I am supposed to build a small "choose your own adventure" game where each screen will provide the players with some options, and based on the option opted for, the story will progress. And we are supposed to build a "state" asset in unity (not sure if this is the correct term :p ) which we can then use to build as many branches as we like. Each state will ask for its branches and when provided, we have ourselves a working "game engine".
And this is what I meant when I said such games seem to be "deterministic". Your choices matter for the story to progress but the same set of inputs will always yield the same output. You are not dealing with chance, or even with a system that you can work. And I want it different for my game, albeit it being just a small assignment.
So I went with this idea:
You are given a randomized set of starting resources namely:
- Population (subdivided into male and female, separately)
- Dimaa (Source of magic and sustenance in our IP)
- Food (I wanted more of these variables but my feeble coding skills made too much of a "spaghetti" out of it, so I limited it to just food for now).
In my fantasy IP, female is the physically stronger and taller sex. And this event is taking place relatively earlier on in their evolutionary phase (imagine hunter-gatherers). And this game is about a race called "Reehain" meaning "Twin winds". They are so named because they are desert dwelling nomads and they move from well to well (of Dimaa), settling near it while its supply lasts. But traveling in the desert is dangerous because of surface dwelling predatory beasts (haven't worked them out yet). So they move under the cover of sand storms.
There are 4 classes that you can divide your population into:
- Huntresses (female only)
- Scouts (female only)
- Scavengers (male only)
- Clerics (male only)
You can allocate food ration to each of these classes. Huntresses hunt more successfully (up to a cap) if more food is spent on their training throughout the year. Scouts and scavengers need 1 unit of food per person. And clerics, instead of food, take Dimaa tithes. That is what they live on (and they survive for much longer for the purposes of this game, but not in cannon lore).
Huntress and scavengers are the main sources of food. Scouts search for new locations to move to in case their Dimaa reserve runs out (this function is not in this first iteration of the game, but scouts serve a trigger function for a later event). And clerics are the healers and the chose few of the society that are allowed to reproduce. So they are a direct input into the growth rate. They also predict when the next sand storm is going to be so that you can plan your move accordingly (this feature is not in the current version either).
The aim of the game is to get your population to 5000+ to become a self sustaining society.
Now that we have a system in place, we can add an event that will trigger the "choose your own adventure". A scout may return with a strange new discovery where she saw an Ifreeti (a race of giants, of sorts) giving birth to another from its own disintegrated self. And she returns with a promise from the Ifreeti to teach them how to reproduce using parthenogenesis.
Amidst this story arch, I wanted to introduce an "argument system" where you would convince the Ifreeti to teach it with lower "price" (play the game to find out about it). But with my current skill level of programming, I am sticking to a deterministic path on this one.
That is the state of the game so far. Next up, I will share some of the drawings and screens I will be using in the game. Thanks for the read!
Best,
Abdullah
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