Monday, May 02, 2016

Not a very productive week

I am still hacking away at the random missions generator, but my weekend saw me being fairly busy, so I didn't get much done. I had to "rollback" a feature (involving not having 2 exits in one room) because RAGS is not very stable, and it crashed a little too often (probably when it had to reroll a result that was already taken a few too many times). A friend of mine was kind enough to show me a way to obtain the same results I wanted using javascript, but I am already too deep into this, and I might have to scrap too much to use it, so I don't think I'll make the switch, even though I am definitely going to keep it in mind for the future.

Maybe I should focus on the non-random stuff I might still need to add to the game, and go back to this later on, or save it for a 1.1 version or something like that. RAGS is proving kind of hostile for this type of systems, I think, so I might have to get back to it with a fresh mind, instead of bashing my head too hard and risk not getting much done. Another alternative would be to lessen the randomness further, and use a few tricks to make it look different enough during each playthrough.

Anyway, those are just speculations, I'll probably tell you what really happened next week. :p

By the way, since the posts here inevitably languish from time to time, if you ever have questions about certain design choices, feel free to ask in the comments, maybe I can expand in the next post about my reasoning for doing this or that. See ya next week! ^_^

4 comments:

  1. I don't understand the "Monkey Island" reference. At all. Please, someone explain it to me. I just don't get it. It's confusing and more than a little annoying. ^^" Also, I don't want to hear about the first rule of Fight Club, et.al., nonsense either. Thanks. :)

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    1. Well, a reference is often just that, a reference. I just like Monkey Island a lot, and wanted to give it a nod, as well as have a "classic", apparently useless item, which is something almost all adventure games used to have. Also, maybe it might have a very specific use in the future, I wouldn't throw it away! :^

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  2. Listen, the last thing TOTDC needs is more sidequests. It really undermines the whole urgency of ALICE taking over Celeste's brain. Besides, you're so close to the end of the story. If you absolutely have to have random planets in the game, considering all the trouble it's been, it should be a post-release update.

    ~kappakappa

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    1. You see, this is an unfortunate casualty of the long development cycle and the number of suggestions I took over the years. Way back when I first designed Europa 4, it made perfect sense to have the Zanitech showroom hint at future quests, then things grew, but I liked the idea of doing something with the hooks I already had in place, but with the many quests in the game, I also felt the need of having these be in a separate category, and so here we are. I am placing the random quests in the back burner now, I might follow your suggestion and leave them for a later update.

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