Second Variety Games

I will not be lamenting real-life issues that continuously impede progress of a hobby project such as Shelter. Nobody wants to hear that.

Another consideration - major "OMG we just made an awesome thing and it is awesome" updates are a rarity in such a complex project. So, I'll be focusing on what has been done every week. No matter how insignificant, no matter how technical it may seem, it is all part of a larger plan.

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So, this week, I quickly realized that the decision to merge Player's reputation with in-game factions into Achievements was a mistake. It's rather stupid to have a "Reputation with Robotic Frogs" range from -5 to 5, and it also confuses the future scripting, where on the "Evil" scale -5 is supposed to be greater than -4, which is at odds with math's definition of "GREATER".

So, Player's reputation has been moved back into Faction Relation Matrix. Faction Relation Matrix used to be trinary - containing values of  F_NEUTRAL, F_HOSTILE and F_FRIENDLY. It will remain this way for inter-faction relations, which, for the sake of sanity, will remain very clear-cut.

When it comes to relations between factions F_PLAYER<-->F_ANY_OTHER_FACTION, however, the stored value is no longer trinary. It is a negative or positive number, and it affects Reputation Achievements.

There are now TWO Master branches of Reputation Achievements for each Faction. "Friend" and "Enemy". They both rise in levels starting from 1, according to reputation value tiers defined for each.

This makes it more intuitive. A "(2) Greater Enemy" of faction F_ROBOTICFROGS is Higher in level of that Master Achievement than merely "(1) So-so Enemy", just like a "(2) Greater Friend" is - in relation to its own Master Achievement branch.

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This week, I also implemented proper support of Achievement-locked dialogue options. These options existed for a year, however we lacked the tools to automate their use. Much of Shelter relies on an external scripting language, which we would've named ShelterScript if it wasn't for unfortunate alliteration. However, coding in this language is as much of a bitch as coding inside Shelter itself.  This is why making external tools was mandatory.

Now the tools and Shelter are in sync, and the functionality is as follows:

Any line that you say to an NPC, including those that invite us into quest description, can be locked into Achievement requirements.

For example, the NPC says: "I am so bored here, I want to see the world !", - an opening to them becoming your party member.
One of your dialogue options would say "I will show you the world - shining, shimmering, splendid !", and it would be in red. Underneath it you will see "Achievement required: Explorer: Visited 5 or more settlements".

If you click on it despite it being red, you will get a blow-off, such as "You ain't from 'round here, I dun' trust ya 'nuff. Ahyuck burp".

Reputation Achievements can be used in similar manner to control which quests are accessible based on how much the Faction trusts you at a given moment.

This is explicitly designed to avoid the Trustworthy Idiot NPC Syndrome (TINS) where you come into a new town, nobody knows you, yet they will go "Psst... hey kid, wanna blow up a nuclear bomb ? We've just met, but something tells me you're more trustworthy than any of these other people I've known my whole life".

It is highly unnatural and it breaks immersion. On a related note, when you initiate dialogue with people, they will rarely, if ever,go "Greetings, traveler, and welcome to our glorious village of Sandy Shades !". In many cases they will ignore you until you initiate dialogue - from whichever angle your current Achievements may allow you to do so.

Also, killing someone of a faction reduces your reputation with them. A few weeks ago the uncomfortable variable has been introduced which measures an individual's "worth" with a given faction, in terms of reputation you lose after killing them.

What is the true measure of a man ? I don't know... but right now it's 50 points.