Zetheros
Developer
Hey Exanimates,
Work continues on getting the new content ready for release, but other than that we've kind of been mostly working on Mind Thaumaturgy, but with a broader scope too. Part of this was something we had to check off our list for the update anyway, our first Revelation based power, a mind power. This was long planned and fairly simple to add, but we're adding it now because, through revelation, it is tied to this update's content. We took this a little further looking at similar interactions in a general way and how to support other revelation powers which have varied discovery methods, as adding new special interactions is something we're actively working on. For now, we have revelation mechanics and another mind power.
Still on mind, you might already be aware of how control over minds isn't supposed to be simple and absolute, but that trying to coerce someone to do something they really don't want to do could break control, also depending on how powerful the mind thaumaturge is. We're now working on Potential scaling, so these mechanics are needed, but we wanted to focus on Loyalty and Possession in particular, because they are quite exploitable as it is, and also the solution to one difficult problem has many other applications. The exploit here is controlling someone just to strip them of their items to weaken them. The AI should understand what is happening and rebel, but there's some nuance here, legitimate equipment changes and conditions that make them more tolerant.
This requires AI being able to analyse all items, decide how useful they are (to them), know what items they would replace in their loadout and how that would compare, basically just deciding how much of an upgrade or downgrade something would be all things considered. It's quite a broad problem, there's a lot of factors and items are procedural and varied so it's not like we can assign any values by hand. This deserves some care as it doesn't just affect a couple of mind powers, it allows AI to understand the practical value of equipment for many purposes, like deciding whether it's worth picking up or looting and using, how well geared another character is and so on.
We know ya'll just in "when update?" mode right now, that's coming when the content is ready, but we're still doing important development work and letting you know. This sort of stuff has been talked about in the community before and we think most of you will probably appreciate it when it comes to it. We're trying our best to wrap things up, but we need just a little more time.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
Work continues on getting the new content ready for release, but other than that we've kind of been mostly working on Mind Thaumaturgy, but with a broader scope too. Part of this was something we had to check off our list for the update anyway, our first Revelation based power, a mind power. This was long planned and fairly simple to add, but we're adding it now because, through revelation, it is tied to this update's content. We took this a little further looking at similar interactions in a general way and how to support other revelation powers which have varied discovery methods, as adding new special interactions is something we're actively working on. For now, we have revelation mechanics and another mind power.
Still on mind, you might already be aware of how control over minds isn't supposed to be simple and absolute, but that trying to coerce someone to do something they really don't want to do could break control, also depending on how powerful the mind thaumaturge is. We're now working on Potential scaling, so these mechanics are needed, but we wanted to focus on Loyalty and Possession in particular, because they are quite exploitable as it is, and also the solution to one difficult problem has many other applications. The exploit here is controlling someone just to strip them of their items to weaken them. The AI should understand what is happening and rebel, but there's some nuance here, legitimate equipment changes and conditions that make them more tolerant.
This requires AI being able to analyse all items, decide how useful they are (to them), know what items they would replace in their loadout and how that would compare, basically just deciding how much of an upgrade or downgrade something would be all things considered. It's quite a broad problem, there's a lot of factors and items are procedural and varied so it's not like we can assign any values by hand. This deserves some care as it doesn't just affect a couple of mind powers, it allows AI to understand the practical value of equipment for many purposes, like deciding whether it's worth picking up or looting and using, how well geared another character is and so on.
We know ya'll just in "when update?" mode right now, that's coming when the content is ready, but we're still doing important development work and letting you know. This sort of stuff has been talked about in the community before and we think most of you will probably appreciate it when it comes to it. We're trying our best to wrap things up, but we need just a little more time.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
