GameIdeas.org

Yesterday was all about describing how to control the characters and the task they have to do, today is going to be about resources and construction. These survivors will need to build useful structures if they’re going to survive the long months stranded on that island.

But first, a change from the original concept.

Goodbye Sophisticated Player Modeling

Remember on Tuesday, I talked about modeling the player’s behavior in a sophisticated way? The game would check whether the player favored religion or science, freedom or control and so on? Well that’s gone.

That idea sounded really good when I came up with it, but it’s just not practical so I have to cut it. Sometimes you have to get rid of really interesting features because they don’t fit the rest of the game — that’s such a case.

The problem is that most factors the player would be modeled on don’t correspond to any current gameplay feature. Sure I could add some elements related to science and religion just so I could check what aspect the player prefers, but that would just complicate the design with little usefulness.

One aspect that still makes sense to analyze is pacifism vs. aggressiveness. By checking how often the player fights with other tribes, we can simulate that behavior when other players download their island. It uses features that are already in the game, it’s fairly easy to evaluate and it’s useful, so that part of player behavior modeling can stay in.

Resources

Back to things that are in the game: resources collection. What are the resources you can collect?

• Food
• Wood
• Rock
• Metal

Food is needed to keep all of your tribe alive. If you don’t have enough, your characters won’t be able to heal the wounds they may get during the game. If you’re missing a lot of food, the characters will start to slowly lose health.

I thoughts about splitting “Food” in two categories: “Fruits and Vegetables” and “Meat”. You’d start the game with mostly veggies, but as technology improves you could get some sort of cattle to provide meat. I didn’t include that feature because it added complexity and I couldn’t think of an interesting effect meat could have over fruits and vegetables. I’d certainly consider adding that back in if I found a way to make it interesting.

The next three resources — wood, rock and metal — are all construction materials needed to build the various buildings in the game. At first only wood would be available, but as the tribe’s tools become more powerful they could be used to carve rocks and mine metal.

These resources would work like in RTS games: you need a certain amount of each to make each building. When balancing the game, it will be necessary to avoid “circle of deaths”, like needing wood to build the only place that lets you get wood. These situations can make players get stuck without some resource and no way to get any more.

Buildings

I keep talking about how you’ve got many buildings to construct in the game, but I haven’t given examples yet. So here are some:

• Housing: Needed for each of the character on the island. That’s where they sleep. Better housings make them heal faster and makes them live longer.
• Food reserve: Where excess food is kept. This building increases the maximum amount of food that can be collected.
• School: A character with a high skill level can help other characters raise that skill.
• Infirmary: Where wounded characters can come to get healed. Also increases the average life length of characters (outside of violent deaths).
• Storeroom: Where resources other than food are kept. Increases the maximum amount that can be accumulated.
• Armory: Where characters go get weapons and armor.
• Walls: They protect the village.
• Mine: Allows access to metal.
• Forge: Building this structure unlocks access to everything requiring metal.

As I mentioned on Tuesday, you’ll be able to customize the look of your buildings as you wish. You’ll start with a basic shape and elements that need to be there, but you’ll be able to choose the shape of the walls, of the roof, what materials and colors are used, etc. Not all materials will be available at first and they’ll have an effect on the game: making a building out of stone will make it sturdier than out of wood. This will also affect the resources and time needed to create the building. The goal is to make it easy and fun to customize your buildings, but at the same time to make it useful and to leave room to experimentation.

Conclusion

So, just one day left. If there’s something you wished I spent more time explaining, you should ask about it now in the comments. In any case I’ll be concentrating more on look and feel tomorrow since gameplay is pretty well covered.

See you tomorrow for the final details of this fun exploratory design!

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