Hello again!
The first step in adventure mode villainous interactions and investigations was to prepare the information screen that displays organizations, plots and actors (such as agents and mob lieutenants and embezzling bookkeepers.) As we start to place witnesses and other evidence in the game, the organization graphs and plots will fill out and allow you to plan your next move, whether you're trying to stop villains in the name of justice or just trying to mess with the competition. It's kind of like those scenes where somebody is placing photographs and tying them together with red string, but the game will do all the annoying bits for you.
Initially, rather than restricting based on evidence, we just displayed everything to get a better feel for what's out there. The 200 year old world I generated had two thousand actors and five hundred organizations. Many of these organizations were just one person bossing another one around for years, but there were several that had more than twenty members and spread out over multiple sites on the map, from cities to goblin pits to abandoned monasteries, with the path from lowest-level associate up to the boss being five layers deep.
Once we could see what's been going on in history generation more clearly, some problems came to our attention, of course. For instance, there were too many of the groups and critters that were disconnected and inactive, trying one caper and then just sitting around for three decades satisfied with themselves, and a few 'organizations' with just one member, surrounded by (literally) dead connections, which the game should have recognized as defunct. We'll need to address those before moving on.
It'll be great to finally get player-led investigations and player villainy up and running!
The next few weeks are going to be a bit busy with PAX (as mentioned in the last news item), and also FDG, a digital game studies conference I'll be at through the end of August, but we'll be back to DF work on September 3rd.
- Tarn
----
Kitfox's Note
Hellllo!
I promised to keep you updated if any of Tarn's panels would end up being livestreamed, and it looks like the System Design one will be! You'll be able to watch this LIVE on Twitch here. (Times are in PST.)
Hope to see some of you around PAX. :)
- Victoria