Provisional Specification for Items in Tower Unite and Workshop Specifications

Hi everyone, yesterday we drafted up a specification for how Items will work in tower.
We’ve managed to work out most of the kinks with user created content and officially created content.

This is open for discussion, as we’re still working on it.
We want to know what you guys think. :slight_smile:

#Tower Unite Item Specification v1

##Definitions:

  • Ranked Server: a server running unmodified code with VAC enabled
  • Item: an object in the game which can be owned by a player and can be placed in the world or equipped
  • Instance: an Item which was given to a player (i.e. has an owner and exists ‘in inventory’ or ‘in world’)
  • Genuine: an Item Instance which was earned on a Ranked Server and has been sanctioned by PixelTail Games
  • Non-genuine: an Item Instance which was earned on an Unranked Server or is a non-sanctioned Workshop item
  • Class: a definition of an item which exists in the game code or Workshop
  • Item Attribute: a parameter which is generated and applied to an item Instance when it’s spawned
  • Item Descriptor: a parameter which is applied to an item Class in game code or workshop

##Rules:

  • Non-genuine items cannot be traded.
  • All workshop items are free (you will not be charged units for them).
  • All workshop items are non-genuine regardless of where you got them.
  • Workshop items can be obtained on both ranked and unranked servers.
  • You can place both genuine and non-genuine items in your condo as it is yours to host.

##The Condo:
Condos will have a new attribute applied to them: “Genuineness”.

Given all the items the player has used to furnish their condo, the game will calculate a percentage that expresses how many of the items in the condo are “Genuine”.

When entering someone’s condo you’ll see a UI element expressing how “Genuine” that condo is:

Our reasoning behind this is that the condo is a place where people get to show off what they have accrued through gameplay.

Since we’ll be making workshop items free (which are non-genuine), we need a way to differentiate between items that were “earned” and items that were simply “bestowed”.

This also applied to non-genuine items awarded by unranked servers as we can’t ensure the validity of their origin.

##Genuine Items:
All items that ship with the game will be marked as genuine when obtained through a ranked server.

Workshop items will start out as universally non-genuine.

##Workshop Items:
On some regular interval we will select popular workshop items, contact the authors of those items and with their permission, mark the items as genuine and ship them with the game.

Once a workshop item has been marked as genuine, the genuine and non-genuine versions of that item will still exist in the Tower Unite universe (i.e. the old non-genuine version still exists).

##Upgrading to genuine:
If a player owns a non-genuine version of an item that was recently promoted to genuine they will have to purchase the genuine version using their in-game Units (i.e. all genuine items must be earned).

We will have a system that facilitates this, you should be able to press a button and replace all non-genuine versions of your items with the genuine version and pay the cost in bulk.

##Item Inspector:
While you’re in someone’s condo, you can use the Item Inspector to look up information about items you are looking at.
This can be used to determine if an item is genuine or not, how much it costs, and other attributes.

19 Likes

Awesome! Thanks so much! The genuine system sounds well-thought out.

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Yeah we spent 2 hours debating how to solve that stuff :stuck_out_tongue:

What I think would be a neat thing you could do, is if you walked up to a user’s item, and pressed a certain key, you could see if the item is genuine or not. For things like fake trophies. Because right now, it seems you only calculate what percent of the Condo is genuine, but not present WHAT specific item isn’t to the user.

Totally forgot to mention that, we’re gonna have a thing for that.

2 Likes

Ah neat. I also think you could just run the Workshop with your own terms saying, if you submit this Item to the Workshop, Pixeltail has the rights to add it to the game. I’m pretty sure Minecraft had the same type of idea with Modding.

Well, we’re definitely gonna contact authors and get permission first.

3 Likes

I don’t understand the point behind the “genuine” quality. The whole characteristic seems to devalue items and condos that are perceived to be non-genuine, and I’m not sure why you’d want to do that.

In a sense, it seems like you’re discouraging customization and forcefully promoting stock items. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with them. There’s nothing wrong with having to work for items. But not every single Workshop item may make it into game, and even then, when folks just want to use all the cool stuff they can find on the workshop, they shouldn’t be viewed as “non-genuine”.

Perhaps it’s just the word that’s catching me. What about vanilla? Stock? Base? Standard? Rather than non-genuine, just calling extra items “Workshop items” would make more sense.

Ultimately, I can understand this for trying to acquire in-game items (or very similar ones) through the Workshop as a means of bypassing payment, but I can only see that as a small fraction of what is to be a bustling Workshop.

We aren’t trying to promote use of stock items. We are trying to find a balance between getting items through actual gameplay instead of just unlocking them through a workshop addon.

2 Likes

The non-genuine items don’t have value to begin with they are free.
If you want genuine items, you have to earn them, thus imbuing them with worth.

We’re not really “promoting” stock items. We’re just saying that items that are non-genuine may have been obtained for free or through unconventional means.

We want players to show off the cool stuff in their condo, and we want that stuff to have value. This is the best way we can control that.

3 Likes

I really love these developer updates, keep them coming!! :smile:

I like the system. We should see how it works first, but it sounds nice for now

The genuine system and approval system seems to be well thought out, and despite being something very conceptual, it’s great to hear that workshop items will end up getting into the stock game since back then you guys said you would probably not be able to approve workshop items. :smile:

I will definitely try my best to make decent workshop items. Do you guys plan to bring back the “Community Contributor” rank? Seems to be a nice award for getting an item into the stock game. :stuck_out_tongue:

This is an excellent system! How will PixelTail consider items to “sanction”?

I imagine every so often we’ll pick a batch of items that are popular with the community.
We should have statistics on that once we get the workshop going.

It would probably come down to certain factors:

A. No prohibited content

  • The item does not contain explicit or offensive content.
  • The item does not infringe on any copyrights (includes memes).
  • The item does not contain hate speech.
  • The item does not advertise a website or service.

B. Item popularity
C. Item presentation is of decent quality
D. The item benefits the Tower Unite universe as a whole

This is by no means the official stance on this, but could be considered start of a draft of rules for our sanction.

3 Likes

can a non-ranked server sell workshop/their own items for Units?
EDIT: bonus question. Can a non-ranked server make it’s own currency working only on that server? (and sell stuff for it)

3 Likes

I like the idea! Seems great to tell when someone has rightful earned all their high status vs. just being in their own server spawning it :sweat_smile: