of his/her own time to bring loot in. (and player decisions is all this mod is about). ZyniX69 , although I am not planning to attach any aspect of this mod to the player level, the guards will level up as the town as a whole levels up. So your comment applies all the same, as the player will have to do something to upgrade the security forces as the town grows, or else the citizens will get unhappy and the production will fall. madman123456, I think both are possible: distributing armor and weapon down the ranks according to grade or requiring there is enough for all before switching gear. I guess it would depend on how these systems would 'feel' in the final mod. Of course, it is too early to tell if these ideas will be in the game, but it is always fun to think about the possibilities. Thanks

I see!. In part, that is covered by the fact that you can have up to four of each raw material producer (lumber camp, quarry and mine) and only one processor of those materials (sawmill, masonry, and foundry). And you are right for the rest of the chain, as there is only one of each shop. I really felt that sometimes there was a shortage of cut stones. To finish the prototype, you have to delay the construction/upgrade of the Marble Works, or it will 'eat' all the cut stones that you would need somewhere else.

The main engine is on hold at the moment. Mostly for a technical reason: OBSE v0017 will be released soon with new array functions. I will recode the whole thing to use them instead of the Pluggy arrays I am using now. Therefore any effort on new development using Pluggy arrays would be partially wasted. Meanwhile, I am working on some 'building blocks', like a way to allow the player to choose where to place new buildings (I've just released a Dynamic Building Placement proof of concept), and a way to position a perimeter line/fence around the construction site. I have not started working on this yet (so the following is just a general idea as good as anybody else's). As I see it, during the initial phases the player will have to recruit people in the mainland. Later on, some skilled NPCs will visit the island for a couple of days (after you have docks and an inn/tavern, of course) and the player may hire/invite them. In any case, I suppose they must be new NPCs included in the mod, in order not to mess with the game and prevent incompatibilities with other mods. Thanks for the feedback. As for loading a game saved along the way, I must confess that I have not tested that much. At each load, I reset a lot of data coming from the ini files (to allow for parameter changes in the future) and there must be a bug somewhere resetting something that should not be reset. I will check. As for the core of your text, I am not sure I follow you. I would appreciate if you elaborated. But I have a few comments on the production speed: Production speed will be variable. I have not worked the details yet, but I will implement some kind of 'experience level' for the NPCs: the more an NPC works on a job, the better he gets. So a master smith will work faster that a rookie. This will match with the visiting NPCs idea mentioned above, in a way that the player may decide not to hire/invite a visiting inexperienced smith, and wait for a more experienced one to show up on the following days. Satisfaction with several aspects of the community (heath, security, progress) will also affect productivity. I would also like to have some additional variables that would affect individual shops and would give opportunity to add a few side quests. Something like a special tool the player has to find, or a book that teaches a few tricks of the trade, or finding an old, retired craftsman to teach the inexperienced one you have. Things like that. But I am afraid this would make the general engine too complex and too difficult to balance. The general idea is that, if the player detects that the saw miller is slower than the lumberjack and logs are piling up, the player has a few alternatives to balance things, e.g. upgrade the sawmill, find a book to improve the saw miller skills or, maybe, build a Hospital (in case the Saw miller is unhappy with the health of the community). Or maybe ask the lumberjack to help the saw miller for a couple of days. Lol. And, out of curiosity, have you played it to the end?

I would appreciate your comments if/when you have the opportunity to check the mods. The lack of feedback is kind of frustrating but not discouraging/ dis-motivating (?) as I have my fun developing it. Thanks for the sympathy.

Thanks, Alithinos. No. I don’t think I will get bored (but I must say that am kind of frustrated as there has been no feedback on the prototype). About the farming and fruits you mentioned: I have just get acquainted with a project that does just that: Craftybits I have browsed thru its forums and I understand that its goal is to give the player the ability to perform A LOT of crafty actions, like farming, skinning animals, carpentry and cooking. The other project I want to mention again is NPCs With Jobs. I hope I am not wrong in saying that Craftybits adds craftsmanship to the PC and NWJ adds craftsmanship to NPCs. Both projects have competent, experienced modders working on them and, when this project of mine gets its final shape, I intend to explore some way of allow the player to use NWJ and Craftybits mods in the island. All this intro is to say that my general idea is not to duplicate efforts and, if possible, use what is already developed. But, by all means, keep adding craft ideas here as they may well be implemented. Also they may inspire other modders that read this topic. I also suggest you present these ideas to the Craftybits/NWJ teams. PS - Just as a teaser - the player will be able to choose the building and place it dynamically

OK. Here we go: the first Alpha version of The Evolving Society Engine Test Environment - TESETE The main reasons for the release is to help you guys getting a better understanding of the general purpose of the project. Keep in mind that every single click while playing TESETE represents something much bigger in the final mod, from simple tasks to whole side quests. I think you will like it, provided you don’t raise your expectations too much and always remember it is an environment to be used during the engine development. And is the very first version. Actually, there is only part of the engine: the buildings construction, upgrades, dependencies and costs are implemented. NPCs are not implemented in this version. The esp is kind of hidden among my other conceptual mods in TESNexus, as it is intended only to you, the reader of the discussion forums. Not to the general public. As so, there is no readme in the archive. The only, quite reduced (on purpose) documentation is below. If you have read at least part of this forum, you know what it is all about. Here goes some information that will allow you to play the mod: - You can play the whole mod without moving from the spot where you arrive. - Time flashes - a whole game day takes less than 10 seconds (it is a test environment, remember?) so you can complete the game in 15-30 minutes - Click on the little house at your feet to choose what to build. - There are a few options to your left. The activator name should be self explanatory. Turn off street lights if your FPS drops too much. - Look up to see your warehouse contents. The warehouse holds your Food and building materials - Service buildings and city improvements have no effect in this version but they are needed to complete the mod. - To complete the mod, you must build all 48 buildings and upgrade them all to level 3. - As an incentive, I have a little treat for you when you complete the task. I hope you like it. - Look right to see your progress - try to get to the top of the graph before leaving the graph area to the right (about 100 game days). - Keep in mind that this is an environment to test the engine: most things are not in scale and many things are symbolic: a tower in the middle of the woods means the lumberjack at that place has been upgraded to Level 3 and has a watch tower to prevent forest fires. Game play and strategy: - After you activate the mod, load a game and press the Right Mouse Button to go to TESETE. - If you leave your arrival place, you may use the RMB at any time to go back there. - Places and buildings have one (virtual) worker that needs a house to live and one unit of food per day. - Houses Level 1 may have one occupant - Level2 = 2 occupants - Level3 = 3 occupants. - You start the game with 5xFood and 5xLogs - use them wisely. - You can get stuck if you run out of logs to build a house and don’t have a house to hire a lumberjack. - Same thing with Food and Farms. - Don’t build/upgrade the Marble Works to the same level of the Masonry, unless you have plenty of CutStone in stock, as, with both at the same level, the Marble Works consumes all the CutStone the Masonry produces - The little moving thing at the edge of the platform represents the time of the day. Some details WAREHOUSE - The warehouse holds your Food and seven building materials: Logs, Planks, RawStones, CutStones, Marble, Ore, Ingots and MetalParts (the metallic building materials like nails, hinges, locks, etc) - A large, 1-per-row object at the bottom = 100 x units - A medium, 2-per-row object = 10 x units - A small, 3-per-row object at the top = 1 x unit - Therefore if you see 1 large cheese, 5 apples and 7 strawberries, you have 157 units of Food in the warehouse BUILDINGS - There are five types of 'buildings' - Names are self explanatory (I hope) - HOUSES - PRODUCTION PLACES - Farms, Forests, Quarries and Mines - PROCESSING BUILDINGS - Sawmill, Masonry, MarbleWorks, Foundry, Blacksmith - SERVICE BUILDINGS - BoardingHouse-Inn-Hotel, Police, Chapel-Church-Cathedral, Healer-Apothecary-Hospital, Import-Export Office and Shipyard - CITY IMPROVEMENTS - Granary, Sewer, Docks, Parks, Street Lights, Paved Streets and Paved Roads Processes costs and production: - FARMS - No input - Production: Level 1 - Produce 4XFood - Level2 = 6xFood - Level3 = 8xFood - Forests, Quarries and Mines - No input - Production according to level: L1=1xunit, L2=2xUnits and L3=3xUnits - Production Buildings - Input and Output the same as the level. E.g. Level1 Sawmill consumes 1xLog and produces 1xPlank, Level2 Sawmill consumes 2xLogs and produces 2xPlanks, etc. Building costs - generally, the higher the level, the more sophisticated the materials: - Houses - - Level 1 = 1xLog - Level 2 = 1xPlank + 1xRawStone - Level 3 = 1xPlank + 1xCutStones + 1xMetalParts - Places - Level 1 = FREE - - Level 2 = 1xPlank + 1xRawStone - Level 3 = 1xPlank + 1xCutStones + 1xMetalParts - Everything else - Level 1 = 1xLog + 1xRawStone - Level 2 = 2xPlanks + 2xCutStones - Level 3 = 3xPlanks + 3xMarble + 3xMetalParts DISCLAIMERS Make sure you DON’T CONTINUE YOUR GAME after going to TESETE - There is no way out: another reminder that you must continue your normal play from a save before you visited the test environment worldspace. Save&load have not been much tested - not sure what to expect. The scripted building animations sometimes crashed the game when building many things at once during tests. Normal play wont have nearly as many as during tests. Turn them off if you need. There is a fair amount of comments in the scripts, but also a large amount of debug code that I decided not to remove (it is an Alpha release for testing purposes only, anyway). And most are messy. No use to clean up now, as I am planning to review everything in the near future. I hope I didn’t forget to disable/comment any test code. REQUIREMENTS and INSTALLATION Requires OBSE v0016 and PLUGGY In the archive there is the normal Data folder for standard install (just the esp an a few meshes in Data/Meshes/QQTES) There is also a Pluggy folder containing the mod .INI files. This folder must be copied to your ". . .My Documents\My Games\Oblivion" folder. After the copy you should have the INI files in ". . . My Documents\My Games\Oblivion\Pluggy\User Files" CREDITS and Thanks - To everyone that contributed in the forums - SkyRanger-1 for the trigonometry code - TomBrightblade for the instruction on how to keep the apples in the air (MiscItem >> static) - I know there are more, but memory is bad and discipline to keep notes is worse. Have fun! ! !

Fangdreth, thanks for the contributions. As usual, I will comment only on the engine related aspects (I want to leave the lore completely open to ideas). ATM I am not planning to go into that many variations of the supply chain. At the beginning, I was thinking along those lines, but discovered that it is (very well) covered by the "NPC with Jobs" mod. I liked the suggestion of a single guild with the player choosing which it will be. It fits well with my original request of 'choices'. Each choice giving one advantage and one disadvantage. With enough of these choices, the player could find some balance that would fit his style (or completely umbalance the game and suffer the consequences). The way it is now, all buildings affect all indicators negatively (the bigger the city, the more you have to compensate by building specific buildings) and some buildings affect one indicator positively. An alternative might be to have each (and every?) building causing specific negative and positive effects. As for the houses: the way it is now (up to 3 NPCs living in a level 3 house) is just to save me some troubles during the test phase. This way I can have only 5-6 houses in the city and they will house all the city population. The city will 'spawn' two or three small villages, and the simulations showed that the village buildings don’t have to go all the way up. So this would supply enough lower class people to keep it realistic. Your mention of medieval communities, gave me a few ideas: 1- a typical society pyramid: the island would have classes (e.g. the typical lower-middle-upper classes) with a limited number of members (a percentage of the population) in each class. The player would choose who to 'promote' each time there is a vacant slot in a class. The higher the class, the happier and more productive the NPC. This would be another way the player chooses which way the society goes. Example: the player would improve security by raising the class of the captain of the guard. It would also open the possibility to demote someone whose 'improved services' are not needed anymore. 2-Or the other way around: instead of switching NPCs in the upper classes, the player switches their assignment: "Joe, my friend, security is a mess. I need you to put it back on track. I will find somebody else to handle your current job". Hey, I like this much better: it is more like the medieval times (lords and nobles and all) and fits one of my original ideas of having the few NPCs you start with growing with you all the way to the top as your friends/secretaries/aides. The guard's ranks and a promotion system is a good concept. Guards are bound to be killed, so there would be a need for a constant flow of new recruits. To have a possibility of determining the island 'purpose' (a tourist paradise or a slave pit?) is also a good one, as it would make the mod re-playable with different outcomes. But I am afraid it would be hard to implement. Anyway I will keep it in mind. About money: the more I think of it the more I am convinced it should be completely isolated from the game money. Actually, as I see it, money has no function in this mod, all buildings and upgrades are based on the availability of raw materials. Money has only some (conceptual) function as a return from exporting goods. But, ideally, it should be totally used to import goods, as mentioned in the previous post. Of course, the player can use his vanilla gold as in any other city to buy&sell at shops, bribe, rent a room, etc And, of course, any ideas I drop here are just like anybody else's and may or may not be used. (although I really liked the classes idea)

That is an idea. NPCs could have several levels and would require some sort of imported goods to upgrade to the next level. Each level requiring a more sophisticated/expensive/rare item. As they upgrade, their productivity improves and they generate goods faster, so they can afford the more expensive items. The goods would have to be consumables, so there would be a need for a constant supply. Lack of supply would drop their level, resulting in insatisfaction. I have not started on the NPCs leveling yet (postponed to the next development phase), so there is time to discuss this idea further. I suppose the mod has to have a final objective. ATM I am considering the player villa as the final prize for a good management. When the villa is finally built, I hope the feeling will be more like the one you have after finishing a difficult quest. At that point, the player may just disable the mod or keep the mod to use the villa. Which means the economics must reach some sort of stability so the player doesn't have to manage the island anymore. Come to think of it, this is another good reason NOT to have excess of anything, even profits. The player villa would be built by the people as a result of some satisfaction indicator. Fangdreth, just noticed your post. Will read it and comment later

Has been a while, so I thought it was about time I told you how things are going: I am working on the mod several hours every day and had a good progress the last few weeks: I have been working on two things: 1) Reworked the way buildings are handled: Although I am working with just a handful of buildings to test the engine, it became very difficult to have them all in the CS. I mean, every building has 3 levels, which means 3 meshes previously placed at the same spot, that are disabled/enabled as needed. Problem is that you cannot 'disable' then in the CS. All 3 are visible, one over the other. So it became too awkward to even just move them a bit, let alone choosing a proper combination of meshes. I could imagine the pain when I had to handle a few dozen buildings and, since I think it worthwhile to invest some time now to get things easier later, I reworked the whole thing and now I only have to position an XMarker. The houses are all in a hidden cell and are moved to the XMarker as needed. This way things got much more flexible for the testing phase: if I decide to use the AnvilHouseMC01 instead of the ChorrolHouseUpper01 for the House level3, it is just a matter of changing a line in a script (which, ultimately, could even go to an .ini file). 2) Developed a simulator You may not imagine it, but setting "The Numbers" for this mod is one of the major challenges (and one of the major satisfactions). By "The Numbers" I mean things like As a farm grows to levels 1-2-3, should its production be 1-2-3, or 3-4-5, or maybe 2-4-8? A Leve1 house should cost 10xLogs and 20xStones or 20xLogs and 10xStones? So I wrote an external program to simulate production and consumption of goods along many cycles (days) in order to get those numbers balanced. Anyway, I think I now have a decent combination. On the simulator I am working with the following scenario: (Disclaimer: the scenario below is just something I developed to test the Engine. It is a coherent scenario for testing purposes. The final version will, most certainly, be quite different.) One conclusion from the simulations is that the mod should have two major cycles: a building cycle and a export cycle. During the building cycle, you start from nothing and get to a flourishing city (the original idea). At this point, top level materials start to pile up, since you don’t have anything else to do with them. The export cycle starts by building an Export Office, a shipyard and a couple of shops to produce exportable goods from the surplus materials, like furniture from excess planks or weapons from metal surplus. The main result is money in the treasury, that will be used to build/upgrade the player's Villa, I guess. This cycle is still in the theoretical stage - nothing really done here - ideas welcome, as always. BUILDING CYCLE Four 'building' categories: Houses, Places, Buildings and Improvements. HOUSES: Where the NPCs live. You have to have a free house in order to hire a new NPC. One NPC can live in a level 1 house, two in a level 2 house and three in a level 3 house. PLACES: Farms, wood cutting areas, quarries and mines. Produce food and raw materials (logs, raw stones and ore). CITY BUILDINGS: Specialized buildings to process raw materials or provide services. Each building needs an NPC to run the business. ATM they are: Raw materials processing shops: Sawmill - Masonry - Stone works - Foundry - Blacksmith Service providers: Boarding House/Inn/Hotel - Guards - Chapel/Church/Cathedral - Health facilities Exporting facilities - Import/Export office, Shipyard and additional buildings to produce exportable goods CITY IMPROVEMENTS Granary - required to store food Sewer - required to upgrade buildings Dock - Parks - City lights - Paved Streets - Paved Roads - self explanatory I am working with a 'General Satisfaction' indicator composed of three other indicators: - Health satisfaction - affected by the level of the sewer and health care facilities - Security satisfaction - affected by the level of the guard station and city lights - General happiness - affected by the level of the parks and religious facilities Now I plan to place the concepts/numbers/buildings from the simulator into a test esp I may have something to show you in a couple of weeks. PS. And I would appreciate if you could suggest meshes that could be used as a Granary. Ideally 3 meshes, one for each level. If not, a single mesh scaled to 3 different sizes will do fine. PPS. Suggestion to name the three level of the health facility are welcome. I am using First Aid / Doctor's Office / Hospital, but I don’t like it. (I like one-word names)

Objects left in the houses and shops are lost when the buildings are upgraded, I am afraid. This would be a problem at the player's house, but, there, improvements come as new rooms, not upgrading the existing ones (this makes the idea of new buildings to a Villa, instead of new rooms to a palace, even more appealing - see this thread) But your concern applies to the player's 'office'. I was considering creating an office where the player could check the evolution of the island, talk with his aides and give orders (kind of a war room). If this office becomes true and is upgradable (I suppose it must), I will have to move a lot of things to the new interior. Containers could be moved to new, planned locations in the new interior. I suppose I could make a list of everything that is original to the office (Pluggy again) and, at the upgrade, move everything in excess to the new interior.

The scenario is this: at the beginning the NPC lives in a Level 1 house, say, a one-room house like the player shack at the IC Waterfront. Later the house is upgraded to level 2 (say, a multi-room, single floor house) and at the end to level 3 (a multi-room, two-story house). As you see, the problem is not the furniture. The whole interior must be different. Unless there are some surprises, the problem should be solved with 3 sets of [Exterior house] + [pair of doors] + [interior cell]. When the house is upgraded, I disable the old exterior house and door, enable the new exterior house and door (which leads to a new interior), and move the AI package target(s) to proper positions inside the new interior. I hope it is that easy (well . . not counting the hard work to set it up) As a matter of fact, I would not mind eliminating all the house interiors, but the problem is the same for the workplace, so it is just a matter of applying whatever solution to the houses as well. Btw, talking about hard work, every 5 minutes I thank Elys for her Pluggy arrays. Can't imagine doing this mod without them.

Problem is that, ideally, the interiors should be completely different. Level 1 houses may not even have a bedroom. Besides, the sleep packages references the bed reference and the bed should not be the same as the house upgrades. Yeah . . . I may have to use this trick. Actually, I think I will have to use it, considering that NPCs may not live in the same house all their lives. Some will move to new houses in villages that are supposed to pop up later in the game. And their workplace may also change, if I implement the NPC reassignment idea. The problem with the bed mentioned above still remains. I wonder if I could use a disabled bed positioned over the visible, upgraded beds. If worst comes to worst, they could sleep standing by the bed (the player has no business peeking into their bedrooms, anyway. lol) I hope I don’t end up scripting the NPCs' every move, as I did for the farmer.

Well . . no plans this far ahead. What do you have in mind? (Come to think of it, AI packages may become very tricky: as the island evolves and buildings get replaced, the doors and interiors should be replaced also, so, either the AI packages need to be adaptable to the changing conditions or triplicated, one for each building scenario. One easy solution to this is to upgrade just the exterior of the buildings, reposition the doors and keep the same interior all along. But I don’t like it because building are supposed to be very different as they level up, like going from one to two stories, and using the same interior will not feel right.)

Short term plan is to work on the concept of leveled NPCs. The general idea is that the NPC experience (or level) should add a bonus to the production site, e.g. an experienced farmer should produce more food than a novice one, everything else being the same. Some questions I plan to work on next: - Global experience x individual professions experience. - The above is related to the capacity of reassigning NPCs to new jobs (which, by itself, is a whole new game within the game) - Requirements for NPC leveling up - Automatic leveling up or player decision? Most likely, there will be scenarios where several NPCs qualify to a level 2 upgrade, but there is only one level 2 house, therefore somebody has to decide which one goes. Should this be a player decision (as it will affect the balance of the evolution) or should I devise an algorithm that makes this kind of decision. - How new NPCs show up: suppose you meet all the requirements and build a new farm. Should the NPCs appear automatically, in a "you build it and they will come" idea. Or the farmer shows up first and a farm is created when you hire him. Or a combination of both: a farmer shows up, the player hires him but will only start production after the player builds a farm and assigns him to it (I like this one better). Next week I will work on the script to control and keep track of all this and on how to integrate this script with the existing ones. But the real focus is the "engine architecture". The challenge in these early stages is to 'architect' it in such a way as to make it easy to add, remove and change concepts in the future. (I guess this is not what you asked, but I took the opportunity to get my thoughts organized here) Beyond that, not much planned. Initially I had the idea of creating some fancy scripts to make them look realistic (like the Realistic Farming), but then I realized this is not really my objective here. It would take a lot of time and it would not get nearly as good as NPCs With Jobs. I suppose the player should be more interested in balancing the overall evolution of the island than worried whether each lumberjack goes from tree to tree to cut them. So, I didn't think of anything much different from the vanilla ones: travel package to work location in the morning, lock up and go to bed at night. As you see, not much of a plan . . . so any contribution is welcome. (not sure this is what you asked either)

I suppose it is time for another progress report: I've just finished the scripts that handle the processes. I have implemented the concept of leveled buildings/sites. At the moment, I am considering 3 levels for each building. Each upgrade improves its productivity. E.g. a Sawmill level 1 takes 1 log and produces 2 boards, a Sawmill level 2 would produce 3 boards and a Sawmill level 3 would produce 4 boards out of the same log. At the moment there are three processes: 1- Housing process - handles house upgrades 2- Building process - handles upgrades of production buildings (e.g. Sawmill) and areas (e.g. Farms) 3- Production process - handles the daily production on each production site. A process runs if its requirements are met. The types of requirements considered so far are: 1- Items (consumed) - e.g. Seeds are consumed to produce food 2- Building (consumed) - e.g. a level 1 building is 'consumed' when upgraded to level 2 3- Items (present) - e.g. you must have X units of food in stock in order to hire a new NPC (the food is not consumed in the process). 4- Building (present) - e.g. a Granary must be created before you upgrade a Farm to level 3. 5- House (available) - a compatible house must be available to be the home of the professional (I am assuming, for the time being, that the NPC is upgraded when its working place is upgraded) Nice thing about those is that the values come from an .ini file, so if will be easier for me to adjust them later down the road, when fine tuning the processes. Next, I will work on NPC processes, meaning: a fourth process to handle NPC upgrades. I guess the requirements may be any of the above, plus: - A certain amount of time working on a certain profession I still must consider whether it is feasible / desirable to keep separate experience levels by profession or just a single, global level. I will let you know when I finish it . . . and suggestions are always welcome. - - - - - - MONEY Another possibility for money is to have it only at the Island Treasury in such a way that money in the treasury would be just another global indicator like Happiness or Health. As a matter of fact I don’t see much use for money in the island. At early stages the island production of raw materials will be used to improve the community. Only later, when you start to have significant surplus and have build some specialized buildings (like larger docks and trade offices) you will start to export and the resulting money would go to the treasury. Treasury money and player money would not mix. The player could not use his own money to accelerate the evolution and would not be allowed to take money from the treasury. Of course, the player could use his money at shops or inns as he would in any other town, but this would have no effect in the evolution of the community. P.S. My son gave me the CivCity: Rome for Christmas. It is fun. And it is somehow related to this work, as it has many professions and a chain of dependencies. But it has also many things that I don’t intend to have here, like geographical distribution of goods. It seems like an evolution of The Settlers.

Thanks, VincentAlliath. As it is now, I am working on the mod 'engine'. It will take me a few months to finish it. Only then I will know which requirements and restrictions the engine will impose on the story line and side quests. And only them I will really start to analize/filter/select/merge the ideas presented by the community. But, although the particular details of each individual idea will not be considered until then, they are all very important at this stage of the development. Just to give you (and other potential contributors) a couple of recent examples from just a few posts back: (1) I just added a new requirement to the 'rules' to be implemented in the engine based on an IHRE's suggestion for the sewer. (2) Elraine raised the LOD concern, which will make me (and others, I hope) keep an eye for possible solutions, which, in turn, may force some change on the engine, which may impose new restrictions to the storyline. As you see, the ideas presented here affect the engine development and the engine specs will affect the implementation of the suggestions. It's like a spiral. I am now at the third turn of that spiral (third version of the engine). Each version is better than the previous because of the ideas presented by the community. All of the above is a way to tell you: Please, add your ideas/suggestions/contributions to this topic. They are important and certainly welcome. Yes, that is an option.

LOD I don’t think LOD objects can be manipulated by script. If they could, it would be easy to enable/disable them as the real building is enabled/disabled. I don’t know much of this worldbuilding business, but, as I perceive it, the CS generates a single .lod file per cell and the lod processing is not very smart. It just uses that file when rendering distant cells. I have just done a quick test and an initially disabled tree does show up when distant. The game does not seem to check whether it is enabled or disable. When the island is built, we will see how bad it is. As you say, there may be ways to alleviate the problem. Maybe a solution will present itself in the meantime (*hopeful thinking*) OBSE I always use OBSE. And, I am using Pluggy for the first time as it became too hard to manage all the data without arrays. I don’t think this kind of mod can be done without OBSE. Maybe, after the mod is released, it will be possible to derive a downgraded version. But I wouldn't count on it. Adding companions and such I am trying to create the basic engine in such a way that it will be easy (*positive thinking again*) for me to add/remove processes along the way. Expanding this concept, I hope it may be possible to make this mod an esm and allow modders to add new things to the island. At the time, I will welcome your expertise on mod dependency, as I know the concepts involved, but I've never done it myself. And don’t worry about long posts. They are quite welcome. P.S. As I enjoy programming, I have my fun implementing new things (the scripting part, I mean) if they are complex and challenging as this one.

Wow. Lots of ideas. As always, I like them all. At this point of development (starting the 3rd version of the engine architecture) I read your posts considering whether the present architecture will support the implementation of the suggestions. I am glad to say that most of the ideas are supported, in a sense that they are processes that consume a certain amount of materials and may require the presence of something (a previous building, a specialist, etc). The one that was not supported was the concept of limiting the growth of an indicator until something happens, like IHRE's suggestion for the sewer. I think the Granary would also fall in this category: it is kind of intuitive that you cannot accumulate more than X units of food until you build a Granary to keep it for longer periods. Although this capping capability was not in the plans, I think the architecture allows for easy adding of new types of 'rules', so you may continue to suggest things along this line. About Money: I think the player should not be allowed to take vanilla gold out of the island. Main reasons are: (1) eventually, the island would give the player a steady flow of money. If the player plays this mod at the beginning of a new game, this easy-money would spoil the game experience (like the struggle to accumulate money to buy one of the houses). And (2) if the player goes to the island later in the game, money is not a problem and would not be a motivation to play the mod right. So I am considering removing money altogether or create a local currency that would not be good anywhere else. The local money could be used by the player to, say, build a new room in its island home. DLOD: I think you touched a serious point here, Elraine. There will be different buildings at the same spot at different moments in time. I seriously doubt the game engine was built to support this scenario. Not only the buildings. I guess most of the island will be covered with trees at the beginning. At the end, many areas will have the trees removed and replaced by farmland. So, depending on how you generate the VWD objects, you either see (from a distance) farms that are not there yet or don’t see farms that are alreay there. We will have to live with some wrong LODs, I suppose. And don't worry about going too deep. I hope imagining those things is kind of fun for you guys (and it does help me conceive the architecture). I kind of go overboard myself with some ideas like: Multi-Skilled NPCs: This is still a vague, recurring idea of mine: all NPCs in the mod would have a list of skills the same way the PC has one, but instead of vanilla Strength or Speed, the NPCs would have a list of professions, like farmer or smith. Some possibilities: - Choosing the right NPC to each job would be an important part of balancing the evolution of the community - The skill is improved as the NPC use it or by books/spells the player provides (quests?) - The player could have an NPC working at the same job all his life, which would turn him into a very efficient professional, like a master smith or something. - Or the player could make him switch jobs and accumulate experience in several crafts . . . (I am not sure why the player would do that, but it would be nice to have a multi-skilled NPC and get some advantage out of it) - It just occurred to me a good reason for the above: sooner or later the player will get tired of micro-managing the island. At this point he should be able to pass the responsibility over to a few ministers or secretaries and leave the island in an Auto-Management mode. The broader the experience of the secretaries, the better the island would be managed. - Recruitable NPCs showing up at the inn or at the Recruitment Office would have random skills, so every once in a while a real good professional would show up for recruitment. The better the city (the inn? the docks?), the better the candidates. - Anyway, it is just a dream . . .

Thanks. Those are some of the missing words. I suppose you are right. Stones out of the quarry would be used to build Level 2 buildings and when the player can afford a masonry, it will produce bricks, which, in turn, will allow for level 3 buildings. Triggered by a suggestion from another thread, we could have some optional city enhancements to boost global community indicators(like happiness or health), so the player may decide which one to build, depending on which indicator is falling behind. In case this turns out feasible, let's start a new line of suggestions for city enhancements and their effects I can think of a few to start with: Public baths to enhance Health Parks / trees-on-sidewalks to enhance Happiness Public lights to enhance Security (or reduce Crime, although I am not sure I want to go SimCity here) Suggestions for global community indicators are welcome. As well as city enhancement(s) that may affect them.

Hi. First, as always, thank you all for the contributions. Second, a quick, weekly progress report: I have been working hard on the TES engine. Progress at this stage is very slow. I have restarted from scratch a couple of times in order to get a better 'engine architecture', if I can call it that. But it is going well. Third, I need some help with the subtleties of some English words. Most of the TES economy will be based on processes. Processes take something as input and generate some kind of product. Processes take place in a specific building, place or area and are handled by a specific worker. I need your help to decide which would be the best word to describe some of the inputs, processes, buildings, professions and products. Ideally, a single word for each. Example: a quarry produces rock(?). A stone shop (?) transforms rocks (?) into stones (?) (cut/polished/minced/whatever rocks). Questions: what are the words to describe raw stones out of a quarry and somehow finished stones to be used in buildings? What is the name of the place and the process that transforms one into the other? Could I have a third process to further refine the stones and produce, maybe, marble to be used in upper class buildings? What would be the words to name the place, process and product? The processes I am working with are (still the very basic ones): (I have been thru Dictionary.com and Wikipedia, but I could not get anything better than this) INPUT >> PLACE - WORKER - PROCESS >> PRODUCT Seeds >> Farm - Farmer - Farming >> Food Trees >> Forest - Lumberjack - Lumberjacking >> Logs Logs >> Sawmill - Sawmiller - Woodcutting >> Boards [none] >> Quarry - Stone miner - Stone mining >> Rock Rock >> ?? - Stonecutter - Stonecutting >> Stone Stone >> ?? - ?? - ?? >> Marble [none] >> Mine - Miner - Mining >> Ore Ore >> Foundry - ?? - ?? >> Ingots Ingots >> Smith - Blacksmith - Blacksmithing >> Metal parts For the conceptual phase, I am using the name of the product to name the worker. E.g. a rocker is the quarry worker that produces rocks. A Stoner is the guy that transforms rocks into stones. lol . But it would be better if I started using the final, more proper names. Thanks in advance for any suggestions. Suggestions on further use of wood, stones and metal are welcome. Ships, weapons, armors and tools have already been suggested.