Can't wait to try wrapping my head around the playable version... though I fear I may fail that particular IQ test miserably
Depending on how you play it, it can be an idle game: you click on blocks and gather energy, to make further steps in the skills tree, to make stronger clicks.
All systems I'm talking about are means to get energy and cubes faster, but the most basic ones (just wait, or just click somewhere) are still effective even at greater levels.
But of course, you will have to wait a looooot of time to max your whole skill tree. XD
This is really great. The level of detail you are going into is astounding. Have you ever played Dwarf Fortress?
I played Dwarf Fortress. I mean, I tried. No mouse support kills all accessibility. So let's say my experience is made of friends talking about the game and stories I read on the Internet.
I like the way the game is designed. It's a "total concept". The universe and the mechanics are designed first, the gameplay is designed at the end. The game itself could be "playing" without the player.
Of course, I don't intend to make a self playable game, but as you know, the level of detail and the synergies are what makes these kind of games great. Sadly, we have to wait that the whole system is made before the game become playable.
The big question that comes to my mind is how accessible do you plan on making this game?
In this post, you can see that I admire Dwarf Fortress level of detail, but I despise their lack of accessibility.
My purpose is to make a game accessible by the tool you want to use.
In Photoshop, you can use only the pencil. In Word, nobody force you to use styles or copy paste.
In God is a Cube, if you want to play only as a god or only as a Minecraft entity, you can. Because you are fine with puzzle games does not mean you have to go first person. And because you are a Minecraft lover doesn't mean you have to play a god game.
God is a Cube is designed more like a MMO where your class is choosen depending on you actions. You are not a mage because you choose to be a mage, but because you are using magic. If you want to use only magic, it's your choice, but puting a small number on points in armor could still be a good idea.
The final form of God is a Cube should be a "fast start" where you choose to be a god, a first person entity or the pilot of a space ship.
There will be interfaces which help you to get the basics of the game (let's say you want to add a room in your spaceship, there will be a button for that). Where you are fine with how the stuff work, you are free to disable the interfaces to put cubes like you want where you want.
I'm not saying that God is a Cube will be 3 full games combined into one. Rather that you can play only one class if you want. The automation and AI will be here to compensate the fact you don't play part of the gameplay (auto moving cubes will repair your spaceship if you don't want to use the God view or the first person view to repair it yourself).
I'm working at the mechanics to make it so that even if you play only one third of the full gameplay, you still have a lot of different experiences to make. But let's be honest: you will play the game like a rogue like (I mean you will die a lot) if you really persist to use only one kind of gameplay when another one could be better... or you will have to be really good with your chosen gameplay, which is also possible.
I personnaly think the constraints are a good way to experiment every third of the gameplay at its fullest, so I will make it so you will always have a tool to help you.
By the way, the solo campaign will almost always force you to use only one kind of gameplay (god, first person or spaceship), in order to make you discover all advantages of each kind of gameplay.
Note: I'm often saying "you can play the game like that". It doesn't mean you have to play the game like that, or I'm making the game to play only like that. It means that I'm providing the tools to play the game like that, and you are free to use them or not, depending of your personal tastes or the situation. It's like Photoshop, you are free to make pixel art with the pencil, or to use the other tools.
I'm designing the game in "the contrary order": 1-Universe -> 2-Mechanics -> 3-Tools -> 4-Gameplay. The conception is currently between 3 and 4, and the development is between 2 and 3.
This makes me wonder - if the circuits are made of cubes, are they the same kind of cubes that make up the island planets or the ships?
In the whole game, 1 cube = 1 cube, no matter the size of the cube. The cubes are 1 meter large on islands, and only a few centimeter / one inch inside your body.
Circuits are made of:
- action cubes (move, detect)
- information cubes (direction left, object wall)
- crystal cubes (to link action and information cubes)
You can find crystal cubes naturally on the islands, as well as inside creatures next to action and information cubes (the creature own IA's cubes).
You can put action, information and crystal cubes directly on the island, they will become 1 meter large to fit the space. It's usefull to make 3D electronics at a great scale, to link factories (buildings which combines cubes) and containers.
3D electronics is like Minecraft-Redstone. Except that you can put this redstone inside a cube to facilitate manipulation.
It's like using the Little Blocks mode for Minecraft.
You can look at this video to watch a working example:
In God is a Cube, you can build a cube to have a defined purpose (such as opening a door), without even looking inside to see how its electronics is working. I will provide basic usage cubes, such as laser towers, and even an interface to make adjustments, such as "equiping a better battery". Players will be free to disable the interface to make their own -better- adjustments or to download other ready to make cubes.
In order to download these player custom creations, I not intend to make some kind of Steam workshop, but a simple text to copy paste or an image. The image version is some kind of Yu-Gi-Oh! / Magic card, with a picture of the final result, a small description and data encoded inside the file.
If not, how would you obtain the special circuit cubes in the game?
You can build the action and information cubes using other action and information cubes for the complex ones, or basic energy cubes for the simple ones.
I have to determine how many cubes it will cost to make the basic information and action cubes, but it will be a low cost, maybe a generic one (such as x cubes for an action cube and y cubes for an information cube).
Complex cubes are made of several cubes. You can combine the directions Forward + Forward + Forward to get a cube which will look 3 cases forward.
A whole 3D electronics circuit / software is itself a cube, that you can combine to other cubes.
So when you want to add functionalities to an existing software, you can make a new software containing the old one with your additional cubes. It's the black box principle, where you don't have to know what is inside to use it.
It have advantages and inconvenients. The major inconvenient is that you can surely achieve the same result by creating a whole new software, combining directly all needed cubes and so avoiding redundances and costing less cubes.
If they are the same, then could you make a nonworking circuit inside of a cube in order to store a bunch of material in a small space?
You can, but I will provide containers to put all the same objects into one space. It will be some kind of 3D box with the object displayed on each face, with numbers to display how many copies of the object are inside.
The nonworking circuit you are talking about is in fact a chest.
In God is a Cube, "using a chest" is in fact "browsing the content of a cube". As a Minecraft entity, you can browse 1 meter large cubes, which will be displayed as several layers of 2D list of cubes.
You can browse these chests (and therefore there are considered like chests) because they contain an object (some kind of magnifying glass) which make them act as a chest.
For a basic player, it's just a chest, and they don't even see the magnifying glass (and they don't care). They just click on the interface to build automatically a chest for X cost, they don't have to know how is working the chest.
But as an advanced player, you can use the pagnifying glass to edit the content of a cube (its software) like a chest. Basically, you will see the 3D electronics like several layers of 2D electronics.
One of the purpose of the game for engineers is to make 3D electronics as 2D electronics (when possible), because it's easier to build (faster and cheaper). I have a working example I will show in less than a few weeks.
Softwares usually exist in several versions (white, blue, green) made with electronics of the same color. You can combine 2 softwares of the same color to obtain a software of the next color (which is better because made of better electronics).
Does this mean that after building a circuit it becomes a single piece of software that can be moved freely from one cube to another?
Cubes are like computers without hard disk. Softwares are like CD-ROMs. If you have 2 softwares to make cubes move, you can move 2 cubes at the same time. Then you get back your "CD-ROMs" and you can put them in 2 another "computers".
What do you mean by better? Lower CPU usage?
Better cubes are faster. Instead of taking several seconds to make a decision, the electronics circuit will be run through faster and the cube will think faster.
I'm still not sure about CPU usage, but lower energy usage will surely be ok. I talked about more CPU needed, but it's because your cubes run faster: more decisions per second, so more CPU. But the task is done faster too. If I'm making it so the CPU cost is the same, the total CPU cost will be the same, no matter how fast (or slow) the work is done.
But with a really high level circuit, the CPU demand will be high (a huge CPU spike), so you will have to have a good CPU.
Note: I'm talking about the ingame CPU, your real life computer CPU should be fine, even on an old computer. A lot of things are calculated only once, and I'm working with worst case scenarios. I prefer to put limits into the game, rather than creating a system which can lag in some situation.
In God is a Cube, it's normal to see a cube making a several seconds pause in order to calculate a very complex path. But you have so much things to do and so much cubes to care about, that you are happy that your computer runs fine.
I created the whole ingame CPU stuff so people will look for efficient ways to make things, rather than using only the easy pathfinder cubes. When your cubes just have to move on a forward line, you will use dumb cubes moving in one direction or cubes looking at symbols on the grounds (you can put arrows on the ground, like some kind of sandbox puzzle game). These "dumb" cubes will cost almost no CPU, especially compared to highly intelligent pathfinding cubes.
Certainly don't rush, but it sounds like a creative mode would be plenty to spark interest. On a more basic level, just having a specification for the circuit aspect of the game would start people seeing possibilities and getting excited.
As I said, I have a working example. As you say, it will be better when I will show it. :p
And "software" implies the ability to have multiple copies.
You can make a copy your CD-ROM, so you have 2.
I looked at a lot of solutions so the whole system can work, and the one I think is working is to consider the following:
- the softwares are made of physical cubes, and are therefore physical
- the softwares are a 16x16x16 space inside a single cube (it's a 16x16x16 small cubes space "inside" a 1x1x1 big cube space)
- you load the software inside any cube, and get it back automatically when the task is done
- you can take back the software from one of your cubes when you want, then the cube become inert
- if the cube is destroyed, the software is destroyed (the cube can loot part of its electronics as action and information cubes)
As I said, 1 cube = 1 cube, no matter the size. So in fact, a 1 meter larger cube is not made of smaller cubes, like I show in this picture:
But rather the whole space is used (there is no wall or ground made of cubes). I will make another schema to show this correctly.
When you want to take the software cubes from an enemy cube / a cube which are not yours, you can destroy the cube (so it loots some software cubes), or you can edit it (using the right tools).
I'm making the system so you can physically enter the 16x16x16 space inside a cube, in order to edit / destroy it / pick the cubes you want.
Here is the example I'm working on:
- on the island, an enemy cube generator is generating cubes to build a structure
- you enter inside the enemy cube generator using one of your moving cube (your cube "get smaller")
- you are now a cube inside a 16x16x16 enemy structure
- you destroy inside laser towers which protect its inside world
- you follow the 3D electronics between the various softwares
- you find the cube containing the 3D map of the structure to build
- you enter inside the cube containing the structure
- you are now inside a 64x64x64 enemy structure
- you move to an important part of the structure, and edit it by destroying and adding blocks of your own
- now the enemy cube generator will destroy and add some cubes on the structure it is building on the island, accordingly to the new 3D map it contains
It's like changing the DNA of a cell. That's an important part of having physical softwares and worlds inside cubes.
Instead of having "an object X which does Y", you have a completely working program made of cubes.
On a basic level of understanding, the softwares are just a 3D structure you can edit. But if you go deeper, it's a real world you can explore and interact with.
Because if you think about it, if you can build real size Redstone and little blocks Redstone, why couldn't you become smaller to explore the world containing the small Redstone?
I don't say it's easy to understand, but I'm making it functional. Worlds made of cubes inside worlds made of cubes.
It's like Inception, but with cubes.
If I make a circuit can I put it in as many cubes as I want without remaking it?
The circuits provided by the game are official ones. They are usually made of one color of cubes (white only cubes for the white version by example). Official recipes for combining are just fusion of 2 existing circuits.
So a One-White only circuit will be superposed to another One-White only circuit and therefore become a Two-Blue only circuit.
When you edit a circuit, it becomes a custom circuit. Therefore, it's no longer part of any further recipes.
You will have to give it another name, and a version number. You will be able to share it on the net (using the picture or the text option). People will use your software, which will work exactly like you made it.
If your software is somewhat broken, you will want to create a new version. But because all sofwtares are physical, people will still be using the old version.
It can be a voluntary decision: let's say you create an IRL version of the microwave where you can put metal, it doesn't mean careful people will have to change their old perfectly fine microwave.
About creating software / circuitsThe plan and the way to build a circuit are two different things. The 3D electronics is the final result, but because it's physical it can be build using a lof of different means.
When you are creating stuff automatically in your inventory (the Factorio way), they are using the 100% safe "falling from heaven" method, which costs more that the moving cube version.
Your factories (the buildings combining cubes) can use different methods to build circuits. They can use 3D pathfinding to calculate one time how to build this circuit, then create and move circuit cubes to create the whole circuit.
If your circuit is made of 1 cube which is 3 cases at the right of the cube generator, the factory will create one cube, put inside the instructions "Right+Right+Right" then the cube will move to its final position.
There will be several kind of factories, such as optimised ones for 2D electronics.
I will provide a basic interface to edit some part of the factories, such as adding more cube generators.
I would like to remind that I'm designing the game around a technology made of cubes.
The generators inside the factories are the same that the ones you use on the island to build structures.
This could be the inside world of a factory (a 16x16x16 space), and the green building could be a 3D electronic circuit:
And yes, you can also be physically inside a factory and build things yourself. At the end of the building phase, the final 3D structure become an object which is put inside a container.
Everything in the game use the same technology and exists physically, no matter which "size" it is.
You think that you are in the uppest level of space, but maybe you are just inside a cube. A cube inside a cube.
It's like some kind of relativity law.
"If cubes are at the same size that the cube which contains them, it means that every cube is the possible container of a whole world made of cubes. If anything is made of cubes or containing cubes, from the infinitely small to the infinitely large, both physically and immaterially, so God is a Cube."
People say I'm crazy, but I'm making video games so it's ok.