Week 41, 2015

I’ve been thinking about the combat statistics this week and what each value adds to gameplay. In the current model, we have pierce, slash and blunt attack values with corresponding defense values. I’ve found this to be difficult to balance and not very intuitive.

The existing combat model

Take for example the mammoth. They have high defense values against slashing, which means Buffalo (which deal piercing damage) will be able to fight them, but Tigers (dealing slash damage) will be slaughtered. This large contrast in outcomes applies for the player’s weapons as well. In the end it didn’t add anything to the experience, and was more of an annoyance for the player to keep track of.

Removing damage types while keeping variety

Therefore I’ve removed pierce, slash, blunt in favour of a single attack damage value. Individual defense types have also been replaced with one value for Armor. The variations in combat are now mainly from attack cool-downs and dodging. An animal with a fast cool-down will be able to do more attacks, but in general have weaker attacks and be less capable of breaking through armor, although they will still be able to do damage. An animal with a high dodge chance will simply get hit less often. It’s also a benefit that this type of combat variation is easier to represent on the game world.

Game balancing

Finally I’ve made some tweaks to the damage algorithm so that the maximum protection armor/clothing can provide is 80% of the total damage. Bruises, cuts and bleeding remain unchanged, but I may evaluate their contribution at a later date for improvements.

Twitter – ParsleyPWG
Website – PokingWaterGames.com

The weekly blog lists of what I do each week aren’t particularly exciting and I don’t think anyone reads them anyway. I’m going to try a different approach, a short sentence or so explaining the main/most interesting thing I’ve been doing along with a screenshot if possible.

This week it’s visual effects. Fighting clouds spawn depending on how much damage is being done to each animal. So the more clouds you see, the heavier the fighting!

For the week from 7 Sep to 13 Sep I’ve been working on:

• Fix can’t bury humanoid carcass
• Possibly fixed random unreproducible crashing when object dies
• Fixed rain noise volume was scaling based on humidity
• Fixed disease symptoms sound effects playing when zoomed out
• Added functionality for rotating objects
• Removed alert text from UI
• Added object status ‘dead’
• More dynamic calculation for plant deaths
• Added animations for plants dying and sprouting
• Massively reduced tree growth in winter
• Reduced animal decision making frequency by 66% to improve performance
• Increased deterioration due to old age in all living things to 75%
• Fixed snowing and raining stopping every hour in winter
• Fixed crash when finding bed to sleep in
• Fixed loading game food pit with unassigned stockpile reassigning stockpile
• Children aren’t allowed to be assigned professions
• Added news item for Pokian becoming an adult
• Added tutorial for child Pokians
• Fixed resources spawning only in water
• Rock spawning now specified in biome xml data
• Added check for incorrect spelling of sound file
• Added missing sound effects for crafting some buildings

For the week from 24 Aug to 30 Aug I’ve been working on:

• Cleaned up options saving/loading to file
• Added option to limit framerate to 30 FPS for slow computers
• Fixed scout going off map when not even on map edge
• Fixed harvest/extract tasks not disappearing when number of times remaining = 0
• Add to news person going to scout
• Add ability to zoom to location in news
• Added news item when Pokian is fighting
• Moved plant spawn chance from plant-specific to biome-specific
• Increased range of wild fire spread to 2 hexes
• Halved flammability of plants
• Fixed animations looking the same when game loaded
• Fixed drawing clothing on animals twice
• Fixed secondary light sources not displaying unless first light source displayed
• Burn carcass mission needs to be done at an altar
• Fixed light not disappearing when light source destroyed
• Fixed cancelling stored object task not stopping Pokian from storing object
• Reduced volume variable for carcasses by 2.0
• Modified effective speed formula so heavy carcasses easier to carry
• Added Altar thought bubble when sacrifice is made
• Cooking meat on a wild fire defaulted to false
• Added “Great Hunt” objective
• Fixed bed not recognised as building
• Fixed changing meeting point causes bits of old meeting point to be left over

For the week from 10 Aug to 16 Aug I’ve been working on:

• Include buildings in influence area in prosperity calculation
• Changed map menu button for building to yellow
• Added image icons for query panel action buttons
• Humans can drop objects from adjacent cells now
• Fixed humans exiting huts from incorrect cell
• Fix loaded game bodyvertex being drawn even when inside location
• Stockpile settings applicable to buildings
• Added debug ability to spawn herds
• Added tribe request panel
• Added notification when new possible request appears
• Notification buttons darken when they have been viewed
• Made existing achievements function with new request panel
• Added timer to achievements so they can expire
• Disable deleting ability for primary achievements
• Refactored object statistics in xml for better organisation
• Added check for malformed xml in collecting object infos
• Fixed crash when animal appears on map before brain activated
• Tooltip change materials required to list amount as well
• Tooltip set background slightly transparent
• Added extra check to prevent duplicate possible requests
• Small optimisation to pathfinder