Post by Whitelord12 in Devlog - Scope Creep Management comments

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Hmmm to be honest from what I encountered in other games and my own limited coding experience I think a potential solution to the general issue with location based events is to have common events that have different flavor text depending on the location.

This way you can avoid having alot of minor events that functionally do the same thing just in different locations, and if you want a functional difference in theses common events you can have a set of mini-events that act as extensions of specific outcomes .

You can also ultize a trick I seen with how the game stellaris handles localisation and differing flavor text. By which you separate the actual text into a separate file and utilize phrases such as "pubfail.1" the their place to cut down on the size of these events and make them more flexible.

This that of course can also be utilized for different levels of undress and can of be be done in parts for more subtle differences.

Granted though of course I am not suggesting you to do all this immediately since adding shiny sounding features on whims is premium scope creep.

PowerOfSin77 days ago(+1)

I already have some support for contextual exceptions, which I had plans to make localized flavor too (like, having regular sex usually doesn't change the main flow based on location, but can sure be flavorful)

Bigger issue is that I want big changes to be more impactful to the story, outside of just flavor. I tried writing some generic events and they were just uninteresting. I realized most of the charm and flavor of these kinds of stories comes from recurring characters, but I cannot use them in these generic events if I want a coherent narrative.

If events were not the whole game, I would opt for these similar events with different flavor approach. However, since they are the main gameplay and reason to play the game, I decided it's a lot more important to keep events more personal, at the cost of keeping locations rigid.

I also attempted single choice events, instead of a few branching choices, and this also hurts the overall experience I am trying to get to.

I didn't mention it in the devlogs before, but I sort of have a few design pillars that I wanna keep intact:

Choices should have a strong risk/reward link
Risk and reward should be clear to the player when they make the decision
Events need to keep the story moving, no backtracking or looping decisions
Replaying the game should provide a different, yet coherent story practically every time

Generic events may break the rule #3 if they keep repeating, and they also cannot usually contain #1 or they risk becoming more specific.

The map can enhance #4 and provides another #1 and #2 to the table, but #3 has a risk of failure down the line, and I cannot predict how far it can go so when I scrapped it, it took generic events with it.

Replies to you can be devlog posts themselves xD

But if someone goes down to read comments, they will see it, which works too :p

Whitelord1274 days ago (1 edit)

You have a good point just I do want to stress to avoid making your plans for the game too rigid as can lead to just much issues as scope creep long term. Though this isn't an objection to your current plans. Since naturally you would need to get your core gameplay loop down and figure out the rough direction you want to take the story first before you can implement more minor features to flesh out the game.

I will say like your past works so I will be following the direction this game takes regardless to see where it goes.

PowerOfSin74 days ago(+1)

Glad to hear you believe in me xD

We will see how things will grow once the basics are settled. I do prefer to have a clear guideline set early so later when I need to make a design decision it will be easier to pick.

itch.io

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