Having deviated from my design schedule is turning out to be a good thing. I've got a vestigial character creation and character management system in now, which helped me spot some clunkiness in how I was planning on doing all that... and having to actually pick out skills instead of just assigning them to be what I wanted in the code made me realize I was planning on being way too stingy with the starting skill points.
It also helped me realize I had badly skewed the difficulties of some tasks. Like climbing. Somebody with a climbing of 45 (the highest possible climbing skill, for a squirrel who allocated the maximum 5 points at character generation) would have a 1 in 10 chance of failing at the relatively simple task of climbing a tree, and a 2 in 11 chance of failing at climging a normal slope... and a 1 out of 4 chance of falling while climbing a wall. Doesn't sound too hard, until you consider that the climbing of trees is something squirrel characters will pretty much be doing all the time... and when's the last time you saw a squirrel go to climb a tree and fail? Plus, with four climbing actions involved in getting up, over, and down a one tile wall, that's 4 shots at that 1 in 4 failure chance...
So instead of making the base climbing difficulty of 5 (my standard skill roll method: random number between 1 and skill + difficulty. If less than or equal to skill, success. Makes it easy to scale... unlike a tree.), I made it 1. So, a non-skilled-climbing-animal, with an aptitude of 3 in climbing, can spend a single point and get 3 skill... and have a 75% chance of climbing a tree on the first try, and a 60% chance of making it up the slope, and a 50% chance of climbing up a wall. The squirrel with the climbing skill of 45? 45 out of 46 chance to climb a tree.
And squirrels have a racial ability that lets them walk between trees without requiring a climbing roll, once they're up there.
It might seem like setting the odds of failure so low makes having higher skill levels unnecessary, but I've got a lot of non-random things in the game based on your skill level. The amount of time each climbing attempt takes and how much EP it burns decreases with skill, for instance.
The swimming skill has also been way too, for lack of a better word, punative to characters who stray into water without adequate skill. Right now, it's almost impossible for non-swimmers to get out of the river until they pass out and wash up on its banks (what happens when you run out of endurance while swimming... the game prevents you from "drifting" out of the water until you're reduced to a prone position).
The issue isn't that I've set the difficulty roll too high... really, an unskilled swimmer in moving water should be carried along, which is the result of a failure... it's that the movement system cancels intended motion in a direction when anything else moves your character. Normally, I figure this will be to the player's benefit, but it makes it way too hard for a non-swimmer to get out of the water even when they're by the banks.
I don't want non-swimmers to necessarily be able to cross a river (it also takes a swimming roll to move from water to water), but I also don't want the inevitable result of falling into running water to be a near-drowning and waking up miles away.
ID:28978
 Mar 30 2007, 9:30 pm
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Will it be possible to craft rafts/small boats? That makes me think of beavers, then agan they're swimmers anyways why would they build a boat? There I go doing my own rambling. Sounds good Hedge, I can't wait for the return of HrH. but it looks like I'll have to. | |
I'm thinking one tile rafts will be in, and I've toyed with some ideas for larger ones... probably just 2x2 squares, though.
And the new version of what I believe players called the "squirrel haven" area should be pretty cool. | |
You could make it so that an animal that falls into deep water by accident or force may panic (depending on their skill).
While in a panic they can't get out of the water. In a panic a relatively easy re-roll is almost constantly being done. Pass it and you calm yourself down enough to grab the side of the river. At that point their endurance stops automatically depleting. They can then choose to attempt to swim around in the river (subject to all the normal rules), continue holding onto the bank to regain endurance (at a reduced rate) or attempt to get out (and with their endurance depleting only on failed attempts to get out they stand a much better chance of doing so). So yeah, an animal can fall in the river and pass out, but it's not very likely unless their endurance is already down. At the same time an animal attempting to swim across the river with an insufficient swimming skill level will almost certainly fail. It also provides a new racial bonus, fearless swimmer. An animal that is completely comfortable in water wont panic. | |
This seems to be a good time to bring up another movement idea -- skiing. There's a long snowy winter in HrH, and it would be really awesome if you could craft skis and use them to move more quickly across the snow. There could be a skill involved too, though I don't know if players would actually train it since it would only be useful during winter.
Then again, I don't know how the idea of rabbits with skis and poles fits into your idea for the game. :-) | |
This is random, but when I read that there is a swimming roll for moving from water to water, I'm reminded that the same was true for trees. Why not do it for regular ground too?
You have a small chance to trip! And drop all of your stuff, oh noes. :( | |
PirateHead wrote:
There could be a skill involved too, though I don't know if players would actually train it since it would only be useful during winter. If there's sufficiently high mountains there could be some areas where skis might be useful year-round (this is probably stretching things a bit, but oh well). | |
Why not do it for regular ground too? That would be too annoying, but it would make sense if you're overcumbered with items. Like you could drop something if you fall. | |
Why not do it for regular ground too? Uh, yeah... no failure rate could be low enough to prevent that from being annoying. | |
@GDT:
I've been considering a once-in-a-blue-moon chance of dropping something if it's in an open container, like a mug, bucket, basket, etc., since that'd give plenty of opportunity for spilled drinks: each "mouthful" of liquid is considered one object (though of course the same liquid stacks with itself), so every time you spilled your drink you'd lose a mouthful of the drink... I think of "mouthful" as a "heaping mouthful", in the sense that it's the kind of mouthful where your cheeks are puffed out as much as possible and if someone makes you laugh it shoots out your nose. Most Beings take small sips or gulps which are fractions of a full mouthful. The only times I'm aware of that someone trips in real life is when they slip on something wet or on a naturally low-friction surface, or when they hit an object while sprinting or running (or while otherwise unaware of the presence of that object). Neither of those happen with any regular frequency. When is the last time you tripped in real life, GDT? What were you doing at the time? Did you fall? Did you drop anything? | |
Squirrels will still rule. That climbing system sounds pretty cool so far, and I like the swimming system. Will it be possible to craft rafts/small boats?