Monday, July 02, 2012

How is this relationship-system-thingie going?

It's growing. I wish I had done more, but I have started working on the first events for Jane. I also added the "introduction" to Darenzia's "true friendship path" and I have been adding some random scenes that will trigger during travels (so they won't be as boring... They should also connect with the relationship system later on).

The poll isn't getting too many votes, but I guess that's the usual "do what you want, we don't want to mess up your development" kind of thing. After I do what's on the schedule already (relationship system+poll result), I wonder if I should start to seriously think about adding some hacking mechanics to the gameplay, as was discussed in the collective forums some time ago. I guess it would give me more variety without having to resort to new one-shot gameplay mechanics all the time, but it will probably drain a decent amout of time... Another positive thing would be to have some meaningful upgrades for the hologlasses, but I have to think carefully about this, as I would probably need to change a few things here and there in parts of the game I had already finished, to fit with this new mechanic more.

Anyway, this is it. Nothing too exciting is happening right now. Once I start to work on more than one love interest, with all the possible interactions that should come from it, things should get more complex, but also more interesting.

19 comments:

  1. Upgrade to the glasses:

    You can easily makes the glass have +1 damage or +1 to hit or even an in-built lying detector that analyses heart beat/sweet etc...

    You can have more situations where you can contact the crew on your ship asking for advice out of a tricky situation.

    One thing that i would really like to see in the game would be more outfits for the main characther.

    After all, the more her resistance breaks down, the more Alice could "force" her into using more slutty clothing.

    Alice would have a great time taunting Celeste, on how much she liked what she saw...

    That could even lead to a bonus when you wanted to "distract" people or a penalty when you try to "intimidate" someone.

    Just my two cents.

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    1. The +1 damage is going to be in the game (it's very easy to implement, and makes sense... It was already in my plans, in fact, but I decided to keep it out for balance issues).

      The +10 to hit would mean to add a chance to miss (currently, there isn't one. The fights already have their randomness in the damage dealt to the characters, and I wanted to keep fights not too important, so the system is very simple, as a result).

      The lying detector is something I thought of, but I would need to steer the conversation system toward a completely different direction (the way it is now, it's hardly fit for such a thing... I really should have worked more on this, now that I think of it). I don't see this one working unless it's something I work on for a long time.

      The contacting and generally receiving/sending messages is something I am totally going to add. There were a few discussions on this point with some beta-testers over the time, and while there aren't too many details defined already, I am sure something will be done with this idea.

      I didn't add a clothing system, mainly for one reason: it's hard to make things consistent. What I mean is, that wearing a formal dress while carrying around a backpack it's odd, and would look suspicious, so I can't leave that up to the players. Either I force them to drop the backpack and weapons (resulting in a bad end whenever you meet a fighting situation), or I leave them the choice only at some specific points in the story, or I lock certain outfits unless you are in specific situations. It can be very complex, in short, if I want to mantain a bare modicum of realism in the game. And that's without naming the difficulty of finding decent dresses for the model, adding alternative pictures each time she gets undressed for whatever reason, different reactions from NPCs, etc... In short, it can turn into a pain in the ass quickly. I am not against adding some variety, but I'll have to think carefully about this one.

      I understand the idea behind the breaking down (and ALICE's mockery), but as I said, there are a lot of things to think of (otherwise, you end up going around naked and everything becomes silly, like in Skyrim, where you just get a remark about it... And I am talking about a wonderful game here, not something like my humble work... ;p)

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  2. Here's an idea. If Celeste is about to fall prey to Alice, Boo intervenes to save her by reminding her that she has friends who care for her. Unfortunately this act of Boo only works once, as Celeste would be too far gone in the second time.

    Also, I'd like to see Celeste taking on a few jobs that requires her to go undercover. Like dressed in a scandalous French maid outfit to infiltrate a kinky rich person's home. Or as a call girl to infiltrate a corporate event or to bodyguard someone.

    And yeah, I'd like to see some hot clothing action! Please give us a reason to buy that nightie or other sexy apparel! Or to wear dresses that we may collect.

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    1. I like the idea of Boo helping Celeste to snap out of it! This might enter the game, one way or the other.

      No pictures in a maid dress for Celeste, unfortunately, so no hope to see that one... :( Undercover jobs will make an appearance (afterall the first mission is actually an undercover job, so it's clearly something she has done before).

      See the above answer. Clothes are nice and everything, but they can break the internal logic of the setting very easily, that's why I opted for the current version, completely under my control. I am not against it, but I see it hard to change in a meaningful way while keeping things from becoming silly.

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    2. Sad that she hasn't done maids yet. As for undercover, I had totally forgotten about her first mission, even after playing through it just now! Maybe an in-game reference that her first mission was done undercover would help the few like me make the realisation. And now that also reminds me that she also technically went undercover in Ashley Neumann's mission. By the way, funny lampshading in the form of her family name.

      I understand completely about the clothes issue. If I could, I'd have Celeste running around in public in that sexy lingerie. Oh well, I'll just have to hope for more delicious undercover and red-light district missions. :-)

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    3. I think there is a video with her wearing a maid dress, but sadly no pictures. The text before arriving to the party mentions fake id and invitation, so you probably just missed it. Nice of you to notice Neumann's lampshading. :D

      Clothing systems are a lot of work, and they are completely cosmetic if you don't work on them early on to make them fit with the rest of the mechanics. Some missions will be undercover, don't worry! ;)

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  3. I think addition of several different types of fashion would definitly catch alot of attention. Now im not saying going anything as crazy as Cursed has but a bit more variety and additions in celeste's "Look" couldnt hurt. Though so far i love the game and have not been let down yet by your work. I cant wait to see what you bring to the table next time mdqp!

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    1. Yeah, but please stay focused on the Quests and other important stuff.
      (My personal opinion!) cursed has overdone this stuff and lost completely the focus on the game itself (i dont play cursed anymore, because of this).

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    2. To Parad0x and Mulder: See the above answers.

      I too, think that in Cursed things got overdone a little, though the main problem there is the sheer number of possibilities (I think that's the worst offender there). Too many variables that need to be accounted for, in several situations. There might be no one that plays an unbelievably fat character in Cursed, but there is that possibility, and you must have at least some general text in place and something specific to certain situations, it's inevitable. And that's just naming one thing. The problem is that most of those situations will never be experienced by 90% of the players, so it becomes a hard job with little to no benefit behind it.

      If you have played Fallout 1&2, you probably know the option for playing like a dumb character. It gave you completely different dialogues, and you would get little content compared to a normal playthrough (unless you "cheated" and used drugs to temporarily raise your intelligence). It was a challenge, more than anything, and it gave you just a small part of what the normal experience was.

      For a one-man project, that's kind of heavy to deal with, and anonymous man tried something even more complex. Maybe he'll manage to strike a balance, though, I am not saying he won't, but he surely picked a hard path...

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    3. Playing as a dumb character. I so missed this in F3 and New Vegas. -CR-

      Oh and for this lying detector thing, something like that might be a good idea, but you can save that for part 2 of the game.

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    4. Yeah, playing as a dumb character was something that left me awe-struck the first time. As a developer, you must be really willing to go that extra-mile to add such a thing, even if the interactions were extremely reduced most of the times (Arcanum had that option, too... :D ).

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  4. Where can I find boo the hamster?

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    1. Did you get inside the canyon/labyrinth? If you explore it carefully, you'll find Boo... ;)

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    2. When you put boo in the cage and watch him, it should be embarrassed, not imbarassed.

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    3. Fixed this! Another shameful situation where I mix my first language and english, giving form to those silly mistakes.

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  5. thinking about "the relationship-system and adding some hacking mechanics to the gameplay"....my question here, cause i don´t know how the rag system works...can you trick it and built it on a new planet or in a new town on an existent planet without changing the old game mechanics...and can you upgrade the hologlasses to a new item that you can wear?
    If yes, maybe then you have not so much work to go back in the details of the running game mechanics.

    greets
    Hardtobuff

    as always i apologize for my english.....school english is a long time ago:)
    like i said....no clue how rags works...i just play them

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    1. I know what you mean, and yes, I could place the new mechanics only on the new planets... But if there is a previous situation where Celeste could have reasonably used hacking to solve a problem, but she didn't, I'd have a problem explaining why. I would need to either change the scene or I would need to add the hacking option there, too. It's more about being coherent than anything.

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  6. Will players need to give Darenzia gifts to get her friendship path?

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    1. Yup, you'll need to put in some effort to get her relationship high enough (though I might make it slightly less demanding than love relationships). This is because you'll probably get some sort of benefit from having an high relationship with someone.

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