Monday, April 04, 2016

Back on track

This week was less "messy", so I got some time to work on the game again. I am still working on the random missions, I reworked some text and items to fit the new quests (for the longest time, we had a "teaser" for a feature that never got introduced, involving planet exploration, which is going to be replaced with the "spaceship salvaging/exploring" stuff), and I have created the system to randomly pick the quest types (currently 3 for each batch, out of 5 types) and the flavour text for when you learn more about them (I figure 3-4 variations each should be enough). I am still unsure on how I want to handle the distribution of quests. I figure I'll need a hardcap, as well as cooldown to avoid making the quests "farmable" for gold, but while it's trivial to implement, it might take a while to decide what's a good limit. I am also considering having more types of quests, but depending on how good the random generation of maps+items+hazards, it might be okay to have just 5 types of missions.


I am feeling more and more confident about using pre-made "blocks" to assemble together randomly, so that the maps look better and I can guarantee certain features to be in the map to make special rooms placemente easier, but at the same time, that might vastly increase my need for rooms, or bump up the code complexity if I don't want to have the rooms exits already placed. I think my doubts can only be resolved by testing dozens of maps and tweaking when needed, though, this one is hard to tackle without hands-on experience with the final result. Speaking of which, I have to start a run or two of the game from start to finish, to check if the game is beatable or if I have introduced some bugs (as well as check if the data loss I had a few weeks ago didn't mess with something on the main quest).

On a different note, I got a new donation! D.Y. was very generous with 50€, so thanks again for it, man! :)

This is it as far as this week goes. The only other feature I was thinking about (but only theorized so far) is something to "auto-resolve" battles. I was thinking that even if you are a masochist and like my terrible fighting engine, you might get bored of the fights which are easy, and might want a way to quickly deal with them that doesn't involve spamming attack and clicking continue, so maybe I could add an option to automate the game to do it for you, once you decide what configuration of ammo/weapon you want to use. There are a few problems I can see come up with it (especially when Celeste loses), but maybe it's worthwhile, especially if I'll have multiple enemies in chapter 2, which might increase the length of certain battles (although I figure for the most part I'll try to capture a "superhero vs. mooks" feeling with them, so you can feel good about Celeste having to fight multiple thugs for it to even be a fight, with the occasional tough battle at some key points).

I don't think there is anything important I am forgetting, so that's it for today, until next week! ^_^

7 comments:

  1. Neat, and I never bother with changing my ammo ever so I guess auto battle is for me. Then again I also haven't played in a long long while. I played like very release for a while, but I got burnt out and I've been waiting for a release to have something really wow for me to play again. So maybe tactics have out grown that mind set.

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    1. I figure there is a demand for auto-resolve, be it for seasoned or new players alike. I mean, if a fight is easy enough you can win it just by firing your weapon, it seems a good idea to speed up the process. It also becomes particularly good when you play the game multiple times, and really don't want to waste time on the combat.

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  2. Sounds great! Really looking forward to the next update.

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  3. Can't wait to play the full version. There is just one tiny thing i was missing in previous versions. With all the teasing and reasoning from Alice, i always just wanted to say: "Ok, here are all your functions back. Have fun with my mind girl"
    Of course game overs are kind of like the treats of a game like this, and should be something you have to play for so you could add it after you used alice functions after a few times to overcome obstacles or just at a certain point of the indoctrination. Or if you really want to explore this option, you could write different versions of Celeste giving in after random Planet encounters. Alice is the star of the game in my opinion so i would welcome a way to show her that she is doing a great job with her "persuasion"

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    1. How about a way to give her full functionality for a limited time, like just one night? Obviously, it'd be a bad idea.
      By the way, have you played Beth by Alburn?

      http://www.mediafire.com/download/hhw487waf9wjzls/Beth_(Release_2.2).rag

      http://alburngames.blogspot.co.uk/

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    2. No, i don't think i have. Thx for the suggestion.

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    3. While I can see the appeal of the "what if?" scenario, you can look at Celeste passing out soon after the virus first comes into play as to what would happen if ALICE regained that much control. It would be a relatively quick conversion, and Celeste would be subdued easily. It's a bit too late to re-think the whole interaction, but we can always add some extra content related to ALICE, we'll see. ;)

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