2 New Tactics:
- I never want a player to get completely stuck (no way to die, no energy to move, trapped on a deserted island), so I made a "Return to Roots" spell. If cast, it will take you back home but with great consequences. It's only a hair above death in terms of what it does to the player.
- I've also added a "Search" tactic that will reveal hidden objects. Now I can put in traps / hidden treasure that a player can find if he or she searches nearby. I am worried about the side effect of players feeling they have to perform a "Search" in every square of the world, so I'll avoid adding goodies in the middle of nowhere. If you search and find something, it shouldn't be a surprise. I tied this "Search" tactic in with the tutorial system to train the player the user interface.
Event System:
There is now an event system that can cause actions to occur based on a variety of triggers. Triggers may be a player leaves a location, player enters a location, a character is killed, or an item is picked up. Available actions include showing a message over the user interface and enabling a tactic. Basically the bare minimum I needed for a tutorial. The types of triggers and actions will expand greatly as development continues.
Tutorial:
This update is all about teaching players how to play. I did a playtest of the game to see how intuitive it was to pick up. The controls are very very simple, but even though they're simple I still needed to tell the player "Left mouse button move/interact", "Select tactic in the bottom right", "Right click to use tactic", and "Middle mouse wheel to pan/zoom map". Regardless of how few words I used, everyone immediately skipped over the how to play screen. I even just had a picture of a mouse with arrows pointing to what each button does and still no one took the time to read it.
Can't blame them much, nowadays it's expected that the game's beginning will teach you the controls (and that's not necessarily a bad thing). On the other hand, I hate it when you're stuck in "tutorial" mode of a game for 30 minutes. If the how-to-play takes that long, then it's overly complicated. Knowing how to play, I can get through my tutorial in 10 seconds. I'm hoping most others get through it in a couple minutes.
What you see when first starting...
After moving...
After using the Search tactic...
After picking up the knife...
After walking outside and to the obstruction...
After walking outside the property...
I may go a very long time between play sessions of a game (even a RPG), and it sucks trying to remember what that tutorial taught me months prior. So for my game I have a handy question mark button at the top right - click it and you get a on screen tutorial of the basic controls; all you need.
And of course everything in this post is temporary developer art...
