Revamped World Invasion System
As we've mentioned earlier, the World Invasion System we had was not working well with our main sandbox/simulation mechanics. It would require that we put significant limitations to the player's powers in order to be satisfying, and these limitations reduce the amount of fun the player can have in interacting/meddling/manipulating the world.
Another issue we had (which we noticed from how many players play the game in our ESGS event) is that the players consider the world map and the world invasion system to be the main part of the game. Interacting and manipulating the characters became a side optional thing they just do to pass the time while they are waiting for the timers. This is opposite of what we intend: the main game is the manipulation, and the world invasion system was supposed to support that by giving some sort of progression as well as providing the players with some of the tools they would need.
Lastly, the human brain is pretty bad at multitasking and our past design require players to multi-task between invading the world map, and interacting with the various internal maps.
So this month we did a significant amount of overhaul to resolve these issues.
New World Map
You still invade the world by spreading your corruption one tile at a time. However, all of these now occur in the internal maps. The Portal as well as other demonic structures (although only the Portal has been converted for this month) will be visible inside the internal maps, and you can interact with them directly from there. You can corrupt adjacent areas slowly, and you can visually see as your corruption spreads out within the internal maps. Instead of showing the player the world map first, the player is first shown the internal map of one region, with the camera centered where his Portal has been placed.
By starting in an internal map instead of the world map (eventually we'll also have this starting region include the tutorials), we think this would reframe the player's focus towards the internal maps.
From here, you can eventually exit the region and see the new world map. The world map is now mostly visual and informational. The game also has fewer but larger regions. But now, all hex tiles are actually high-level representation of a small square section of the internal map. Whatever happens to the internal map will also visually update the world map.
Examples:
This water hex tile surrounded by 2 mountains:
Is a representation of this section of the region's internal map:
This settlement hex tile:
is a representation of this section of the region's internal map:
You may find it odd that a hex tile in the world map represents a square are in the internal map. Would be much simpler and easier if the world map is made up of square tiles. Honestly, this is only because we cannot really revamp our hex tile assets in the world map anymore due to budgetary and time constraints (alas the bane of every indie developers in the world!). Maybe when the game gets successful we can revise this world map and turn it into square tiles!
The other thing the world map provides is a way for the player to visit each region. Aside from these two things, the player no longer needs to interact much with it, as all of the things we used to have here can now be done in the internal maps. This allows the player to focus on one internal map at a time. There will still be some multitasking required, as the world is composed of multiple regions, but we intend to open it up slowly.
Revamped Player Actions
The World Invasion and World Map changes fix the unnecessary complexity that the game used to have. But one other thing we also want is to just basically ramp up the fun of interacting with the world and its residents. For this, we decided to reduce the limits we placed on the player's abilities. We originally intended to restrain them so that there will be some challenge in wiping out the world. After much consideration, we think it would just be much more pure fun to unleash the player's powers. Yea, it would be quite easy to kill off the residents, but now you can do it in style. We'll leave it up to the player's creativity now to decide how he wants to do it! So our new goal now in the upcoming months is to provide the players more fun tools to execute whatever mischievous things he wants to do to these worlds.
What this means gameplay-wise is that the player can now perform most of his actions at no cost. So if he knows how to cast a Tornado, he can cast as many of it as he wants. He can turn everyone into a vampire or a werewolf. He can start a zombie apocalypse by inflicting just one character, or if he wants to do it much more quickly, afflict more at no cost.
This does mean that the game is now more of a sandbox-simulation than a strategy-simulation. But even in sandbox games, there still needs to be some sort of progression and we also want players to experience new things per playthrough, otherwise it will get stale fast. There's more to say about how we'll deal with this but it's a topic for the next couple of months!
Mana
As mentioned above, most actions have no cost... but not all. We still have Mana as our main player resource. We'll talk about how it will be used later as the work on that is still ongoing. For now, what we'd like to share is how the player gains Mana in the game. In the past, we've experimented on this simply increasing slowly over time (Mana Regen). Now, we've directly connected it to the player's agenda as an evil overlord: spreading evil and misery.
Basically, Chaos Orbs are produced whenever something evil or miserable occur in the world. The player can click on these to obtain Mana. When a resident performs a criminal act, he generates a few Chaos Orbs around him. Same thing when a resident cries, or spits on someone's grave, or screams for help.
The idea now behind Mana is that it is an entirely optional resource. You will have enough means from your starting powers to wipe out the world, but unlocking more interesting options would require Mana. You don't get Mana from simply killing residents, so if you want a lot of it, you've got to be creative in spreading evil and misery!
Mood and Mental Breaks
These are blatantly copied from RimWorldl! Well, they are not exactly the same as our Mood modifiers are different but they behave quite similarly.
Mood is basically the sum of all Statuses that a resident has. So we already have Energy, Fullness and Happiness needs before, and now we further added Comfort and Hope. Characters gain various Statuses depending on how full these Needs meters are. In addition to Needs-related Statuses, there are plenty of other sources of Statuses, such as Illnesses, Injuries, heartbreak, grief, etc.
When a character's Mood is sufficiently low, he has a risk of triggering a mental breakdown, which can take the form of Hide at Home, Dazed, Catatonia, Suicidal Mode or Berserk Mode. Let us know if you want other forms of mental breaks.
Reason we introduced Mood and Mental Breaks is these are another source of Chaos Orbs. When a character is in a Mental Break state, it will randomly expel Chaos Orbs from time to time. So one goal of the player is to trigger Mental Breaks to farm Chaos Orbs!
Emotion Based Reactions
One of our issues with how characters react to events around them as well as Intel shared to them is the complexity of it all - as various situations and relationships must be taken into account. A way to simplify this a bit is to deconstruct a character's reaction into a set of emotions. If a character sees his lover having an affair, what emotions would he feel? Anger, Betrayal, Sadness? How about if he sees someone administering aid to a friend? Gratefulness, Approval? And then what we do next is code what each of these emotional components do. Approval simply means an increase of Opinion. Anger may add an Angry status effect and trigger retribution. We still have to assess different situations, but putting the actual reactions inside reusable Emotion components significantly simplifies how we deal with them.
Interrupts
We've reworked some of our Actions and separated involuntary ones like Stumble and Puke as well as special ones like Chat and Break Up as Interrupts. This should resolve some of our strange job prioritizing issues, and reduce instances that a character must manually get close to another to perform actions.
Hollowed Mountains
We've also hollowed out our internal representation of mountain tiles. Some items and monsters will be spawned inside. In the future, it will be possible to dig through thick mountain walls to get inside.
Monster Lairs
Our Monster Lairs are now represented inside the Internal Maps. This is where we will spawn some of the random monsters on World Generation. In the past, Monster Lair landmarks are just separate hex tiles in the World Map and the monsters inside do not have simulated behavior. With the revamp, every landmark we have will be directly visible within the internal maps, and all creatures inside will also be fully simulated (although they do not have Moods and Relationships unlike sapient beings such as Humans and Elves).
It still looks pretty empty but it will be much more cavern-like soon!
Settlement Ruler/Faction Leader
In previous builds, a Faction Leader is a separate unique class in the game and they are also the ones that function as ruler of a settlement. We also made these roles essential, meaning that at no point in time must there be a Faction or Settlement with no leader. This caused some issues with some of our systems. For example, when a faction leader werewolf transforms to a wolf form, it also used to trigger leader succession.
Now, we modified it so that there is no longer a unique class for these. Instead, it's just a special role that can be assigned to a resident, we have a behind-the-scenes election that randomly takes place that takes into consideration a resident's traits, relationships and class to determine who becomes a new Settlement Ruler or Faction Leader. It's also now possible for these two to be two different characters even if they are in the same Settlement. It's also now possible for Settlements and Factions to not have a leader for some time as the "election" does not take place instantly the moment a leader is gone. When a character becomes designated as a Settlement Ruler or Faction Leader, it simply gains new abilities and behaviors (for example, designating new blueprints to build, judging prisoners, changing faction ideology).
Create Your Own Serial Killer
Previously, when you afflict someone with Psychopathy, its victim criteria is randomly generated. We've changed this so that when you apply Psychopathy, you can choose your own victim criteria based on Gender, Race, Class and Traits.
You can add up to two different criteria. The UI is still pretty crude but it is just a placeholder and will be fixed later on.
