Monday, March 10, 2008

Making More Complex People

So today what I've started to do is to add greater variety to the personality bit of Kudos 2. In the old game, you had this list of 13 different 'attributes' for your character. And there was about 8 different friend types.
The new system is more complex, but I hope, understandable.

In the new system you have lots more attributes, maybe 25, but only 13 of them get shown at any one time. The system shows you the highest value ones, plus there are some (like happiness or tiredness) which are always shown regardless.
So one day the game might show you a strip of GUI that says "optimism 66%", but a few days later it might be replaced with "Dishonesty 71%". I'll probably add some button that expands it to show you everything for people wondering about values they spotted earlier. My only concern is that the sytem won't be obvious to people who wonder where certain values have gone.

In addition, the NPCs will have much more variety of personality. Some will be dull, some extraverts, some pessimistic, some others will be persuasive, honest or charismatic. As with the first game, spending time with these people will let these effects 'rub off on you'.
So if you hang out with lots of dishonest, dull people, you will also become a bit dishonest and a bit dull, blowing your chances of a job as a policeman or a tv presenter :D

It's all good fun to work on anyway...