City³, the replacement for RPGX
Its about to get better.
Earliest Information:
I have been in discussion with Brian Smith for sometime and I have decided in the next major revision of "RPGX", the name will be dropped. Instead, we are going to dub the next gen mod City³.
Thats right, we are abandoning RPGX. Not before a final v1.31 hotfix update though.
Its slow, unworkable, and buggy. And its rumored to have a polymorphic virus embedded in it somewhere. So yeah, we're dropping it.
What do we want to accomplish in this mod? Here's some of the pointers.
- Emmersive city experience without sacrificing gameplay
- Choices will decide consequence, this is determined by the groups, not built in "crimes"
-Groups "keep" records on you - Organized groups which can jail/hostage you! (Police is by default a group)
-Seperates companies and organizations - Professions and not multiple jobs (akin to Sims 3 or Iban's v3 mod)
- Resources harvested for city production
-Food: Crops, Fish
==feeds City's food supply, able to hold food in your hand and eat it or give it
-Ores: Standard Ores & Rare Earth Minerals
==Used for commercial shops for manufactured goods (guns)
==Price and ore cost production determined by damage or handled by special profiles if detected
-Trees: Standard Trees & Endangered Trees
==Processed into bricks where you can either use it or sell them to a commercial lot - And finally, a GUI which helps facilitates all of the above
-Lists things normally shown in /stats
The Envisioned Future of City RPGs
Building
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A lot of time in RPGX has went to the separation of the lots into three categories, Residential, Commercial, and Industrial. Sounds a lot like SimCity, right? Well, in the future, this is supposed to give the city builds organization instead of a messy blend of houses, factories, and shops all in the same area. This change was made so the add-on could enforce this itself. How?
Residential lots have low taxes, they are for homes.
Commercial lots have higher taxes and will allow facilitation of shopping inside, whether for food, guns, or clothes. How the mod will accomplish this is yet to be decided.
Industrial lots will have similar taxes and will process resources for you; this includes food resources (crops and fish), lumber into usable/plantable bricks, and ores into materials used for clothes and guns/ammo.
Crime and the Law
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Right so beforehand, City RPGs have been hooked around the law being the dominant party and always having the advantage over crimes. Being able to see who kills who, being unpunished by the mod, etc etc.
In the future, people can be jailed -or- taken hostage by affiliated criminals and mafia. Police have handcuffs, they have duct tape.
Want to get away with a crime? Sure, why not. Go for it. If someone sees you do it, you're in trouble.
Resources, Hunger, and You
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Many City mods have had to deal with unlimited resources. This contributes to the problem of too many weapons being available to the richest people and only helping to ignite DMs within the city when deaths are unpunished.
In the future, much labor should start with cheap resource gathering, as with newcomers. Newcomers are the most often people that join City RPGs so they should be the laborers: but lets leave Jobs for the next section and talk about Resources.
Fish, crops, and other food resources contribute to the city's food supply when processed in the Industrial Lots talked about earlier.
Trees, when cut down, are processed into bricks that the individual can buy in 500, 1000, or 2000 packs on Commercial Lots. They are very cheap. Probably $1 for 10 bricks.
Ores, when mined, contribute to metals and ores used for the manufacturing of goods like guns and ammo. In fact, ammo in the long run may take more to manufacture than just a single gun.
On the other hand, there is always illegal processing or rare earth minerals used for special items.
Endangered fish, endangered trees, or rare earth minerals. They all contribute in some way.
Jobs
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Jobs, jobs jobs jobs... the core and heart of all City RPGs. In an age where people want to be different than others, theres always a demand for unique jobs... however there is a problem in modern City RPGs where there are jobs that do nothing but are useless and take up space on the mod just so someone can say they're X (job name).
In Iban's recent City RP mod, he has it right. There are only so many profession types, there's just ones with different levels of accomplishments - tiers if you will.
President and Council Member? Aren't those in the same profession: Administration?
Hacker and Codemaster? Same profession again: Programming.
All of these can be classified under one job, just with different levels.
Simplicity is better than complication, you know.
I hope this helps up clearing some of the ideas I had for RPGX's future.
PS: The GUI mockup is missing a New Group button on the third tab.
I talked about this a lot, but most of these ideas will be incorporated into the City³ project. I will elaborate on this further.
In the concept, one starts a server with the City³ addon. They are greeted with a Host GUI dissimilar to the standard GUI where they must name their city and decide their government type.
The host is always considered by the addon's system to be the "founder" and not its head of administration. One can decide a totalitarian system, a democratic system, or such to be the system for the administration. The only difference is who has the rights to City Controls and Police Management, of which the Police is a default group that sees to it that the city is at peace. This is the first time where a host may not have powers that the City's Administration has, but they can always demolish and rebuild the city with a different Government. In fact it may be possible to overthrow a government.
Thats right, a group can assume control of the city under certain conditions.
Revolutions are always fun.
How do we avoid abuse though? Do we tighten the restrictions needed for a new administration, or rather, group to take over?
Its simple: The administration (dissimilar with host/admins) doesn't have the power to destroy core infrastructure, or anything on a Road Lot which supports the roads and sidewalks, and it costs administration whatever the building cost to build (in terms of brick count) to demolish it.
The Host/City Founder has whats called Executive Orders, which is a nice way of still having power over the city even when someone else is in charge.
Executive Order 1: Rename the city.
Executive Order 2: Forced change of government.
Executive Order 3: Forced change of group in charge (Only non democratic cities).
Executive Order 4: Disband a group. (WARNING: Deleting the Police is not a good idea.)
For a long time, City RPGs have suffered from problems that plague the gamemode itself. The aspect of building, crime, being killed and losing money, all of them.
It ends now.
We are looking for possible coders and modelers to assist in this project. You want to help? PM me.
Project Management - Randomness
Lead Programmer -
Assistant Programmer -
Modeler - Eepos (strictly the models)
Artwork (Brick Icons and the like) -
Testers - This project is on hiatus as of now due to the Next Gen MERP Project.
