Notes from playing Lasercake
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Isaac Dupree
Mar 9, 2013, 7:42:32 PM3/9/13
to lase...@googlegroups.com
I played Lasercake for a while.
So I have a bunch of random notes.
-no way to hover in the same place/height in the air for a while
-no way to build bridges
-still can't always turn a conveyor you just placed. Shouldn't
conveyor-turning range be significantly longer than placing range (at
least while they have to be different)? Also, it would be sweet if one
could rotate a conveyor that's buried under a tile (though.. unrealistic).
-why is there a delay between clicking to throw a piece of rubble and it
moving?
-When going to my notes file (in another XMonad workspace), then
returning to the game, my cursor is visible there. Maybe: if the window
is re-focused, re-grab mouse? and unfocused, ungrab? Also, is there an
isMouseGrabbed?
- vertical shafts in mines for ventilation? I was thinking about making
vertical shafts so I could tell where a mostly-horizontal mine *was*
relative to the surface. Then I remembered other uses for shafts. In
real life, how do people find out the relation between a mine and the
surface (or other parts of the mine)? Coordinates? Other methods? How
does one survey a mine (there being no GPS, sun, moon, or stars to help
out)? Do magnetic compasses work in mines? Do pressure-based altimeters?
- A way to destroy conveyors? [...later note: one that doesn't take me
an hour of playing to accidentally discover :P]. A sensible way to make
conveyor belts turn a corner? I started using reverse conveyors, which
helped:
: ^
: ^
: >>>>^<
The < above is the "reverse conveyor" I mean. Realistically, how would
it go? A wall where the "reverse conveyor" is? (There's no way to
create a wall currently.) Less momentum? Objects on the conveyors not
tripping on each other?
- Misclicks are annoying (changing environment, hard-to-use trackpad-
misplaced conveyor, dig when meant to throw). For some purposes, a rule
"clicks are ignored unless you have been continuously pointing at the
same thing / same action for the last 0.2 second" would be nice (for
some value of 0.2). Other times that would make it impossible to do
anything at all, or hard to sneak something in at exactly the right moment.
- adjustable guy height from the ground? (affects the visual effect)
- a way to temporarily pause/unpower the conveyors?
- ok i'm having trackpad aim precision problems too.
- one of my autorobots got stuck, and in an attempt to try and rescue
it, I got the neighboring autorobots to run into each other and get
stuck on each other too. Shooting them with a laser jostles them but
doesn't get them back going. Ooh I can push them now! But now I have
an autorobot that's loose and going in the wrong direction! Dunno why.
If I push against it I can push it back, but when I stop it keeps
trying to go in this wrong direction. I made a cave for it to get stuck
in and pushed it into that cave.
- Moving exactly aligned along the x or y axis is tricky. It probably
shouldn't be tricky because those axes are important in Lasercake.
- I got stuck a couple times too but I have a laser to shoot myself out
of those situations. I couldn't quite tell if it was legit that I
couldn't move.
- someday there will be cleanup bots. These bots would clean up rubble
that accidentally gets dumped near a conveyor (e.g. put it on the
conveyor or take it to a junk pile). Why will they exist? Because
someone will make those bots. It has an aesthetic effect whether or not
it turns out to be gameplay-useful to clean that stuff up. :)
- near a busy place, any ground tile without a conveyor on it tends to
get junk sitting on it eventually (at least, with the current tile
physics). Also... both my refineries got a 'hat'!
- oh whoops I missed that 'z' can deconstruct conveyors
- it's cool *seeing* traffic here (on conveyors), vs simcity
representation: crowding causes obvious problems (spillage :P)
- You can't throw pure metal. Occasionally you really want to (it's in
the way and you're full...). Now, maybe it's denser than rubble so
you're not strong enough to throw it :P
- tiles disappear as they get to the input of a refinery, rather than a
step later, which is visually strange
- Ah, the volume of these rubble piles is O(height^3)! That's why
they're taking quite some time to get full up.
- Discussing with Mom the difficulty where paths (roads, conveyors,
pipes) can get in each others' way in two dimensions but not in three
dimensions; I wanted to make a bridge (no way to do it); Mom says: "or a
traffic light" - an automated signal to avoid the need for multiple
levels. After a while I made a tunnel, which worked. It was a bit
tedious to build: dig + conveyor seemed to be the way. Autorobots are
unwieldy for digging specifically aligned tunnels, at least if they are
up or down bots. I can never tell where they mean to start going up or
down, and the sometimes seem to change their minds! And, yeah, having
ramps might make it more intuitive whether your tunnel slopes work or not.
- dreaming: when engineering a factory/system that has roads avoiding
intersecting each other: there might also be catwalks for maintenance people
- are refineries inefficient? i.e.: what happens when you (accidentally
or intentionally) pipe their pure-metal output back into their input.
- the game needs a save/restore system. Preferably one that will be
somewhat portable between Lasercake versions.
- My 'w' got stuck down - I had to switch to a different workspace
to get the game to stop thinking it was down - not sure why. (Many
keypresses at once and chording problems?) Releasing/pressing/releasing
the key didn't help. This is on my laptop keyboard - no complications
with multiple keyboards. Is there a way to get the current set of keys
that the OS believes is down, to double check? Or?
...happened to me again, with the up arrow key this time. Odd. Happened
about a dozen times in the hours I was playing. But what could explain
this? I checked the key-down-ness state tracking code in main.cpp and
it removes a key from the "currently pressed" state whenever it is
released! Is it my OS doing something weird? Then why doesn't it
happen to me in other programs; maybe it only happens while the mouse is
grabbed? (But the keyboard isn't grabbed!) Maybe switching workspace to
write these notes, unshowing the Lasercake window, over and over,
confused X11 somehow? Maybe using my hacky XMonad-based method that
makes KP_5 be clicking? But there was no obvious correlation between
any of these and the problems.
- heh - if you dig too fast, the conveyors get bogged down by multiple
layers of dirt and stop working. They should have a sound they make for
that state!
- ohh, you can deconstruct your rogue buggy diggerbots! But- only if you
can fit them in you. Probably you should be able to deconstruct them
into loose metal just to 'kill' them if you need to.
- ..the user being able to draw conveyors like roads are drawn in
simcity? (because it might be more UI efficient than clicking on each
space)
- There needs to be some way to stop runaway autorobots that are as fast
as you!
-- lasers
-- them running out of energy
-- tabbing to the autorobot and telling it to stop
-- the simulation making it so this doesn't actually use up your RAM
(Actually, the runaway autorobot I didn't catch didn't use up my RAM.
After all, it's not super fast and it only real-izes the worldblocks it
physically travels through, not the ones it could "see", unless you tab
to it.)
So I have a bunch of random notes.
-no way to hover in the same place/height in the air for a while
-no way to build bridges
-still can't always turn a conveyor you just placed. Shouldn't
conveyor-turning range be significantly longer than placing range (at
least while they have to be different)? Also, it would be sweet if one
could rotate a conveyor that's buried under a tile (though.. unrealistic).
-why is there a delay between clicking to throw a piece of rubble and it
moving?
-When going to my notes file (in another XMonad workspace), then
returning to the game, my cursor is visible there. Maybe: if the window
is re-focused, re-grab mouse? and unfocused, ungrab? Also, is there an
isMouseGrabbed?
- vertical shafts in mines for ventilation? I was thinking about making
vertical shafts so I could tell where a mostly-horizontal mine *was*
relative to the surface. Then I remembered other uses for shafts. In
real life, how do people find out the relation between a mine and the
surface (or other parts of the mine)? Coordinates? Other methods? How
does one survey a mine (there being no GPS, sun, moon, or stars to help
out)? Do magnetic compasses work in mines? Do pressure-based altimeters?
- A way to destroy conveyors? [...later note: one that doesn't take me
an hour of playing to accidentally discover :P]. A sensible way to make
conveyor belts turn a corner? I started using reverse conveyors, which
helped:
: ^
: ^
: >>>>^<
The < above is the "reverse conveyor" I mean. Realistically, how would
it go? A wall where the "reverse conveyor" is? (There's no way to
create a wall currently.) Less momentum? Objects on the conveyors not
tripping on each other?
- Misclicks are annoying (changing environment, hard-to-use trackpad-
misplaced conveyor, dig when meant to throw). For some purposes, a rule
"clicks are ignored unless you have been continuously pointing at the
same thing / same action for the last 0.2 second" would be nice (for
some value of 0.2). Other times that would make it impossible to do
anything at all, or hard to sneak something in at exactly the right moment.
- adjustable guy height from the ground? (affects the visual effect)
- a way to temporarily pause/unpower the conveyors?
- ok i'm having trackpad aim precision problems too.
- one of my autorobots got stuck, and in an attempt to try and rescue
it, I got the neighboring autorobots to run into each other and get
stuck on each other too. Shooting them with a laser jostles them but
doesn't get them back going. Ooh I can push them now! But now I have
an autorobot that's loose and going in the wrong direction! Dunno why.
If I push against it I can push it back, but when I stop it keeps
trying to go in this wrong direction. I made a cave for it to get stuck
in and pushed it into that cave.
- Moving exactly aligned along the x or y axis is tricky. It probably
shouldn't be tricky because those axes are important in Lasercake.
- I got stuck a couple times too but I have a laser to shoot myself out
of those situations. I couldn't quite tell if it was legit that I
couldn't move.
- someday there will be cleanup bots. These bots would clean up rubble
that accidentally gets dumped near a conveyor (e.g. put it on the
conveyor or take it to a junk pile). Why will they exist? Because
someone will make those bots. It has an aesthetic effect whether or not
it turns out to be gameplay-useful to clean that stuff up. :)
- near a busy place, any ground tile without a conveyor on it tends to
get junk sitting on it eventually (at least, with the current tile
physics). Also... both my refineries got a 'hat'!
- oh whoops I missed that 'z' can deconstruct conveyors
- it's cool *seeing* traffic here (on conveyors), vs simcity
representation: crowding causes obvious problems (spillage :P)
- You can't throw pure metal. Occasionally you really want to (it's in
the way and you're full...). Now, maybe it's denser than rubble so
you're not strong enough to throw it :P
- tiles disappear as they get to the input of a refinery, rather than a
step later, which is visually strange
- Ah, the volume of these rubble piles is O(height^3)! That's why
they're taking quite some time to get full up.
- Discussing with Mom the difficulty where paths (roads, conveyors,
pipes) can get in each others' way in two dimensions but not in three
dimensions; I wanted to make a bridge (no way to do it); Mom says: "or a
traffic light" - an automated signal to avoid the need for multiple
levels. After a while I made a tunnel, which worked. It was a bit
tedious to build: dig + conveyor seemed to be the way. Autorobots are
unwieldy for digging specifically aligned tunnels, at least if they are
up or down bots. I can never tell where they mean to start going up or
down, and the sometimes seem to change their minds! And, yeah, having
ramps might make it more intuitive whether your tunnel slopes work or not.
- dreaming: when engineering a factory/system that has roads avoiding
intersecting each other: there might also be catwalks for maintenance people
- are refineries inefficient? i.e.: what happens when you (accidentally
or intentionally) pipe their pure-metal output back into their input.
- the game needs a save/restore system. Preferably one that will be
somewhat portable between Lasercake versions.
- My 'w' got stuck down - I had to switch to a different workspace
to get the game to stop thinking it was down - not sure why. (Many
keypresses at once and chording problems?) Releasing/pressing/releasing
the key didn't help. This is on my laptop keyboard - no complications
with multiple keyboards. Is there a way to get the current set of keys
that the OS believes is down, to double check? Or?
...happened to me again, with the up arrow key this time. Odd. Happened
about a dozen times in the hours I was playing. But what could explain
this? I checked the key-down-ness state tracking code in main.cpp and
it removes a key from the "currently pressed" state whenever it is
released! Is it my OS doing something weird? Then why doesn't it
happen to me in other programs; maybe it only happens while the mouse is
grabbed? (But the keyboard isn't grabbed!) Maybe switching workspace to
write these notes, unshowing the Lasercake window, over and over,
confused X11 somehow? Maybe using my hacky XMonad-based method that
makes KP_5 be clicking? But there was no obvious correlation between
any of these and the problems.
- heh - if you dig too fast, the conveyors get bogged down by multiple
layers of dirt and stop working. They should have a sound they make for
that state!
- ohh, you can deconstruct your rogue buggy diggerbots! But- only if you
can fit them in you. Probably you should be able to deconstruct them
into loose metal just to 'kill' them if you need to.
- ..the user being able to draw conveyors like roads are drawn in
simcity? (because it might be more UI efficient than clicking on each
space)
- There needs to be some way to stop runaway autorobots that are as fast
as you!
-- lasers
-- them running out of energy
-- tabbing to the autorobot and telling it to stop
-- the simulation making it so this doesn't actually use up your RAM
(Actually, the runaway autorobot I didn't catch didn't use up my RAM.
After all, it's not super fast and it only real-izes the worldblocks it
physically travels through, not the ones it could "see", unless you tab
to it.)
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