Templates file.

Discussion in 'Scenarios' started by xtended2l, Jan 21, 2021.

  1. xtended2l

    xtended2l Commander

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    Today I tried to add alternative recipe to some item as I did in all other games numerous times. So I just added new "template" and restarted my dedicated server lol Needless to say, my game gone nuts, a half of my CV just disappeared, with all the loot. Then I found out by googling that there could be only one template for every item. And by digging into my savegame, I found out that Deconstructor is what caused a half of my CV to disappear, and that I cannot place it anymore. I bet there is explanation how additional template made Deconstructor non-functional. But my question is - Will it change in the future? I mean alternative recipes(templates) to craft items and blocks?
     
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  2. Kassonnade

    Kassonnade Rear Admiral

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    How do you expect the game to decide by itself between two templates for one item ?
     
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  3. GoldDragon

    GoldDragon Captain

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    A similar way that 7 days to die does glue, I’d think.
     
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  4. xtended2l

    xtended2l Commander

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    This:
    There should be a simple enumerate call. It is a disaster that the game lacks such a simple functions. We were developing a mod for 7 Days To Die for more than a year. Never met such issues there. It was also so easy to work with xmls, EGS configs drive me nuts lol, but that could be that I used to work with xmls. Anyway I feel now how limited are modding possibilities in EGS.
     
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    Last edited: Jan 21, 2021
  5. Darinth

    Darinth Commander

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    Except that 7dtd doesn't support a major feature that Empyrion does: the ability to craft not only the selected item, but all of it's components, automatically. This complicates things. Sometimes the solution should be obvious, like how glue in 7dtd should simply use the lower cost recipe if available, or the more expensive one if not. But what if there were 2 roughly equivalent recipes using different resources? I mean... you could do a priority system... but sometimes I assure you I'll want to have different priorities than what would be hard-coded (maybe I'm short on a particular resources)

    How do you deal with the deconstructor? What does it turn things into? Can I then use the deconstructor to construct something and deconstructor it into an entirely different set of resources?

    Multiple recipes for the same object is a lot of cases that aren't easy to resolve.
     
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  6. xtended2l

    xtended2l Commander

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    While I agree, that this feature in EGS is very handy, I dont see how it make things overcomplicated. If your recipes are enumerated in the system, so they have unique id's, and you can have not almost, but EXACT set of resources in them and it will work, because there will be two icons for these recipes - so no conflict.

    If you have multiple recipes, you can just specify unique recipe for deconstructor only, so again - no conflicts.

    Coding is not an easy task for sure. No way I am comparing the development of the game itself with modding. But being honest, there is no unsolvable situations.
     
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  7. Kassonnade

    Kassonnade Rear Admiral

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    You can make the same exact recipes in empyrion, but each game object requires its own ID, and in the config it is up to us to make sure we don't make duplicates. That's why I asked the question : if you throw 2 times the same ID to the game, how do you expect it to discriminate one to the benefit of the other ?

    How is that "7DTD glue" thing related to the topic ? I know nothing about that game. Are the objects IDs exposed to the players, or all managed internally ?

    This has been changed now for blocks in EGS, since we have 2048 additional "slots" to make new objects, and we don't use ID numbers anymore as they will be assigned internally. The downside is that we have to be careful not to change things in configs (the name) and try to run a saved game with the old names.
     
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  8. Darinth

    Darinth Commander

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    So... I want to make item A and item A requires item B, C, and D
    Item B has a single recipe, it's obvious how this gets rolled into the recipe for item A.
    Item C has 3 different recipes
    C1: Requires 2xE, 3xF
    C2: Requires 2xE, 6xG
    C3: Requires 10xH
    Item D has 2 different recipes
    D1: Requires 5xG
    D2: Requires 15xI

    Just in this situation, there are 6 different variations of the recipe for making item A. If Item G has 2 recipes... this number of combinations jumps up suddenly to 24 different variations.

    Now... is this fixable? Yes. But the UI either gets complicated or very long (scrolling through the lists of different recipes, subrecipes, etc...) and I'm just not confident in there being a good solution.


    This works, but it does have the side effect of allowing you to make make an item with recipe A, and it will end up getting deconstructed with recipe B to transform resources.

    There are some situations where there are no good solutions. They're not frequent, but when you're making games you have to strike a balance between flexibility and ease of use. Having multiple different recipes in a system that will auto-craft sub-components is a dicey subject IMO.
     
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  9. xtended2l

    xtended2l Commander

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    What I've seen so far - other games just take the last and ignore previous iterations of the same ID, and do not start an armageddon when you do so.

    Straight and primarily related. The glue is just an example, there are a lot of recipes in the game when it requires less items to craft the same item in a more advanced workstation(constructor) and such. This is the fact that it works there. Recipe is simply not bound to the item. Most ID's are shown, yes. At least for blocks and items, that I remember.
     
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    Last edited: Jan 21, 2021
  10. xtended2l

    xtended2l Commander

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    Is it an issue? It could be controlled by the creator of alternative recipe to keep the balance. Like item A needs item B, and item B needs item C to construct. And alternative recipe gives you an ability to craft item A directly from item C. BTW, there are a lot of such recipes in Satisfactory. A lot more than it is in 7DTD. Alternative Recipes is one of notable features there, which unlocked by exploring the map.

    My point is that alternative recipes used in all games except EGS, which is weird like hell. I understand that Deconstructor, which for whatever reason returns 100% materials, requires more attention on alternative recipes, but it is no way a show stopper.
     
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  11. Kassonnade

    Kassonnade Rear Admiral

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    When you think of it, it would not make sense that "Fiber plant" can be found on all planets in a galaxy, for example. They made "components" be general categories to allow to make more different objects from which we can get these components. So on one planet the "natural sweetener" can be found in one object, but on another world it will be found in a different object/ plant.

    So basically, there is no need for multiple recipes, but much more need for varied sources, to avoid encountering always the same plants/ animals/ rocks in all playfields.
     
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  12. Vermillion

    Vermillion Rear Admiral

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    You can have multiple recipes for the same item. But as long as the Deconstructor exists, it will throw an error when it reads the recipe list. Even if you set one of the recipes to be ignored by the Deconstructor.
    I experimented with this a lot a while back, but couldn't get around the Deconstructor being unhappy.
     
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  13. GoldDragon

    GoldDragon Captain

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    And it is for that reason alone that there is always but 1 recipe for each item.
     
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  14. Kassonnade

    Kassonnade Rear Admiral

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    There was also the ID limit problem, so the game could not afford to waste one on a duplicate. Also note that mods are not following any rules, what we see as "broken" might simply be "working as intended" because that's the way it was hardcoded.
     
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  15. xtended2l

    xtended2l Commander

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    You know which recipe I added? It is your idea(as far as I know) to melt down plates into ore in the furnace (or that was ravien?). Now I know you did not added iron plates to these recipes for a reason lol
    For sure the whole "templates" code is malfunctioning pitifully.

    If dysfunction is our function, then I must be some kind of Genius ;)
     
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    Last edited: Jan 22, 2021
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  16. Kassonnade

    Kassonnade Rear Admiral

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    lol... " It's not a BUG it's a FEATURE " ! :D
     
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