tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post4313008219063053291..comments2024-02-24T03:34:18.060-05:00Comments on Stealing Commas: I think I'd like to see a boom bust survival mechanic in games.chris the cynichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06872875475212333027noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post-2443601869806357522015-02-13T05:43:08.858-05:002015-02-13T05:43:08.858-05:00There's a technical constraint, of course - ev...There's a technical constraint, of course - even now games aren't very good at dealing with multiple people who are supposed to have human-like levels of mental complexity. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Wolf_(gamebooks)" rel="nofollow">Lone Wolf gamebooks</a> were notorious for this, because they told an ongoing story - after a few books you'd gained some reputation, so you'd get an escort of soldiers when going off to do something dangerous, but they'd all get killed or at the very least you'd be separated from them so that you could go back to single-protagonist adventure.<br /><br />I like Packbat's suggestion and I'll offer a closely allied one: you can face the same overall "plot" problems, but you'll also have problems that change based on the size of your group (a big group has more chance of including someone with the key skill and can defend itself better, but it moves more slowly and needs more food and shelter). That wouldn't even need to be separate endings, but rather separate approaches to the same problem.Firedrakenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3889388775673754833.post-77835950207278447582015-02-12T20:04:14.956-05:002015-02-12T20:04:14.956-05:00I remember a dragon-themed vertical-scrolling shoo...I remember a dragon-themed vertical-scrolling shooter on the NES where, if you beat the first level, you would play the rest of the game in hard mode, and if you didn't, you'd play the rest of the game in easy mode. You could do a similar thing here - not hard or easy mode, but one set of challenges versus a completely different set of challenges. The boom-or-bust mechanic would make that happen very naturally very quickly, too:<br /><br /><b>If you fall on the bust end of the spectrum:</b> You are trying to survive on your own, or with very few other survivors. No-one will be awake if a zombie breaks in in the middle of the night. Your only chance of survival is to figure out how to get away clean and not be detected before morning. On the bright side, that means that the zombie necromancer has no idea you exist, which means if you're smart and you're fast, you can take her down by surprise in an ambush and end this before it spreads.<br /><br /><b>If you fall on the boom end of the spectrum:</b> You have dozens of survivors whose lives are dependent on you. It's not that they're helpless (although some of them are - and what are you going to do with the people who have been bit, anyway? It's not as if you <em>know</em> they'll turn, but everyone is scared), but when everything went to hell you were the badass at the center of it all that kept these people alive, and by panic logic that makes you boss. You need a base big enough to give everyone a place to collapse from exhaustion, you need a base <em>small</em> enough to guard from assault, you need enough food and water to keep everyone alive, and, preferably sooner rather than later, you need to figure out a plan to stop the necromancer before she manages to overwhelm you all.<br /><br />If you start off on the bust end, you might run into other survivors, but there's not much you can do for them - it's not as if you have a safehouse they can stay at.<br /><br />If you start off at the boom end, you can't afford to be hemorrhaging survivors - it's not as if the necromancer will forget you exist.<br /><br />I would want to make the boom ending harder to get, but they'd both be hard, even if it is for completely different reasons.Packbathttp://packbat.net/w/noreply@blogger.com