I've considered that, actually. Three things:

1. Clues are preventable. Townies will have to go out and recruit houses at night at high risk to get them. Mafia excel at killing at night thanks to pings and their stealth bonus. Plus corpses (which also provide clues) are killable units, so if mafia clean up properly after their nightly hunts (which takes a bit of time), then they can lessen their danger.
   
2. Players are still paranoid. Even if someone has enough clues to draw inferences, who else will? Skilled mafia players could forge clue information publicly, too, to fuck with everyone else.
   
3. If need be, I could make a % chance of clues being invalid, and thus throw in some red herrings. I'm going to first try getting it to work without doing this, though.

But I think I'll push back clues n' shit to v1.2, just to square away the stuff I have now.

Alright, although I am still quite doubtful about whether the clues will add more to the gameplay, I guess I shall see how they will work out in game once implemented, and make up my opinion about them afterwards - I hope they will be worth the effort.

Good luck with your progress, I am looking forward to the upcoming update.

This made me a bit confused about what you mean by clues. Would it just be a random message that infers to a certain player who killed another one?

I guess I'll just use statements of no specific kind that give a vague clue to a set of players who could be mafia. Then it's a matter of working some set logic to infer likely suspects.

If I can manage more control over how they're placed, though, I'll try to see if I can make clues be specific to murderer players rather than just to mafia players in general (with corpse clues, I mean).

Update: Got a little bit done, but again I'm being bogged down. I could use some help with those clues later, too.

Right now I'm trying to devise a sufficiently lulzy execution sequence for the lynching. What I had in mind at first was just to make a doodad door unit close itself onto a unit and then kill it, which is the closest thing I can think of to some kind of execution. Or maybe a closing floor trap or watching that large floor hatch thing "eat" the unit or something silly like that. Or maybe I'll just censor it out and play some wavs and leave it to people's twisted imaginations to fill in the rest.


Minor stuff, though. And I still have no farting clue why the day 2 vote was going ape-o. If my added failsafes don't work, I'm just going to redo the whole vote thing from scratch.



tl;dr - Probably another week at this rate.

Bug: Both the 33percent and 5percent gas messages display at the same time.
If you do clues, you're going have to do a LOT to stop people who know the game well working the mafia out from a few clues.

Yeah I caught that 33%/5% bug. But thanks for pointing it out.

I'm not too worried about clues. If anything, I wonder if they'll even be used at all, really...



Anyone mind helping me write some in advance, by the way? i r iz not cleverink enuf...

Clues in what way...?
Like... the suspect ran off in a northwest direction? Or like a whole other one?
If you can give me an example or two.. I think I can TRY to come up with some .

(Players 2, 4, 8) You go, girl! - Suspect is female
(Players 1, 3, 5, 6, 7) Oh boy! - Suspect is male
(Players 6, 8) May not be human. - Suspect is non-human
(Players 3, 4, 5, 6) I need a hero. - Suspect is a hero unit

Yeah I really suck at writing these.

Ohhh. Hmm.. That's kinda hard XD.

Uhh.. Players 3,5,6,8 Oh god hit in the head? XD Blunt weapon/ Melee haha
Players 1,4,7 Gunned down ! XD. Aaha, I suck at these too eh?
Players 1,2,3,7 A letter starts with a S. XD.

Those are just I came up over the top of my head... I can try to come up with more tomorrow at church . Good luck XD

Hmm yeah.

Lately, I've been pondering about this map... I've played it four times now, and while it's a good map with a solid base, it is begging for more...

Though you may rather stick to being simple and keep your current system, I find your mineral as mana thing really ... limiting .. to the gameplay... I feel that there's just not enough incentive for players to kill each other, and it makes the game much of a waiting game (like phantom, which I dislike, thus I may be biased ) So I'll suggest a system to replace the mineral = mana system and hopefully instill more hate amongst the players.

Money.

- Each player will start of with set amount of money in which they can use to do w/e Minerals are used to do now.
- Players will gain money after each day (like they've been working)... i.e. they'll get the extra money once night starts
- Mafia can get extra money. May want to test this out for balance.
- What's interesting with this system is that the money can be Stolen!! If the player is holding the money, and is killed, the killer can then take his money (giving incentives for townies to make decisions quicker).

- The players, however, can hide their money in their manor (giving incentives to raise manors) OR BURY it somewhere! Other players will have to use the "Investigate" button to find the bag of money (giving more use of the investigate button.. to find footprints + money)
- Money can be used to recruit houses, buy floor traps, rebuild manor... And, it makes sense that you'd bribe people with money, rather than mana.. lulz (IMA CHARGING UP MA LAZER .. COME WITH ME OR I'LL HUFF AND I'LL PUFF, AND I'LL BLOW YOUR HOUSE DOWN)

- I also suggest putting in a Not-Too-Significant upgrade system (infantry armor/weapons). This gives the Mafia a dilemma (if he/she gets more money than others).. since if they have way more upgrades than others.. they may be suspected.. but they'll be stronger in case they're attacked. ...
- A Blacksmith (weapon/armor upgrade) can be put in place somewhere.. which'd also act as a Hub for many people (creating conflict and profit), and should also be vulnerable for destruction! It would also be the place to buy for floor traps or rebuilding the manor or stuff.

- You can even add in a bank ... but the manors' niche overlaps that.

- Lastly, with the money system, you can easily add more interesting things to the game.. like Bike vultures.. or Car tanks... but that may get too complicated and take the players from the real objective of the game... which is to kill the Mafia ...
- therefore.. i'd suggest the Mafia gets more money (cause of black markets.. common, this is an excellent plot!) .. and, with multiple Mafia, where else can you get more money than others by robbing the robber?

Because of the greedy nature of SC players... teheheh.. this'd give players a LOT more things to worry about. The Mafia will be kept on his tail and not just run around doing nothing.. people will wanna kill him for his money (even fellow mafia (? maybe...))

Hey i think i can help with those clues.

Maybe something like "I heard some gunshots the other day" could mean the mafia is a player with a gun, or "I saw a really though person around there" would mean the mafia is a hero unit or a melee unit. Maybe "I overheard some bad guys talking, one of them had a southern accent" could mean the mafia's house is one of the southmost ones? or "I heard one has been meeting up with some kind of dealer" could mean the suspect can stim (get high xD)?

I ain't making this into no fuggin' RPG!



Ah but seriously I may actually consider something like that for later. I could modify abilities to use plain cooldowns rather than minerals for ability mana, and then dedicate it to money instead. Though that kind of addition would have to go along with special roles and that sort of crap that I'll add later in v2.0.


I'm already aware of the waiting tactic issue, and I've decided to use a resource that's more a bit abstract (and more mafia-relevant) in the meantime: Information. Hence why I'm trying to work out the clue system right now. I'll probably redraft the clue model for v1.2 a few times before I'm satisfied with it.



Hmm. Maybe it's important enough to go ahead and pack it with v1.1 instead?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 11 2010, 7:29 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

I dunno.. I thought it'd be just the thing to spice up the gameplay...

It's an idea. If I can't get clues and information systems to work well for that problem by v1.2, I'll probably resort to something like that (though I don't want that to be my reason). Or otherwise see if I can fit it into v2.0, again.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 11 2010, 8:58 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

Update: Hmm. Maybe I'm approaching this from the wrong angle. Clues bug me a bit because they sorta float above everything else in the game and, of course, I can't seem to think of an especially clever way to handle them yet. I think I just need a new layer of information to work with, really.

I like the concept of a money dynamic which does provide a sorta information layer of its own, but on the whole I think it takes the main gameplay too much into the RPG direction and away from the heady, abstract stuff that mafia is about. This doesn't sound like something to add with another version. This sounds like something to add under a completely different project branch altogether.

Hmm... should I make the MacroTriggers project sources available?



Anyway. For the current branch, I just need a better information layer. A controllable information layer, that is (so player behaviors won't really work to do this). I have footprints, vision control, and I'm contemplating adding clues. I'm open to more ideas, if anyone can come up with any. I'll be meditating on this for a while.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 11 2010, 7:48 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.

I like the idea of a money/upgrades .

Uhh more ideas...
How about.... a Diablo 2 type thing..? Where when someone dies, they drop something... maybe a clue?

That's sorta what I already said corpses would be for. But if you want money/upgrades, either it'll have to be way later, or I'll let someone start their own separate branch do add it. It's quite easy, actually.



Update: I haven't come up with a suitable alternate information layer, so I suppose clues will do. I think the answer lies in how to handle clues themselves, really. I'm going to skip making them into vague riddles and using any of that set logic bullshit and just cut straight to the chase: Single suspect with a 50% chance of being a red herring. For corpse clues, remember the clue is murderer only.

If I find a more graceful way to handle this information layer later, I'll use it. For now, this'll do.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jan 12 2010, 8:00 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

That's good too :0. I like riddles .

The gameplay itself should be your riddle. People would just eventually memorize any specific riddle clues I put into the map, which'd just widen the rift between pros and nubs.