Friday, July 25, 2014

7/25

11a0- Woke up. Sleep was above average.
12p1- Ate. Internetted.

We have a value in-game called "Viewership". In the story, you need viewers to ensure your TV show is still running, or else you won't be able to buy a ticket home and it's game over. In game, it's really just a life bar that all survivors share. To simplify matters, if anything bad happens to your crew, it results in a decline of viewership. It's kind of weird that when something bad happens, viewership drops (like if Luke gets his hand chopped off, people don't just stop watching), but the mechanic is admittedly simplified because of everything else that's going on.

Viewership drops when a survivor is incapacitated in combat. Viewership may increase or decrease due to certain moral choices, usually involving a tradeoff of favoring one survivor over viewership.

Should there be a "Civilian Strength" value?
In-universe definition: The combined strength of unnamed survivors working to keep the base running. Since the sonic emitter can only cover a certain distance of living space, civilian strength always caps out at 10 civilians.
Mechanics definition:
-If it drops to 0, game over. Unlike viewership, the maximum for CS is 10.
-Both Viewership and CS decreases when a main survivor is incapacitated.
-CS is affected by its own set of moral choices in the story.
-Unlike Viewership, CS can be gained through territory control on the map.

Pro:
+ It adds a sense of realism. When you rescue a group of hardy survivors, you should realistically be awarded survivor strength, not an increase in viewership.
+ It adds an element of gameplay. You'd have to worry about viewership and survivor strength separately. Since it caps, you want to keep it at a certain level under 10 to make sure that you don't get an excess amount of CS.
Cons:
- Extra fucking work. Delays. This is mainly what's stopping CS's inclusion.
- Vaguely worded. Stella is a civilian and has no business holding a gun, but she is not considered to be a part of the Civilian Strength.
- The player might already have enough shit to worry about.

1p2- Spent the hour rambling above.
Difficulty 1/10 Efficiency 10/10
2p3- Finished the rambling from above. Jotted down a few story ideas for the events portion of the game. Worked on Larissa's story. Felt lightheaded for the whole hour, went out briefly to get a little fresh air.
Difficulty 5/10 Efficiency 9/10
3p4- Worked on story elements. Made some hard choices, cut out some story content. Well, you gotta trust me on that one.
Difficulty 4/10 Efficiency 10/10
4p5- Exercised, then ate snack.
5p6- Worked on Zoe's story.
Difficulty 3/10 Efficiency 10/10
6p7- Worked on Zoe's story. Rejected friend's proposal to hang out.
Difficulty 2/10 Efficiency 9/10
7p8- Worked on Zoe's story.
Difficulty 6/10 Efficiency 10/10
8p9- Worked on Zoe's story.
Difficulty 5/10 Efficiency 7/10
9p10- Finished Terra's rejection story.
Difficulty 3/10 Efficiency 10/10
10p11- Finished Larissa's rejection story. Worked on Isabel's.
Difficulty 5/10 Efficiency 8/10
11p12- Finished Isabel's and Veronica's rejection story. Did pullups. Worked on Zoe's story. Feeling depleted of energy.
Difficulty 7/10 Efficiency 7/9
12a13- Worked on Zoe's story. Worked great.
Difficulty 3/10 Efficiency 10/10
1a14- Worked on Zoe's story. Took a break.
Difficulty 5/10 Efficiency 5/5
2a15- Took a longer break.
3a16- Flirted with new female on the internet. Drew her in an attempt to woo her.
4a17- Finished conversing. Case remains open.
Difficulty 11/10

8 comments:

  1. I am really impressed with you're perserverance. You've taken on a hell of a project with practically sole responsibility for it's succesful completion. Extra kudos for beating throug all the heavy criticism you've had to endure about lack of updates (albeit it justified on some level, which was probably part of the hardship for you). You can be proud for coming so far already and even prouder when it's finished. And I'm still taking these new estimations for release dates as rough estimations :P, so no pressure. Congrats on coming out on the other side of a very dark hole, or at least finally seeing the light at the other end of the tunnel.

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  2. where can i buy your game?

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  3. Haha I loved the ending of this. Keep us posted =)

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  4. I don't think that a Civilian Strength bar is necessary. They viewership bar is good enough, and though it may not make sense why it moves up or down every time, it does most of the time and it is a simple concept for the player to deal with. Adding realism is always good, but sometimes its just better to simplify things. That said, do what you want. This is your baby!

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    Replies
    1. This was my thought when I wrote my last comment. Intricacy is great, but don't kill the game with complexity. God knows too many games have suffered that fate.

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    2. I'd love that to be part of "what comes later".
      I mean, why not sell expansion packs or the like?
      Sounds to me like all those intricate mechanics coming into a CiV game with the addons, when everyone knows the base game already.

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