Why are the lights on?

[Itchykobu]

It just occurred to me while running through a house - the world ended and was reconstructed piece-by-piece, and somehow every house has power? It's convenient for me, but a bit odd overall.

The obvious answer, of course: MAGIC!

Though it seems this could be leveraged into game play - a settlement building, 'power plant' that turns all the lights on up to X tiles away; or power plants spread around like the pylons are, that you have to flip a switch in or use TUs to send a NPC to do it for you...or both.

Well, I didn't want to throw something directly into Mantis yet, as it kinda just dawned on me as a weird scenario, but how does everyone else feel about the lights situation?

[Nalgas]

The obvious answer, of course: MAGIC!

Yup.  As always, a wizard did it.

Though it seems this could be leveraged into game play - a settlement building, 'power plant' that turns all the lights on up to X tiles away; or power plants spread around like the pylons are, that you have to flip a switch in or use TUs to send a NPC to do it for you...or both.

That almost made sense at first, until I stopped and realized that some of the time periods don't (or at least shouldn't) have lights that are "powered" in that sense, because some of them are pretty early compared to the others.  At the very least, it feels weird that their power systems would all be directly compatible like that, to the same degree that it feels weird that the lights would be on.  I guess the wandering monsters could've turned the lights on to see where they're going.  Or, you know, a wizard did it.

[Itchykobu]

That almost made sense at first, until I stopped and realized that some of the time periods don't (or at least shouldn't) have lights that are "powered" in that sense, because some of them are pretty early compared to the others.

Well, under such circumstances the lighting would be a different story (wizards). At least, electricity doesn't power the torches in my house (I won't make too many assumptions about yours).  As for the rest of the world, what we really need are a couple of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower Viva Tesla.

[x4000]

To be perfectly honest, I think of this in two categories of answers:

1. For the older stuff, prior to the contemporary time period, it's mostly magical light sources despite the visual stylings.

2. For the newer stuff, contemporary and onward, they have some fancy magic-augmented electronics.

In all seriousness, basically everything in this world, no matter how technological, would have some underpinnings of magic since magic has always been around and is such a core part of this world and its culture.

[Itchykobu]

Perfectly fair explanation. However, if you ever find yourself thinking, "What other objectives can we give players?", don't overlook the possibility of powering up regions - to turn lights on, to make switches accessible, open gates...yadda yadda yadda. Optional side quests always make things interesting!

You've built an impressive framework, and every day I'm excited to see where the next patch takes it.

[x4000]

I appreciate it!  And yeah, definitely having various ways to have "power" like things with regions is of interest.  I've had some really interesting fantasy-themed ideas in the past, mostly in connection with my fiction writing work (all unpublished so far, but I had a few near misses with major literary agents), and I hope to get to explore a lot of that through this game.

[Nalgas]

To be perfectly honest, I think of this in two categories of answers:

1. For the older stuff, prior to the contemporary time period, it's mostly magical light sources despite the visual stylings.

2. For the newer stuff, contemporary and onward, they have some fancy magic-augmented electronics.

In all seriousness, basically everything in this world, no matter how technological, would have some underpinnings of magic since magic has always been around and is such a core part of this world and its culture.

Sure, but would all magic necessarily work the same way over centuries and centuries of time and across large physical distances, or would they discover/invent new and improved ways of doing things with magic just like we do with our technology, not all of which would be directly compatible?  Saying they all just work because it's all magic is the "a wizard did it" solution, which is of course fine, and it's just a game (and a very, very minor aspect of it) so it doesn't really matter too much in the grand scheme of things, but that's something that's bugged me about a lot of magical fantasy.

Someone comes up with this great alternate universe with its own rules for how reality itself works, and the really good ones explore how that affects the development of cultures and societies and even more mundane things like people's everyday lives, but while they often go into the political and historical implications of whatever magical system their world operates on, they frequently ignore the technological side of things or get it hilariously wrong.  There are occasional exceptions, but they're unusual.

I guess you can blame my uncle giving me several boxes of classic hard sci-fi books when I was a kid, from Asimov to Clarke to Niven, so even though I still like fantasy, I'll always have Science! nagging me from the back of my head sometimes.  Heh.

[x4000]

so even though I still like fantasy, I'll always have Science! nagging me from the back of my head sometimes.  Heh.

Yeah, I have the same, because of my dad.  So -- sure, I think that the way that magic is used did change over the centuries.  And I think that's reflected a bit in the game already, really.  But the narrative's impact on the game world is something we're only beginning to plumb, really.

[Dizzard]

I always assumed since these regions were sort of like snapshots of different time streams. So things like lighting would stay working if they were working at the time of the cataclysm.

[x4000]

I always assumed since these regions were sort of like snapshots of different time streams. So things like lighting would stay working if they were working at the time of the cataclysm.

That was the other part of it for me, too.  I think of it as being a little bit like Pompeii on how everything is "in media res" to some extent.

[Echo35]

Fusion reactors left over from the AI Civil Wars. Oh, wait, wrong game