This week was mostly spent recovering\u00a0from the last update and on the initial\u00a0design work for the next draft of the map\u00a0systems.<\/p>\n
I’m basically taking a layered approach to it. Basically solving one problem at a time, adding one missing element as needed.\u00a0This\u00a0has actually been in progress for awhile now. The first big step was introducing the monster den system which basically established how map progression should work and how to integrate battles into the game. The second big step was overhauling the way the main quest is structured into 3 big primary goals with strict time limits, each capable of winning the game (as opposed to the previous meandering objectives with little completion incentive until the end).<\/p>\n
The\u00a0next thing I’m focusing on is tension.\u00a0It’s not the most fashionable RPG element with Western RPGs throwing it away in favor of quick save convenience while Japanese RPGs\u00a0simply designed easier one-shot dungeons, though it lives on in various dungeon crawlers today. What I mean is giving players incentive to stretch their resources as far as possible. In more traditional RPGs this just meant trying to avoid backtracking to town in favor of completing the dungeon (accounting for the risk of pressing on vs. going back to town). In roguelikes it just means surviving as long as possible. What I’m talking about is resource management. I’m talking about the danger of a dungeon.<\/p>\n
The traditional means of accomplishing this has just been making players backtrack to town if they decide the risk is too great. But this isn’t\u00a0a viable\u00a0solution to the problem due to the\u00a0tight pacing we’re looking. Doubly so when you factor in that backtracking creates “empty” turns where players don’t get to do much (which then makes it\u00a0far\u00a0worse to sit through other player’s turns and makes losing far more irritating. You generally want to target every player having as similar of turn time as possible throughout the game).\u00a0So that is the problem I’m facing right now: How do you create tension without backtracking?<\/p>\n
I don’t have an answer yet. I’m also kind of really excited about finding one. The tension of delving into a dungeon is probably\u00a0my favorite RPG element, but even I can admit that\u00a0handling it with backtracking (or inevitable death in the case of roguelikes) isn’t necessarily the most engaging way of doing it. So I’m really enjoying\u00a0trying\u00a0to find a better way to do\u00a0it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week was mostly spent recovering\u00a0from the last update and on the initial\u00a0design work for the next draft of the map\u00a0systems. I’m basically taking a layered approach to it. Basically solving one problem at a time, adding one missing element as needed.\u00a0This\u00a0has actually been in progress for awhile now. The first big step was introducing… Continue reading December 7th, 2014<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":466,"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions\/466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crabattack.org\/blog\/hawk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}