| Thursday, December 27, 2007 |
  Last Logical Hurdle Solved | 
Posted - 12/27/2007 10:09:14 AM | I have spent the past couple of weeks (off and on) beating my head against the last logical issue in my game. Here is the breakdown:
• Village population is the sum of every inhabitant in the village.
• Type "villager" is an un-assigned NPC which has minimal impact on production and consumption of goods, although will generally consume more than produce.
• Villagers can be assigned to be either "Miners" or "Farmers".
• Villagers assigned as Miners or Farmers can be arbitrarily re-assigned as Villagers, or switched between the two roles.
• Other specialists - Herbalist, Trader, etc - are hired from new arrivals at the village. Basically they come looking for a job.
• All inhabitants, other than Villagers, have prerequisites, based on general population, or of numbers of specific other specialists.
And here lay the problem:
• Some types are converted into other types (Villagers can be turned into Farmers) and some types are opened by certain criteria (If you have 25 Villagers you may have the opportunity to hire a Trader). Call these two options "Evolve" and "unlock"
I realized a couple of days ago I was making things too complicated by requiring that there be a certain number of unassigned Villagers available in order to unlock some of the other roles. So now there need only be a certain overall population in order to unlock those roles which are made available based on population. This also made another piece easier: Having a certain ration of different specialists to overall population; e.g. there can only be one Accountant per 250 villagers.
Also, once a villager is assigned a role (farmer | miner), that villager stays in that role permanently. No more switching. In order to account for bad rolls of the dice at the beginning, the game will start with a small stash of food and salt, so everyone doesn't starve to death on turn 3.
Wow. For a simple game - which this is - the design is a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.
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| Monday, December 10, 2007 |
| The First Prototype | |
Posted - 12/10/2007 10:43:07 PM | I just posted the first prototype of "A Dry Harvest" here. Flash 9 required.
Not a lot to see yet. Most of my work has been under the hood, and I have taken the opportunity to learn a lot about best programming practices. Of course, this has distracted me from actually making progress on the game, so I decided that, since we are in the third month of the contest, clean code must take a back seat to results.
Two notes:
1. The completed game will probably be a stand-alone executable, instead of running in the browser.
2. The small gray square in the upper left corner of the interface is an output window I am using since I don't have the "trace()" command available to me, as I am not using the Flash IDE.
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| Adding Some Structure | |
Posted - 12/3/2007 9:03:15 PM | I have been playing around with making a type of structure document for my game (Now officially titled A Dry Harvest). Much of what I have come up with is heavily influenced by Inform 7, which, even if you never use it to create a game, is a fantastic tool to use for organizing your thoughts.
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A DRY HARVEST
Structure Document
The Village is the central location of the Game
The Village contains People and Sources
There are two types of People: Villagers and Specialists
Villagers are inhabitants of the Village.
Villagers are sorted by the Player into Farmers and Miners.
Villagers stay in the Village until they die.
Villagers have Mortality.
Specialists are hired by the Village.
Specialists have Morale and Mortality.
Specialists come and go, based on Morale and Village Reputation.
Specialists modify the attributes of a Village.
Example: Herbalists increase Village Health
Morale is a function of Village Health and Village Reputation.
Village Health is a function of Available Food and Population.
Mortality is a function of Village Health over successive turns.
Village Health is a function of Available Food and Population.
If the Available Food drops below the Required Food for a turn, Village Health declines.
As Village Health declines, the likelihood of Villagers dying and Specialists leaving increases.
As Population declines in relation to Available Food, Village Health improves.
As Population declines, Morale declines.
Village Reputation is a function of Accumulated Wealth, Population, and Village Health.
Village Reputation determines the availability and cost of Specialists.
Accumulated Wealth is a function of Salt Accumulated and Salt Dispensed.
All People require both Food and Salt.
All Villagers require 5 units of Food and 5 unit of Salt as food per turn.
All Specialists require Food and Salt in varying amounts.
Salt is treated as Money ("Salary"), A Trade Good, a Unit of Currency, and Food.
Sources are dispensers of Salt.
Some Sources are immediately available, some must be discovered, and some must be unlocked.
Immediately available sources require no special circumstances to harvest.
Discoverable Sources, once discovered by a Specialist, can be used by Villagers
Unlockable Sources, once unlocked, can be used by Villagers, as long as the Village contains one of the type of Specialist which unlocked the Source
All Sources are finite. Eventually the game world will run out of salt.
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I have begun putting some interaction into the game, now that I have finally decided on the structure of the code classes, objects, etc. By this weekend I should have a basic playable demo where players can go through the first few turns. And, it being done in Flash, I will be able to post my prototypes as I complete them.
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