September 2020 - Week 55 - Next Feature

Summary

• Next feature
• Rabbit-warren of related features
• App for in-game variables
• thatguybgreen

Detail

What is the next feature? Deepening the risk and reward by adding ores and monsters spawning as these ores are uncovered. I spent Thursday researching copper, tin and iron ores, smelting, bloomeries, kilns and flux. The danger with this is that there is too much information and I just keep reading. I have a bunch of notes and now I just need to hammer out tasks.

After making a list of tasks covering bronze and iron-working they both depend on pottery. The fact that things are getting more dangerous the further we dig, the player might want some way to protect their Dwergs. The first level of protection would be leather armour. Which requires a leatherworker. Leather needs tanning. Tanning needs hides. Hides come from butchering animals. Animals are killed by hunting. Hunting requires a bow and arrow. A bow requires a bowyer. If we're going to be butchering animals we might as well add cooking stews.

If we're going to add animals, for example deer, I'd like them to have some kind of existence within existing systems: they graze grass and are hunted by wolves.

I took the weekend off and came to the conclusion on Monday that I don't have to go down all these rabbit holes. There are requirements that can be just papered over while I try to find the fun in the risk vs reward progression as the player digs deeper. In this case I can ignore the requirement for pottery when building furnaces. So the next feature to be added is bronze-working.

In the early hours of Sunday morning I woke with an idea to make a tablet application that would allow changing in-game variables with sliders while the game is running. The idea is that some constants are best determined by playing the game and tweaking the values by feeling. I've decided to spend the next week on this rather than the bronze-working.

Late on Monday I enjoyed the streamer thatguybgreen try out some more games from itch.io's bundle for racial equality. This streamer is going through every game in this bundle, check out his playlist on YouTube.