GenesisVR, the God game in VR and crowd-sourced design
Feb 7, 2016 0:23:53 GMT
Lord Ba'al, 13thGeneral, and 2 more like this
Post by echocdelta on Feb 7, 2016 0:23:53 GMT
Just a quick note, in design we have totally removed any references to possible DLC - which is generally why I try to never include that in my speech. If customization of villagers will be a thing, for example, we'll be planning for it early on. By mechanical reduction, so without talking about content, we've long scoped in asset swaps on NPC actors and we've locked in that each 'village' will be one of x-number of possible cultures from a pool of templates that define a building set, character-socket (hat/clothes/textures) and aesthetic items like banners or (if they exist) decals.
We're currently internally looking at how the mechanics of Faith-per-household work, because it significantly opens up the ability for a player to define 'their' God and have the 'quality' of their miracles related to a value which can be subtracted or added to houses.
The faith/miracle logic appears to be mechanically sound - bigger houses have more NPCs, an NPC needs a home to generate faith, faith must be generated by a home with NPC, partial belief households do not generate faith for player, player has diminished returns when casting on 'urban' centers - if player invests X-amount to cast Beachball Miracle, they must aim to increase their faith generation per tick. It's always an investment, logically speaking, that prohibits any player from just ROFL-stomping onto a city or urban area. Also, we're trying to represent the diversity of beliefs in 'urban' societies, but without adding new mechanics.
So - why does this even matter and why did I just rant about an off-topic mechanic? Because we're then able to say things like 'Town Y will react more to Y-type miracles', which then opens up the ability to plan something like 'Y-type of God is good at Y-types of miracles, so they're better at converting Town Y, but not Town Z'. Thus we can then start discussing more than just a God, but X-amount of Gods, which then opens choice, or customization.
I tend to limit these discussions internally, instead wanting more mechanical groundwork, things being played out on paper and questions arising. Once the logic is there, the content/fun stuff is actually the less difficult part.
We're currently internally looking at how the mechanics of Faith-per-household work, because it significantly opens up the ability for a player to define 'their' God and have the 'quality' of their miracles related to a value which can be subtracted or added to houses.
The faith/miracle logic appears to be mechanically sound - bigger houses have more NPCs, an NPC needs a home to generate faith, faith must be generated by a home with NPC, partial belief households do not generate faith for player, player has diminished returns when casting on 'urban' centers - if player invests X-amount to cast Beachball Miracle, they must aim to increase their faith generation per tick. It's always an investment, logically speaking, that prohibits any player from just ROFL-stomping onto a city or urban area. Also, we're trying to represent the diversity of beliefs in 'urban' societies, but without adding new mechanics.
So - why does this even matter and why did I just rant about an off-topic mechanic? Because we're then able to say things like 'Town Y will react more to Y-type miracles', which then opens up the ability to plan something like 'Y-type of God is good at Y-types of miracles, so they're better at converting Town Y, but not Town Z'. Thus we can then start discussing more than just a God, but X-amount of Gods, which then opens choice, or customization.
I tend to limit these discussions internally, instead wanting more mechanical groundwork, things being played out on paper and questions arising. Once the logic is there, the content/fun stuff is actually the less difficult part.
