The craziest thing you've seen in a building/simulation game?

Hey everyone, question for you: what is the craziest thing you’ve seen/done either in Stonehearth or a similar game (for example, Rimworld / Stardew Valley / Dwarf Fortress / Minecraft / Gnomoria / Terraria / The Sims/ Sim City / Animal Crossing, etc)?

Reason I ask: as we define the shape of our game, we want to make sure it has room in it for the kinds of stories that you want to tell. A lot of games in the building/simulation genre are really great at producing interesting stories, and I’d like to hear the ones that stand out to you.

For example, I thought Magnasanti was one of the coolest and creepiest ways to make a statement using Sim City, maybe ever. I don’t think you’d ever make this kind of statement with Stonehearth; our game has a different tone, but it’s certainly a story that’s stayed with me, and it plays on and builds on Sim City’s theme of making a perfect utopia. Dwarf Fortress’s Boatmurdered, similar, except with a focus on gritty madness. :slight_smile:

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I remember Magnasanti, when I saw it the first time it made me go back and play the game again. Though my playstyle in sc3 was completely the opposite of his. I would focus on small areas, trying to make it looks natural. Wow, that game is already 18 (?) years old! I remember plaing in a demo cd back in 2000, which only allowed a city to grow for 4 years lol, then buying the full game (plus expansions) and played it for almost 5 years.

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Okay… so, Crusader Kings II. Totally different type of game, but it has a)characters with b)traits and c)ongoing opinions (as does Stonehearth, of course), which combined with all its complicated systems allow for some really interesting stories. And while I don’t expect Stonehearth to ever achieve that sort of depth, partially because building the community is more important, partially because you don’t play as one of the characters, and partially because your Hearthlings aren’t trying to kill each other to gain power… it might still be looking at some if you want to expand traits and Hearthling relationships.

In my first serious game, I played as a minor duke in France. He already had a daughter even though he was pretty young, so I wasn’t trying too hard to get a male heir; he had plenty of time. Except it turned out some people disliked him for no good reason and so someone randomly killed him.

So here I am, playing as a 10-year-old girl, who everybody hates because they disliked her father, she’s too young to rule and so is under a regency, she’s a female ruler in medieval Europe, and she has a female heir because that’s her next cousin. And this bishop, one of my most powerful vassals and a man so immoral he’s nickamed “the Devil”, decides to kill my mother. This gives me a reason to arrest him, but I can’t because my regent won’t let me. I spent the years holding feasts to try to appease my vassals - at least those who show up (my bishop doesn’t) - and hoping my mother doesn’t die. And since being so bad at diplomacy wasn’t helping, I decided to take a diplomatic education. This helped, but I also became Deceitful, which made sense to me given what desperate measures I might’ve had to take behind the scenes to protect myself and my mother.

But finally, I came of age - 16, which is plenty old enough to rule a duchy! - and I could start doing something about all this. But I couldn’t imprison the devil, because he was by far the best tax collector in the realm and I needed the money. So I asked him to end the plot against my mother and he gave the game’s standard apology (which I couldn’t help but feel wasn’t very sincere.) But after catching him stealing from the treasury, I got to imprison and ransom him a few times, which was very good for the budget.

Since CK2 is based on dynasties, I needed a heir of my own - but of course anyone I married who coild secure a meaningful alliance wouldn’t allow their children to be of their wife’s dynasty. So she married a handsome mercenary captain. And made a male heir. Then she died in childbirth, and I had to repeat the same thing with her son. Same regent, too - I imagined they’d reconciled after the whole not letting her arrest the bishop trying to kill her mother thing and that’s what she would have wanted.

Though I kind of gave up on that run after he died of “Lovers’ Pox” shortly after coming of age.

Sorry for the ramble. It’s long, and it’s quite unrelated to Stonehearth’s gameplay or world, but it’s by far some of the best stuff I’ve seen. [To be fair, I really need to play Rimworld sometime.] Just be glad I haven’t gone on about anything in my first D&D campaign yet :stuck_out_tongue:

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Crusader King… Is it that game where a guy manages to create a kingdom of horses?.. Yep, it is That Time A Horse Became Empress Of Rome

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Okay as of recent games, I was playing Rimworld. I had started a colony on Telos. Cypher my Negotiator (aka Colony Leader) was making friends with the local tribe, So that we could start trading and helping one another on this difficult world. Things was going well till One day Cypher got sick. Well Nebs my doctor for the colony had to take his place (second best Negotiator) for the next negotiations, (when the friendly tribesman showed up) Well everything didn’t go so well, Nebs who got insulted very easily, was offended and started attacking the leader of the local tribe and killed him, Negotiations was out the window. No more trading, no more help. We are now hated with that tribe, Cypher who got better couldn’t even patch things up. Now I’m in bitter war with this tribe till the end of time. That’s the craziest I have had so far recently.

What actually happen in gameplay:

I started a colony in Rimworld in the seed Telos. As i was building and gathering. A local Tribe showed up. I looked at their faction standing with me, it was a 10, (very low but friendly) I had Cypher who is my best negotiator greet them. things went well. Well over time, I ended up with around 56 standing points with them. Not bad I was thinking. Before the next time they showed up to trade or visit; I cant remember. Cypher got sick, Well in the game a sick person doesn’t respond so well in negotiations or trading, and So i ordered Cypher to total bed rest to get well. That left Nebs, my Doctor of the colony to step up in his place, as He has the second best Negotiator to have him talk to locals. (forgetting he had the abrasive trait, Oops) Well they showed up as i was building, I sent Nebs to greet them and entertain them while i was designing my next building. The next thing i know i hear gun shots going off, and Nebs and Carl and Frank was under attack. I scrolled up real quick and saw that the actual leader of the tribe had come to visit us; that Nebs was entertaining, but now he lied dead on the ground, and Nebs thoughts of negativity was Insulted by Drake (Tribe leader). My colonist was fighting the other 3 visitors from the tribe. (this is a game you don’t reload, you go with the flow) so i let it fold out. Well in the end they killed 2 other visitors leaving only 1 to flee. I looked at my faction standing and was now a -87 enemy of the tribe(All that hard work gone in one instants). They cont to raid and fight me to this day. I have tried to patch things up having Cypher communicate with them, but they dont want to hear it. 4 years later in-game, the faction standing with them is now a -75, but seems it will take forever, Generations to fix it, so we are in constant war.

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the craziest thing that has happened to me was a little story of a ghost town (coincidentally, it happened in stonehearth a couple of weeks ago)

So, I start the settlement, everything is going hunky dory, 2 fighters, but I am working my herbalist to become a cleric. Houses are being built, there is plenty of crops, and so far the sentient stones have not been so much of a problem as we might have thought.

that is… until the stone golem arrived.

after a particularly bad attack of the walking skeletons, the defense force was heavily injured, once the attack was dealt with, they returned to their quarters to sleep their injuries off.

IMMEDIATLY after they went to sleep, a stone giant appeared on the horizon, and the footmen were still sleeping

eventually, when the golem was at the gates, one of the footmen awoke with slightly under half health, not ideal, but better than nothing.

That beast ate through the defense like he was made of paper, even trying to retreat and have the citizens provide support while the brave fighter recovered was of no help. The second fighter awoke and joined the carnage,but it was too late to save the town.

after the citizens fled to avoid being stomped by this stone creature, the fighter did his best to tackle this colossus, but to no avail, for one wooden sword could not defeat this monstruosity.

He was slain, and the behemoth yearned for hearthling blood.

The following fight was nothing short of a massacre, one after the other this monster chased each citizen until they were far enough from the town flag, and anihilated one by one until the once thriving forest outpost was nothing more of a ghost town.

and for a night, all was quiet.

Having found no more poor souls to destroy, the golem returned to the mountains, where many claim he remains to this day.

The morning after the carnage, a lone wanderer came into town. Finding an empty town must be quite puzzling all on its own, specially with such a large ammount of food and tools lying arround. The terrifying realization came to this lone hearthling once he saw… the plethera of graves that adorned the citizen’s last stand (this is actually where I found that sounds glitch I reported into the forums, and it eventually game me the idea for custom tombstones… which is now being turned into a mod by @Hamnisu )

with all the terror and reverence one can have for the dead, he set about to collect the remains of what was once a town, he placed the dead in a row, collected some food, and surveyed the now rotten farms, which would yield no food for some time. He set about trying to find a sustainable way of feeding himself, as there were enough resources to continue construction on the dormitories and masonry.

That is when the globins came.

Being one lone fighter (having changed classes to become a footman before they arrived) he stood no chance against an armed goblin raiding party, as he lay on the ground, fainted, all seemed lost.

But as the hours passed, his strength proved to be his saving grace, his heart kept beating, and while unconscious, he remained alive…

as dawn emerged, there was a glint of hope on the horizon, a moving figure, a rustling bush, a creeping shadow.

A faithful and compassionate cultist arrived just as our brave defender had his last portion of heart flicker. With much haste she hurried him off to the nearest bed, where he slept, narrowly escaping death.

This cultist began to gather food for herself, and surveyed the land, the goblins were aproaching, you could smell their camp smoke.

That is when they decided, to move on, or to perish as their predecesors did.

an all out migration began, as much as one person can migrate. Stone and wood were stockpiled, food and tools were accounted for, and furniture was packed.

One by one, what was worth saving from the town was salvaged, the comfy bed, a mason table, a cook spoon, 3 log piles, 4 empty storage boxes, a stone firepit, and a wooden town center.

the day after, the survivor awoke, and agreed that something must be done, as the aproaching goblins were to return at any moment

2 days it took, for everything to be moved, leaving the inconsequential behind to apease the goblins, were they to return.

It was all moved to the adjacent mountains, where they could live in peace, and start anew. They made a new friend, who immediatly became a mason and helped remove all that was worth removing.

and with that, our pursued hearthlings left what was once a beautifull and blooming home, destroyed by both stone and goblins, to the mountains.

They escaped, and as the goblins made their next atack to destroy their new settlement, the last ladders were being removed, focus was to change from woodworking to masonry, as trees tend to grow less on boulders.

aaaaaaand that concludes the saga of “the forgotten”. The little hearthlings DID move all the old tomsbtones out of respect, but that had to be done right after they salvaged everything that was worth anything.

I actually had a lot of fun with this game, I eventually started another town, but man, this was an adventure

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Well… There are plenty of good/crazy stories from my time with Stonehearth, Rimworld, Terraria, The Sims, Starbound and such, but I think the vast majority of extreme builds that I’ve made (typically cooperatively with others) or seen, would be in Minecraft and Paradox strategy games (especially Stellaris, which is what I tend to play by far the most). The latter wouldn’t make good material for the reason that you ask, but Minecraft might or might not.

Typically when I play Minecraft (alone or with friends), I play large modpacks - things like Tekkit, Voltz, etc. - so what me and/or friends have made tend to be in the realm of complex machine/robotics facilities that not only look quite extraordinary (especially what some of my friends are capable of), but are so efficient by the end, that they eliminate the human variable entirely… or well… at least as long as someone was there to maintain chunk-loading :sweat_smile:.

Something that I’ve seen quite few times, and would love to see a little easier in Stonehearth, is floating structures. Either as standalone, quite literally just floating (which unfortunately rarely looks any good) or are on floating islands or similar constructs. If systems were in place to ‘accept’ and better help the player make these WITHOUT mile-high scaffolding and/or ladders, then players could make a lot of good fantasy themed stories without needing mods or a shitload of content in the vanilla game. A combination of creative free-hand building and imagination should do the job to make it feel right.

… I don’t quite feel like any of this would help, but I don’t really have anything else to offer at the moment, so hopefully I’m wrong.

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I’d just like to mention that that isn’t even the only horse playthrough that guy’s done. I believe there was one where he replaced every single major character with horses, and another where he restored Zunism under a Middle Eastern horse empire (praise the sun!). Great game.

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These are some neat stories people have posted. I have to wonder how Stonehearth is supposed to do any of those things, though. Maybe it’s just because, having followed the game for several years, I’ve seen it change to substantially, but look at the depth in the stories @coasterspaul and @micheal_handy76_mh are sharing. Those aren’t feasible with just some minor tinkering.

I loved building a stronghold in Terraria. But even though Stonehearth has measurably more options for designing buildings, there’s nothing alive about the Stonehearth world. Sure, with judicious use of ib you can make a huge castle…but can you fish in the lake? Does your solemn graveyard do anything? Do your cauldrons bubble and your specialty merchants wander around your home? Do you feel like your Hearthlings are your PCs and visiting merchants your NPCs? No - none of this happens in Stonehearth, so even if you had all the pieces you’d still not have the puzzle.

@coasterspaul 's CK2 story is a really good one (and I’m impressed by anyone who does well in that game, that game is downright vicious). But it needs distinct and persistent NPC entities, not just little war camps spawning here and there. It needs awareness of social and economic pressures, not just military ones - and Stonehearth has no social constructs at all, and no economy to speak of.

@micheal_handy76_mh 's Rimworld story also relies heavily on a persistent NPC colony. It sounds more like something we could see in Stonehearth, if there was a cohesive enemy AI built. But his story is also entirely hinged on the social interactions between the player colony and the NPC colony.

@TheRedBaron91 's story is a Stonehearth one. So obviously that story exists in your game. But it’s also mechanically the simplest by far of the three - it’s just a tale of multiple attacks wearing down a village. It relies on a lot of flavor text and imagery created by the player. While struggling against the odds is always a fun story to be in, this is just a story of losing through attrition, and trying to survive a fighting retreat. That’s not even a good story to work toward because so many potential players won’t enjoy that sort of slog at all.

I guess all this pessimism is rooted in my inability to understand what kind of game you’re actually trying to make. You don’t have a combat system even worth the electrons it takes to disparage it, despite many posts about the shallowness and excessive simplicity of it all. There’s no social construct because there are no choices and consequences; yes, you have personalities and “interactions” but they’re independent of player input so they’re just something you have to see interrupt the tasks you’re actually trying to complete. You don’t have any sense of a living world; neither in the static buildings and furniture, nor in the ephemeral here-and-then-gone war camps of spawned enemies, nor the lifeless emptiness of your village as your Hearthlings spend all day out and about sort of following your orders. You have no economy of any interest because there’s nothing special to buy, there’s no limit to what you can sell to a trader - only how much gold they have to buy - so they have no personality.

I really want Stonehearth to be a good game. And even though it’s a discouragingly long dev cycle, you’re obviously still working on it with intensity and perhaps even passion. I just don’t see how we can give you good feedback on what narratives Stonehearth should support, when it’s still unclear what sort of game Stonehearth is going to be. Maybe that’s just my own failing. I have a few :slight_smile:

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Quite the story, @TheRedBaron91; in my book, you need a big pat on the back for sticking through it and form your 2nd settlement after the first one perrished!

I’d like to thank you for sharing your story - it will add food for thought to my work with the mod.
And, if I ever find myself in a similar situation in Stonehearth (again) I shall think of your story and keep on fighting!

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The name I use here (and on pretty much the rest of the internet now) comes from my first town in the game Towns after I was finally able to save up and buy the game proper. I had a few dozen hours on the demo, so I knew a lot of ways to optimise early progression; but past 20 in-game days everything was new territory.

I “rolled” my citizens and map (which is to say, I hit “new game” and the game generated them all randomly), and the first citizen on the list was named Francis d’Avre – my IRL name is Francis, and a quick googling of d’Avre suggested that it could be interpreted as “nobleman” or “rich person.” I took this as a sign – my first town would be led than none other than me, an avatar granted to me by RNGesus!

I set the other citizens to their tasks, and converted “myself” into a soldier. Armed with only bare fists, wits, and a rudimentary patrol route system (plus the hard-won experience that anything more dangerous than a single medium-sized spider would probably kill “me”), I created a patrol route to intercept any wandering monsters and then went to focus on building up the town. Very quickly I ordered the construction of some bone armour and a spear, and then sent “myself” to equip it and clear out the hostile frogman population in the jungle. This combat netted me a slightly better spear (it was green! Apparently this meant it gave “me” extra HP and defence), taken from the dead hands of the frogman leader. I took that new spear, and sent “myself” to assault the snakeman population in the desert. These enemies were tougher, but “I” managed to fight them down while surviving serious wounds, and secured the safety of our growing village. I also picked up a sweet curved sword, this one was black which meant it did extra damage and improved “my” accuracy – nothing would face “me” and live to tell the tale now!

And it was growing! While “I” was busy defending the borders, several immigrants had arrived. Being so busy micro-managing the combats, I’d forgotten to check in on the food supplies. We had a meager stockpile, but much of the wheat harvest was sitting un-milled and therefore useless to us as a food source. We were relying on fresh fruit, as we had no iron to make an oven, and couldn’t bake any pies without flour.

at this point, I’m going to break character to explain something about this early version of Towns I was playing. There was a rather critical bug we called “Hunger Lock”, which Stonehearth has actually had to overcome as well. Basically, citizens would get hungry, and not be able to take on a new job because they were too busy looking for food, which meant they became literally too hungry to bring in the harvests and everyone starves to death. So yeah, that’s what I was staring down at the time – a slow spiral into Game Over

As “I” awoke from my recovery snooze, “I” went to look for food and found none. The last few pears had rotted away overnight, leaving our larder bare. “I” went to talk to the other townfolk about bringing in the harvest, but they were too busy complaining about being hungry.

So, “I” rolled up “my” sleeves, laid down “my” gear, and began harvesting apples. As “my” friends ate, their strengths returned. They ignored advice to turn the apples into pie, preferring to eat them raw, but even so “I” had managed to avert the starvation spiral. The town celebrated with the first new loaves of fresh bread, now that people had the strength to mill some flour.

But I (as both omniscient player and stoic town defender) knew that the bread and apples wouldn’t last. “I” picked up my sword, and headed into the snowy Northern wilderness – if I could secure an outpost, we could feast on snowcherry pies, which were twice as nutritious and approximately 1.8x as tasty as apple and pear pies!

Well, you can guess what happened – instead of finding lunch, “I” became it. After looking away for a moment to check in on the town, I got the notification: Francis d’Avre has been killed! I panned over to where the fateful fight had taken place, and found… nothing. No corpse, no yeti, just a stand of snowcherry trees.

I figured that the yeti had eaten “me” and ambled off to its den to sleep and digest its hard-won meal. And that is how I took up the mantle YetiChow.

It’s not a particularly complex story – I got a lucky RNG coincidence, which prompted me to roleplay the game a bit more than I usually would, then “I” won a few combats before switching back to a civilian role in order to help bring in more harvests, before switching back to a soldier and dying. There should have been a corpse, but there was no free space for it to drop onto (a limit of Towns’ engine), so that prompted the story about being eaten and provided context to the whole saga. Obviously the story as I’ve written it relies heavily on my narratizing the events, but Towns made that narrative easy to write, and all the plot points were driven by interacting with the game, not a “script” I put into action like you would likely do in a traditional RPG. In other words, the story is about how “I” reacted to what the game through at the town, my choices as a player being personified in a soldier who shared my name.

I think that Stonehearth already has most of that covered, mechanically, and that’s what first drew me to it. I’ve since done other crazy things in Towns, and I’ve been able to replicate them in Stoneheart – things like cramming a “full” town into a single building, or hollowing out a mountain and filling it with stored food. But my “craziest” experiences in both games come from when the RNG combines juuuuuust right with the emergent stories in the game to create a memorable coincidence – that coincidence provides fuel and direction for an evolving narrative.

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As much as CK2 gave me, I still had to use my imagination to get a really coherent story out of all of it.

I tried to follow a town from the eyes of one character in Stonehearth once, and though it took more imagination - though the mood system did give me a lot more to work with once it was added - I enjoyed trying to fill out the story of the desert mining town of Copperwood. I mostly stopped that because I got busy with school - I still have enough pictures for a couple of updates just sitting on my hard drive gathering digital dust, so maybe I should continue it.

The game has the potential for role-playing and storytelling, but right now you have to do most of the work yourself. Also, I kind of feel like you have to fail pretty bad for an interesting story.

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I’ve been reading this thread over and over, and though I have stories, I can’t think of any goods ones that fit into the building/simulation genre. Here’s a couple recent ones, but nothing amazing.

  • Cities Skylines
    Many times I had built a city, and kept running into the problem of uneducated labor for my industrial areas. Finally I decided to make an “outskirts” to one city, an area of residential and just enough commercial. I didn’t spend any unnessisary money on them that I didn’t need to, so the area didn’t have police, fire, medical, nothing. Obviously you can guess how fast this turned into gang central. Funny thing is that once I legalized drugs in the outskirts, happyness went up, crime dropped significantly (almost 30%), and the income from that area increased do to “tourism”. Thought it was quite hillarious at the time.

  • Aven Colony
    Had built a pretty big colony (has 936 colonist) and when AFK to grab some grub. Came back, and my water pumps had failed, thus my colonist were dropping like flies. So at that point, I’m scrabling to try and save them, and I’ve already lost at least half of them. FINALY, like last min, I get water production back up and running. Current population…14. So at this point, I’m trying to decide whether to abondon it, or rebuild it. Went with rebuild and scratched what I could. Got the population back up into the 200’s before I finally decided I’d just start over.

My favorite story, which my fiance even laughed at me for, took place in Fallout 4. Was trying to build a settlement yet kept getting attacked by a neighboring Children of Atom post. Now not only do I HATE the Children of Atom, but this was messing with what I wanted to do. So at first, I tried sniping them from a distance; died a couple times. Then I tried going mid range, and again died a couple times.

Finally, I got pissed, grabbed my shotgun and pulled a Leeroy Jenkins (even did the cry and everything!). Only one other time (Grand Tourismo as a kid) have I had that amazing of an experience, in my history of gaming. After dying half a dozen times trying to kill one group of people, it felt bloody amazing to bash the majority of their skulls in with the blunt end of that gun.

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Thank you for the stories everyone! They are much appreciated. Aside from being really entertaining, they have are a few common threads that I find really informative: for example, they have protagonists–either individuals, or specific rulers, or even “I” the player. They illustrate struggle, and they almost always involve being surprised by something the game did, that nobody expected. This is the sort of stuff we can go back and use as a yardstick for whether or not SH is managing to evoke stories, and where we can go back and shore things up, when we’re failing.

Unlike Rimworld, SH is a game first, and a storytelling generator second. However, when we decided last fall to reorganize ourselves to make a really great game, as opposed to a pile of features, we decided our game was about pioneering a living world that inspired warmth, creativity, and storytelling. We whack at these goals all day in different ways, but it’s easy to lose focus if you’re always staring at a thing. Thanks for providing more inspiration and a broader perspective for today.

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It took me a while to think of a story, and I only have one because this occurred while I was thinking. A series of events that took place in The Long Dark (survival simulation).

I was heading from a destroyed lookout to a new one, referencing my mental map against an outdated meta-game map, trying to reach a point for part of the Nomad challenge (where you spend 72 hours in each of several given locations). While i was on my way there I was attacked by a wolf. I grabbed my axe and fended it off. Found it farther up my trail dead and only just starting to freeze. I quartered it and carried it with me to the lookout where I proceeded to cook it up and eat it for the next few days.

The reason I decided to share this here is that the combination of AI, meta-game and in-game motivations lead to my wolf encounter and a story of man against nature. It wouldn’t be meaningful or impactful if any of it had been scripted. The closest thing there was to a script was the attack which involves grabbing a weapon and clicking rapidly.

I think that’s the thing I’m missing from SH, there’s not enough interaction between me as the player and the world of the game. There are AIs, scripts, meta-game… there’s nothing in-game dragging me along, no reason for me to want to accomplish things within the game. Only reasons outside it.

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this still kinda blows my mind!

or this

https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=37490

Not very relatable to stoneheart I guess but what people can program in games does amaze me.
And I guess for these type of games best features (in my mind) are things you can build on. Like if you have water I want to build a watermill to drive a sawmill :stuck_out_tongue: Or build a boat and sail somewhere! if you have orcs I want to go to war with them! if you have magic I want to build an altar to channel all the might of the magic world.

If you have farming I want to build an automatic watering system. if you have wind I want to build a windmill! to grain corn or pull something else! If you have electricity I want gates! :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyways that’s my dream game! stoneheart does have some of it! particular the build system is exactly this! if you have a build system let it uses resources! and have to scaffolding :stuck_out_tongue:

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A player story that really impressed me for DF was Archcrystal. It’s a story about a very long running fortress that over the generations managed to tame dragons and clear hell. What I think it epotomizes is a very high skill ceiling, with enough patience and experience a player was able to create a monument of tremendous size. There wasn’t a limit, there’s no “this is the biggest thing one can achieve, no further”.

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Hard mode of stonehearth can smash your army that has 400 power.
I lost 21 hearthlings total.


I was lost 13 before too in same game.

UPDATE: 1 MORE. I’m guessing you can see why.

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I dont have any stories of my own, but I’ve read a few dwarf fortress ones. The thing I’ve noticed in common with those stories is that the reason they happen is due to the amount of systems within the game. With that many systems, they begin to interact with eachother and become more than the sum of their parts.

In order for stonehearth to have room for these kinds of stories to occur, you need to make more of these dynamic interactive and passive behaviour and control systems, and the more you add, the more they will begin to interlock and have domino like effects on eachother. Your conversation system is a good start to such a path, and i encourage you to continue to add these kinds of elements.

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This is something I heartily agree with. The conversation system on its own isn’t too flashy, and never will be, but it gets me excited because it’s the foundation for stories just like the ones we see in Dwarf Fortress or or RimWorld. It requires a really long view to see things that way, though, because it means imagining a bunch of other systems which will take as long or probably longer to properly set up. But when it all clicks together…

well, that’s what I’m excited to see happen!

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