⭐ Forensic Friday 11: Merry Christmas & Structural Integrity!

Merry Christmas everyone! Since it’s christmas day I will keep this one brief. The biggest update I have for you is that structural integrity has finally been implemented. It’s been a long time coming. I believe I mentioned it back in Forensic Friday X(can’t remember), so its been a long awaited feature (at least for me). Currently structural integrity only works with walls, so it is yet to be implemented with other objects such as floors and furniture. This is likely to be the brunt of finishing this feature, being making it work seamlessly with all buildable objects and making it intuitive to the user where walls can and cannot be placed etc.

Structural Integrity #

Structural integrity works by using a algorithm that @DilLocalAreaNetwork proposed, where each block calculates its horizontal distance to the earth and then uses that moment and uses that to calculate the force it experiences. This force is then combined with various other factors such as the cumulative weights above a block and weight distribution amongst surrounding blocks. This all results in a relatively “realistic” model. Here are some limited examples of what emergent behaviour arises from it.

Stable square supported 4 load bearing columns

Complex structure before collapse

Complex structure after collapse

In all these examples the walls are color coded. This is a new view (currently not accessible as of now) called the stress view. This allows users to see what areas of their structures are under stress and are at risk of causing a critical collapse if damaged or destroyed.

In other news:

Designing Convicts #

Convicts(Category C) are almost ready to be implemented (hopefully by @DilLocalAreaNetwork#8968 ). With restriction zones almost being done and rooms being done for the most part, and a lot of the construction stuff being done; we are starting to get to a point where we can introduce the core NPC classes. For this reason we have started to give serious thought to how Convicts should work in the game and what behaviour they should model. Here was a quick rundown of all the main things we could see convicts doing in our game:

Basic Needs #

Prisoners have basic humans needs that need to be met. If prisoners are starved of these basic needs they will get irritated and potentially misbehave to varying degrees. Basic needs:

• Shower,
• Food,
• Indoor prison ward time
• Outdoor yard time

Cells #

Prisoner cells needs basic requirements:

• A bed, or bunkbed, a toilet, a metal desk

Prisoner cells have additional things that can be added to increase their happiness such as:

• A desk, a tv, flat screen tv, bookshelf etc.

The more space a cell has, the happier the prisoners have i.e. a negative cramped infliction if they are in a tiny cell

Behaviour & Behavioural Traits #

Prisoners perhaps have compliance meter which models how willing they are follow the rules They also may have other traits such as:

• Reputation
• Toughness (perhaps could be increased at a gym)
• Empathy?

Prisoners ideally should try and form friendships & gangs(more likely to be formed with friends? Perhaps a gang could adopt someone who is tough but has no friends etc) an such during free time, and perhaps get into fights etc depending on various factors.

Maybe prisoners talk when they are close to each other and can either compliment, say something neutral, or insult. If prisoners then rack up enough insults from a particular person they could then hate them. Perhaps prisoners have a value called forgivenessFactor which affects how long it takes for them to forgive someone? Friends should ideally hang around more often than non friends, i.e. just walk around together?

Traits #

Prisoners would ideally have a handful of traits such as:

• Strong
• Stocial - being resistant to solitary etc
• Fearless
• Skilled Martial Artist
• Death row inmate

Misconduct #

Prisoners should be able to perform misconduct every so often resulting in appropriate punishments (punishments would be assigned in a menu) such as:

• Stealing/hoarding stolen items (could be interesting as they could still something from an experiment and it leads to some insane outcome)
• Contraband
• Getting in a fight
• Assaulting a guard
• Escape attempt

Other behaviours #

• Prisoners are able to attack any entity
• Prisoners initially don’t mind being locked up (since the corporation said their prison term would be shorter if they volunteered) if their mood reaches a certain point they might attempt an escape
• If the majority of prisoners are unhappy there could be a riot which could be ended peacefully or most likely very bloody
• Prisoners will naturally loose their minds after a few tests if they don’t have a specific trait to ward that off, eventually prisoners will have to be killed in a private room away from the prison called The Termination Chamber.
• If a prisoner sees another prisoner get killed by on site personnel they will either Fight or flight. If they fly they will perhaps start a riot, or be mentally scarred for a few weeks
• Not all prisoners will partake in Containment Breaches. Some will run and hide, some will try and escape, some will try and cause more mayhem.

Case Closed #

That’s all I have to say for this Forensic Christmas. I hope everyone tries to make the most of their holidays and looks forward to a new, hopefully more promising year. I can say that 2022 will be a very good year for Containcorp development. The summer sprint shall be highly productive!

Merry Christmas!
The Team,
Plasmarc Studios