Future Plan of Capitalism Lab - Customizable Game Logic

[David]

Now that the Banking and Finance DLC is feature complete. What remains is the final phase of testing before its official release.

We would like to share with you guys our plan for the future development of Capitalism Lab, aside from the already announced Real Estate DLC.

The dev team has been contemplating the idea of customizable gameplay logic for a future DLC. The goal of such a design is to allow the player to customize not only parameters and visual appearances of buildings and objects, but also the gameplay logic using scripts. The long shot is to reimagine Capitalism Lab as a platform allowing users to create mini business simulators focused on a great diversity of industries (for example airline, restaurant, casino, planetary mining, survival, a time scale spanning hundreds of years and civilization related gameplay etc).

There are still lots of unknowns regarding this approach as until now we weren't able to allocate a meaningful amount of time to really study its feasibility. Taking one small step at a time would be wiser than trying to accomplish all these in one-go, which is an incredibly daunting task with tremendous uncertainty.

Towards that, we would like to seek the help of a small group of users who find this idea exciting and have the time and enthusiasm to contribute. We will then form a discussion group and set up an email discussion mailing list, meaning that you will receive an email whenever anyone in the discussion group replies. It is fair to say that the amount of email communication is probably not suited for someone with less than a true interest in this project. On the other hand, if you think you would enjoy participating in discussion of gameplay, trying out early prototypes, we would appreciate that you reply this to this thread and tell us a thing or two about yourself and the type of contribution that you think you would bring to the project. (If you are an experienced CapLab modder with a popular or decent mod under your belt, you may skip this step.) We will then take a look at the history of posts that you have written in the forum and follow up with you with a few more questions if needed.

If the project does move forward to the development stage, members of this group will have first-hand private access to work-in-progress versions of the DLC. If we are able to form the group as planned, we intend to depend on the group to give us feedback throughout the development. And we will not have to run beta-test recruitment like what we did with the previous DLCs as the group would supersede it.

[saffgee]

Hi David - as we have discussed many times before, I am very happy to contribute to this in any way I can. Thanks !

[David]

Hi Saffgee, thanks for your positive reply.

Before moving into private discussion, I think we could try to demonstrate on the public forum about what we mean by customizable gameplay logic.

Let's take the Hotel feature for the Real Estate DLC for example, the idea would be to let users define variables of a hotel and their interactions with other game variables in a script, and the game executes it based on the script.

This way, different mods can have their custom versions of hotels gameplay mechanics.

Here is the original suggestion for the hotel feature: viewtopic.php?f=49&t=7100

Note that this would be an experiment and hopefully discussion will lead to a viable approach capable of producing the intended result.

[saffgee]

David if I may, I think as a broad delineation we are looking at 3 areas that have consistently garnered a lot of interest on the forums:
1) Time related events/customisations; essentially this encompasses historical mods, future mods, dynamic timing mods, etc. Basically any mod or additional complexity that involves passage of time.
2) Scope related events/customisations; this one covers industry expansions like services, restaurants, hotels, etc. Pretty much any mod or customisation that involves broadening the scope of the current game setup.
3) Detail related events/customisations; anything related to deep dives on a specific sector or further detail around existing or new gameplay. The various DLC's tend to fit under this category for example, or things like mining, etc.

Each of these areas may have customisable pieces like graphics, parameters, gameplay logic - and I guess the question is how do we implement a generic script system that allows for customising these pieces via script logic and how easy is it to apply that logic across the various elements to enable almost endless game play permutations?

The end result could be something that allows for example a mod to define passage of time events; eg. a full spectrum mod that takes the player from the 1920's to the 2120's, with customised graphics appearing at milestone dates (eg. 1920/1970/2000/2050/2100), products set with start and end dates, building start/end dates defined and generational events (maybe an heir takes over every 50-60 years). Further it allows for each game to potentially be a business simulator for a specific sector - ie as David said, a mod that specialises in Hotel management, or one that focusses on Software, and so on.

Each custom script would then add far greater scope for modders to nuance gameplay and create interesting stories/games. Also, scripts are far more accessible than changing datasets, meaning that each player could tweak his setup the way he likes it, with little to no experience of modding needed to succeed.

[baz]

Hi David,

I am interested in this idea and i'm happy to help where I can.
Would this allow for more Semi industry and staying within that Semi industry. Ie my post about Car's been made up of several parts, and then tyre companies been able to stay within there nominated area, Battery companies ect Leading to a car made up of several components, whilst the car company concentrates on making cars and not all of the components? Ideally leading to less factories and maybe just sticking to cars?

[saffgee]

Would this allow for more Semi industry and staying within that Semi industry. Ie my post about Car's been made up of several parts, and then tyre companies been able to stay within there nominated area, Battery companies ect Leading to a car made up of several components, whilst the car company concentrates on making cars and not all of the components? Ideally leading to less factories and maybe just sticking to cars?

I'm somewhat hurt you don't remember that's one of the cornerstones of my Modern World mod. I know it currently has its limitations, but updates are coming, much of it along the lines of what you desire.....give me a few more days to get the 2.0 Beta out and then hopefully it will address many of your points. The 2.1 will build further on that and with the workarounds in place it should really nicely mirror the actual real world better.

In the meantime I'll also work with David on this project and hopefully add my 2 cents on exactly those sorts of points you make. I definitely want all that too !

[baz]

Hiya Saffgee

I'm somewhat hurt you don't remember that's one of the cornerstones of my Modern World mod.

I haven't forgotten your mod my friend, just making sure we can get the all the bits you need to complete your mod, and more.

[Frozencore]

The current game has many variables on a micro scale already set. In addition, we have mods that add custom opportunities that extend beyond the original content.

It's my opinion, to elevate Capitalism Labs, is to take it to the Sci-Fi realm. There is so many more opportunities that can be capitalized on within an open ended Sci-Fi realm. Introduce multiple planets and monetary exchanges, and you multiple the desire which makes Capitalism Labs great. While monetizing on an exchange within a single world is great, it's the conquering of multiple exchanges and worlds that sound much better.

[saferain]

This plan is great, I want to join.

[David]

This plan is great, I want to join.

Hi Saferain, a big welcome to you for joining the Team CapExpert!