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New Year's Day Special Suggestion!!!!

PostPosted: 07 Apr 2018, 21:59
by eltomito
All the characters get bunny ears for Easter and hats for Xmas. Wouldn't it be cool if they got something special for New Year's Day, too?
Yes, it would! And it would be a varying degree of drunk driving!!!
On new year's day, every character would be drunk or hangover to some level which would change every year, vary between the characters but be the same on all computers.
For example, on Jan 1, 2019, Wilber would be a little tipsy and perhaps oversteer a little. Sarah would be so hungover she woudln't be even able to start her gizmomobile.
Puffy would be so wasted she would drive backwards instead of forward and left instead of right, and she's be switching the directions every 20 seconds or so (because she realizes, OMG! I'm so drunk I'm driving in reverse! I hope nobody noticed!) Suzanne couldn't take her foot of the gas no matter what. Etc. The next year, they would each get drunk to a different degree.
I think it would be very educational about the dangers of driving under influence. It would also inspire conversations such as: "Did you see Hexley this year? He drove just like our drummer always drives home from our gigs!"

Re: New Year's Day Special Suggestion!!!!

PostPosted: 07 Apr 2018, 23:36
by QwertyChouskie
Although it could be hilarious, it could also be confusing and trigger a lot of false bug reports (why aren't my controls working?). Such a thing would have to be designed carefully, so as to avoid confusion.

Re: New Year's Day Special Suggestion!!!!

PostPosted: 09 Apr 2018, 02:29
by GeekPenguinBR
New Year Hats.jpg

Just a silly idea for New Year Eve hats with an unpretentious art over the official promotional rendering:

1.Conical hat with "Happy New Year" and a Sparkler.
2.Top hat with an animated motion sign board with the phrase "Happy New Year".

Re: New Year's Day Special Suggestion!!!!

PostPosted: 10 Apr 2018, 15:46
by hiker
GeekPenguinBR {l Wrote}:Just a silly idea for New Year Eve hats with an unpretentious art over the official promotional rendering:

1.Conical hat with "Happy New Year" and a Sparkler.
2.Top hat with an animated motion sign board with the phrase "Happy New Year".


I like the conical hats :)

Re: New Year's Day Special Suggestion!!!!

PostPosted: 11 Apr 2018, 23:28
by eltomito
I really love the top hat even though it has nothing to do with New Year's Day. But the drunk part is the good part :) It sucks I have no time to implement it! It would make Jan 1, 2019 one hell of a day!

Re: New Year's Day Special Suggestion!!!!

PostPosted: 12 Apr 2018, 00:18
by GeekPenguinBR
hiker {l Wrote}:I like the conical hats :)

:)

eltomito {l Wrote}:I really love the top hat even though it has nothing to do with New Year's Day. But the drunk part is the good part :) It sucks I have no time to implement it! It would make Jan 1, 2019 one hell of a day!

I'm not a programmer, but I think it's difficult to do. No?.

Re: New Year's Day Special Suggestion!!!!

PostPosted: 12 Apr 2018, 08:53
by eltomito
eltomito {l Wrote}: It sucks I have no time to implement it! It would make Jan 1, 2019 one hell of a day!

I'm not a programmer, but I think it's difficult to do. No?.[/quote]

I don't think so. Also, it might make more sense to add a special Champagne Bottle item for that one day which would be hidden in a gift box and it would get used automatically within let''s say 5 seconds of picking it up (just so that you could actually see you have the Chapagne Bottle before you gulp it down). So, the only defense against getting drunk that day would be avoiding all gift boxes. Actually on New Year's Day, all gift boxes could turn out to contain champagne. :D

Re: New Year's Day Special Suggestion!!!!

PostPosted: 12 Apr 2018, 14:39
by XGhost
eltomito {l Wrote}:I don't think so. Also, it might make more sense to add a special Champagne Bottle item for that one day which would be hidden in a gift box and it would get used automatically within let''s say 5 seconds of picking it up (just so that you could actually see you have the Chapagne Bottle before you gulp it down). So, the only defense against getting drunk that day would be avoiding all gift boxes. Actually on New Year's Day, all gift boxes could turn out to contain champagne. :D

Just my own two cents regarding this topic...

First of all, as you have already noticed, the implementation for this kind of special day is not so simple as just tweaking the driving behavior of the karts a little -> from a design perspective, but also from a technical perspective! Regarding your suggestion, the key here is how you want to achieve an understanding from the player, what exactly is happening. Because just tweaking the karts driving behavior will lead to mass-confusion guaranteed! As you mentioned, there must be an element that tells the player directly or indirectly what led to this behavior (e.g. champagne bottle). From the technical aspect -> such a feature implementation is not easy at all! There are so many aspects that are undefined or not quite clear how it should work mechanically. And you make it immediately a lot harder when coming up with the idea to add a new ingame-element. This is not something you just integrate in a happy afternoon and I can't stress that enough. Are you familiar with STKs code base?

But there's a second aspect that is still undiscussed here, and I'd like to move the focus also to this point. STK and many other games celebrate those special holidays with a little ingame event: changing or adding some assets, tweak the behavior of the game mechanic slightly or something else. Those events are fun because they're intended to surprise players with something they didn't know until then or just generate a feeling of the game being alive and up-to-date. What we should not forget, however, is that those special days are always culture-bound, in this case mostly to the western-christian culture. But I believe the target audience of STK are not just western first-world children, but foremost people, no matter from where they come from. And I think when discussing game features that are culture related, we also need to discuss what serves an audience, and what might affront another.
So, does that mean I'm against any 'special day' features in games? Not at all! I think STK does a good job handling the cases. The changes to the game are subtle, not game changing, and surprising (heck, everytime after Christmas or Easter there's a new thread mentioning the changes to the game!). Christmas and Easter are two holidays that are generally accepted in many cultures even not always related to a specific religion. New years eve would fall in the same category. But as designer you should always ask the question: Am I offending or even discriminating a culture or religion explicitly? As example STK: the santa hats in December may have no use for a Muslim player. But the changes are not gameplay changing and you don't discriminate the players culture in any way (except for maybe including elements of christian culture while ignoring others, but then again -> every media has its origin).
You might see where I'm going with this.
I really like the idea of having more special day events in the game. I mean different hats for different days are always fun and could be implemented without major technical implications. But I'm not on the same track with the 'getting drunk' idea here. This new years eve party concept is somewhat unique to the western world. It is even illegal in many countries and frowned upon in other cultures. And I think this kind of 'gag' will make more players turn away from the game than 'being hilarious'...
So, I'd like to see maybe some more opinions on that. And as always, I encourage you to get started, try to implement something in STK, experiment and convince us of the opposite :)

Re: New Year's Day Special Suggestion!!!!

PostPosted: 12 Apr 2018, 21:12
by eltomito
XGhost {l Wrote}:
eltomito {l Wrote}:I don't think so. Also, it might make more sense to add a special Champagne Bottle item for that one day which would be hidden in a gift box and it would get used automatically within let''s say 5 seconds of picking it up (just so that you could actually see you have the Chapagne Bottle before you gulp it down). So, the only defense against getting drunk that day would be avoiding all gift boxes. Actually on New Year's Day, all gift boxes could turn out to contain champagne. :D

Just my own two cents regarding this topic...

...


Hi! Thank you for reacting!

As far as alcohol being offensive to people from some cultures, perhaps this "feature" could only be enabled when the user interface is switched to a language that pretty much guarantees half of the population using that language is unfit to drive in the morning of every January 1. I'm thinking German, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Russian...

It isn't exactly clear how this feature should work yet but that's what this discussion could help figure out.
It seems to me the Champ Pain Bottle (possible brand name:) could function as a New Year's Day variant of the Plunger in the Face.
- You pick up the Champ Pain inside a gift box.
- If you use it, your vision gets blurred with a drunk effect that makes it hard to drive and takes very long to gradually return to normal.
- Very long means several real-world hours!!! So, if Gimp isn't careful and chugs a bottle of Champ Pain during a race, his vision will be blurry
even during subsequent races for the next few hours!!! (And restarting the game doesn't help. Poor, Gimp!)
- The drunk-vision effect has to make it clear it's a consequence of the Champ Pain, so that players don't think it's graphics malfunction. Perhaps there could be bubbles fizzing through the blurry view or something.

AI cars:
1) Either they never get into this state. So, they never drink C.P. and if Suzanne gets drunk like a monkey because of a human player, she knows better than to enter a race as AI.
2) Or they can enter races drunk after a human player made them drink C.P. and the effect on them is the same as the effect of the plunger in the face, except it lasts really long.

I'm absolutely unfamiliar with the STK codebase other than being able to compile STK from the source a couple of years ago, I think.
And I was hoping somebody else could pick up on it and actually implement it. I'm just contributing some fantastic ideas here! (I know the STK devs hate people who say this :D )

Re: New Year's Day Special Suggestion!!!!

PostPosted: 12 Apr 2018, 23:03
by XGhost
eltomito {l Wrote}:I'm just contributing some fantastic ideas here! (I know the STK devs hate people who say this :D )

That's not only STK devs... ;) . Ideas are cheap. I consider myself a terrible designer, but even I can come up with some game ideas.
The thing is, even a great idea is worthless when there are not people willing and capable of making them reality. And moreover, every person that contributes their time working on your concept, shapes the outcome of your idea. While people are building from 'your' idea, the way they create, the decision they make in the development process, even all the great ideas they'll come up on their own will define the final product.

You get the point, so let me give you a prophecy:
No one of the STK devs over the next few months (maybe years, maybe never), will probably invest their time into this suggestion. Because such a feature in your suggested complexity has zero percent priority, it is something that adds so little to the game. You can look up the milestones and the open issues on GitHub and you'll see, work is better spent on some other feature.

So the only and probably best person for this job is currently, guess what, you. If you like your idea and are eager to see it in reality, then let's start. This is a community driven open source game after all. So, get the tools, learn what you have to learn and go ahead, you got the drive. The STK devs would probably rather see an active contributor than another "idea guy" and are always willing to help you.
...
In the process, you may realize that it is harder than you thought, or that you need to learn some things first to understand the whole, or you could get sick of your own idea and scrap it completely (speaking from my personal workflow here :lol: ). But that's ok and totally fine -> Believe me, the benefit is greater than the frustration!

I hope I haven't discouraged you... :) I'd love to see new and crazy features in STK!

Re: New Year's Day Special Suggestion!!!!

PostPosted: 13 Apr 2018, 00:56
by hiker
eltomito {l Wrote}:I really love the top hat even though it has nothing to do with New Year's Day. But the drunk part is the good part :) It sucks I have no time to implement it! It would make Jan 1, 2019 one hell of a day!

If you search in this forum, there should be a thread about a drunken implementation. It was for a organisation or researcher, and added a delay to all key strokes, simulating slower reflexes when being drunk. Not sure if it was actually ever used though.

While I don't agree with the 'forced drunken' mode on the 1st, I would really like to get the party hat in - and while we are at it, what about something for Chinese New Year? Maybe we can give each character a dragon head (and could someone contribute the maths to find out when Chinese New Year is?)

Re: New Year's Day Special Suggestion!!!!

PostPosted: 15 Apr 2018, 07:00
by sinisa3games
GeekPenguinBR {l Wrote}:I'm not a programmer, but I think it's difficult to do. No?.

I think it depends.

Re: New Year's Day Special Suggestion!!!!

PostPosted: 17 Apr 2018, 06:06
by GunChleoc
I'd say the drunken bit would be more appropriate for a game aimed at adults. You'll get resistance for a drunken feature from Western cultures too, because this game is aimed at children.

For non-Western cultures, how about having some cherry blossoms on the tracks for the Cherry Blossom festival?

Re: New Year's Day Special Suggestion!!!!

PostPosted: 01 May 2018, 23:29
by eltomito
GunChleoc {l Wrote}:I'd say the drunken bit would be more appropriate for a game aimed at adults. You'll get resistance for a drunken feature from Western cultures too, because this game is aimed at children.

Actually, if the racers drink magic glowing green fizzy goo from a champagne glass, no harm to children is done and people of no earthly religion have a reason to object.

I think the ingooxicated state could cause the camera to revolve around the character regardless of the direction the cart is heading. The more engood, the faster the camera spins. And you get a party hat.