Actually duel mode doesn't happen at all in that case. Yeah good catch. If you get voted, you're implicitly supposed to die, basically. Though you do still have a fighting chance... even if your odds have now gone down the shitter.

So in other words, try not to get voted out.

A lot of the time you're voted out due to some random noob not knowing how to get rid of their vote or just randomly voting someone out of the blue and refusing to get rid of their vote, so I just let whoever was voted out live anyway, and if they're killed then I go after whoever killed them (assuming the person who was killed is innocent).

Well let's see how lynching rewards work out then.

Update: Finally got duel mode finished. I'm slightly amazed at how much crap I had to dig through to inject even a simple game sequence smoothly into rest of the existing gameplay. I won't bore you with details. You AoS fuckers have it easy keeping all your game elements atomic and built over a singular, consistent gameplay context. This shit's getting to be a mind fuck. I'd almost prefer plain Assembly coding over this.

Maybe that's just a sign my code is turning into a huge shanty town, though. But I have been trying to use good practice with my design thus far, so there's no way I can be completely to blame. So many interlocking gameplay elements together is just bound to make a mess of things.

Well that settles it: v2.0 is going to be a remake from scratch.
If I do it at all, that is.



Anyway. About a page-long list of F&T is all that remains until v1.1 is ready for testing. Again, other than maybe some public betas, v1.1 won't be a release version. v1.2 should be fairly straightforward, though (knock on wood), but it will imply some fairly significant changes to the overall gameplay dynamic. It'll need it's own special handling.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Jan 21 2010, 7:10 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.

Update: Decided not to go through with 2.0 any time soon. Version 1.2 will suffice for now.

That said, v1.1 is basically done. Though I think I have some momentum built up now, so I'm just gonna plow straight through to 1.2 and be done with this. I'm starting to get sick of staring at this dumb thing.



I figure I'll be satisfied enough with this by then to file it under the 'good enough' category and move on.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jan 24 2010, 1:42 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

Update: Here's the v1.2 outline (loosely):



Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jan 24 2010, 11:43 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

Very nice summary...

TwoAs it turns out, Several problems for me:

1) Reveal - I don't get it... is it supposed to work at night? ... . Isn't it a little OP for people who are attacked and are running away?
2) Footprints haven't been used very often as it doesn't really tell u much, and Investigate takes too long to work (I noticed that the higher the sleep meter, the better it is... maybe that has something to do with it.. maybe)

I am iffy about the Duel Mode. It is already pretty difficult to be a Mafia and be able to get down to the last civ. Because, the mafia is in the minority, he has to either trick the other players to kill each other, or kill them himself. If i was a townie, i'd just go for broke and recruit as many houses as possible, and stay close to areas around my manor....
Townies already have a huge advantage.. and now, the Mafia has to duel the townie? Unless the mafia was able to trick everyone... (Tho I've done so twice out of the two times I was mafia.. cause no one expects a loud mouth like me to actually be the Mafia).. the Mafia ppl probably had to get their hands dirty... and not go around recruiting houses...
Since the Duel mode is based on the amount of houses you've recruited... I really donno...

In the real life Mafia game (played with cards... or some kind of randomizer) ... When it's down to the last 2 people (or when Mafia # = Townie #) the game is done, because the Mafia should have already won (They can't be voted out, and they'll just kill the last townie that night)...

It's my opinion that it's not too thrilling to be the Mafia ... I'd have to be so careful to trick everyone // kill everyone and conceal myself.. but then when I've finally killed all the people except one guy, and I still have a 50/50 chance to lose.... Not that cool.

I really Like the Hide ability. Tho it really is the only advantage (other than pings) that the Mafia get. The sleep pattern discrepency is a good and subtle thing that is hard to notice, but people who are aware will notice.

I'm also iffy about the corpse.. People (pubbies) jump on the first person who kills anyone... and with corpses, this just FURTHER discourage the assassination of people... i.e. makes the game less exciting..

I know it's supposed to be a Puzzle//Mind Fuck game more than an Action game.. But I just feel there is a serious lack of incentives to kill other players (Other than you wanting to be a bitch )

EDIT: Oh Right! When examining the corpses and getting the clues.. how're you gonna account for the players that are not there, since your clues should point to two players? (Tho u've probably made clues for all possible combinations already lol)

EDIT2: My light bulb of ideas just flashed while I was in the showers .. What if a player can carry the corpse and choose to bury it? I haven't figured out what would be the best mechanism, but probably just having the drone given to the player who chooses to pick it up and have it follow the person is good enough. Then have the drone bury and use burrow detection. Throw in a timer in which the person has to be next to his/her drone until the drone is fully buried. If he moves, order the drone to move to him.

This is a good mechanic as it (somewhat) solves (in my opinion) two problems that I've listed above. One, it solves the uselessness of footsteps, as now they have a use in leading you to the buried corpse. Two, the rather discouraging corpse can be taken care of... And it's a pretty exciting and realistic thing to do...

Yeah, you've said that it's possible to "get rid of" the corpse.. but it just seems cooler to carry the corpse around.. lol..

btw.. i still feel a money system rather than a mana system works better.. it's more realistic and it's also more scary... it also gives incentive to kill, giving both the Townies and Mafia players more variables to deal with. It works well with the corpse idea too, as it provides a consequence for taking others' money.
Moreover, it gives players the need for revenge.. This will exponentially increase the popularity of your map, and ... PROFIT!

Lastly.. can u decrese the E amount needed for cloak? :\ .. it's rather annoying low. Ppl need to use it right away.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jan 24 2010, 9:09 am by UnholyUrine.

Make the manors cooler, just add some triggers that make them more than just a bed, 'cuz when I've played we always have a party at night in someone's manor, and one of the players keeps watch while people sleep, so it'd be cool for them to be able to do something. Also, the hinge coming back seems a bit silly, perhaps if it came back at lower health, but coming completely back just seems ridiculous to me.

I think maybe two clicks to interrupt abilities would be nice, because while playing I've accidentally interrupted my abilities, by clicking because I didn't know if they were actually going or not, so it'd be nice if first click just moves you back, and second click interrupts the ability.

And finally, it's too easy for the townies. Honestly, the only game I ever won as mafia, or saw the mafia win, was when the townies just got mad at eachother, it seems to me that the best way to fix this would be to make the hinges on doors more easily breakable, which might also coincide nicely with your hinges being replaced, because at the moment, pulling off a murder is extremely difficult.

It's a temporary effect, but actually now that you mention it, it probably is OP because mafia wouldn't want to kill someone who could leave a corpse behind that others could easily find and investigate after homing in en mass to where a dying player's Reveal occurred. Corpses need to be cleaned up first, or they'll leave clues, and mafia players wouldn't have enough time in that situation.

Yeah I'll consider removing it again.

Edit: But a smart player could just manually use minimap pings moments before they're about to die anyway, so it probably won't make a huge difference. I'll consider removing it if I add hideable corpses, though.
I shrunk down the investigate duration considerably. I'm considering just making it a function of ability mana instead of time, increasing just the same as your sleep meter gets low.

Come to think of it, what was my original logic for basing it on the sleep meter, anyway? Hmm...



This teaches me to record my reasonings for each new addition I make, for future reference.

Duel mode only activates if there's one mafia left and the other townie player hasn't been already voted out (but is still alive). If mafia do their jobs right, it should never even be an issue. If not, well consider that mafia players in general have more opportunities than townies do throughout the game. This includes relatively unrestricted access to the entire map at night; cumulatively almost half of the game's duration is theirs alone. They've got a good chance of scraping up a few extra houses, if they're smart.

But this'll have to be something I'll work out with balance testing.

How aware people really are capable of being is something I've been questioning lately. It might not be as big of a drawback as you think.

Haha nice. I'll look into it.

I'll switch to money when I have to completely give up on relying on information as a resource. Or just do v2.0 built off Urban Monopoly, where money is practically the life blood of the whole darn thing.

My offer still stands if you want me to release the trigger sources for this, though.

What were you saying about townies being too hard to kill?

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Jan 24 2010, 11:47 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

If you aren't doing anything besides either sleeping or cowering in fear inside your manors, I'm not doing my job right.

I'm considering adding discoverable secret entrances to manors just for that reason.
party about that, fuckers!

Actually not a bad idea. I'll consider it, too. But I've also recently added clearer indications that abilities are in effect, so I may not have to. We'll see.

Let's wait until testing out the new version before deciding if matters have improved any. If not, I'll just up the damage for armed mode or something.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Jan 24 2010, 3:57 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.

.. Or if you can trick people into thinking you are innocent....

The key words in the first quote is "If they do their jobs right"... Aren't they supposed to be killing people and then pushing the blame to others? I still don't see why, if I was a mafia, I'd try to kill anyone...

Exactly! .. lol.. that's why I thought it was too OP. With the corpse, it's even moar OP...

Going back... I think the core game mechanic works, like the Manors, Recruiting Houses, Sleeping, Voting at day... They all work together. So I wouldn't suggest u making a completely new thing from another map, unless you're sick and tired of this map already, and feel that it is time to move on.

Lastly, It is really hard to balance test your game... Your map's mechanics are quite novel, and it is hard to expect any random pubbie who is a Mafia to do his/her job right (This is partly why I suggested the money system, as it is more intuitive, and is also why I am iffy about the Duel System). Not saying that it won't work, but it needs something to sustain the pubbies' interest... simple Mind Fuck won't work as most pubbies don't have enough Mind to Fuck with...
Next time I play this.. I'd probably save some replays for you for balance testing.

Still.. I want to see how the duel system works out before condemning it.

Oh, and the thing about cloaking.. maybe u should allow Mafia to start off with more energy than the Townies... this gives mafia advantage, and gives something subtle that townies might notice.

That's what I'm hoping night recruiting clues will help remedy. Townies will have a strong incentive to go out at night to gather these clues to learn mafia players. Mafia can make short work of careless townies during this time. As long as they don't mind cleaning up a few corpses afterwards, this should work out.

Well that's the thing: They technically work together, but they're very limited/limiting. I'd want to evolve the underlying gameplay base for this to be something that would be fun to play just by itself, and THEN to build additional game modes off of it.

But I'm just going to go on to Sin instead, probably.

Thanks. That always helps.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jan 25 2010, 4:13 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.

Update: It's looking like there's going to be a v1.3, since there's a lot of stuff I'm still up in the air about, but I'd rather have some preliminary junk taken care of first. Lynches are one. I want to add that firing squad thing, but I'd rather just see how it works out with the placeholder I have, first. Lots of other little stuff like that, too.

Surprisingly enough, I'm also now observing the beginnings of some trigger lag. Another reason for v1.3 I suppose: To clean shit up. I've been pretty sloppy so far just trying out shit, refactoring it, trying out more shit, refactoring again, and so on. Starcraft is absolutely horrid for refactoring and unit testing. This is the first map where I've actually invested a chunk of time to adding a distinct debugging scaffolding layer around a lot of game functions. I'm almost tempted to add some cheat codes in for the lulz.


I don't want to spend too much longer on this, though. I basically want to get it in working order, release the trigger sources (my MacroTriggers files), and then just push it off to sea and let it drift wherever.




Might be up to a week-ish before v1.2 is ready for testing, again. Clues were giving me a bit of trouble earlier.

I found a helpful exploit: During night, if you have a Spore Colony attachment to a house, you can attack a footprint and it will follow your character around - this makes it so that you don't leave footprints behind, making for easy destruction on manors (assuming you don't get caught by a passerby, that is).

Clever. Too bad I'd replaced creep colonies with sunkens in v1.1, though.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jan 26 2010, 9:17 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.

Update: Well something decided to go right for a change, and it appears I'm farther ahead of schedule than anticipated. Imagine that.


Clues are about done. Some F&T remains until I'm ready to resume public testing. Then I'll decide on a few more things, and hopefully have v1.2 done before the week is out!

Stay tuned.

Awesome.

Update: Alright clues seem to basically work, but I'll need a lot more data before I can conclusively decide on anything about that yet. That's coming soon.

For now, I've got to organize my new thoughts a bit:

1. Recruiting is a bit too readily available. I'll probably boost the ore cost of it substantially.
   
2. Outer edges of play area still a bit too large. Gonna prune it a bit and trim off some houses as well.
   
3. Lack of player intimacy issue still a major issue. Too much wandering, goose chasing, and general aloofness. Need to brainstorm more solutions...
   
4. One idea, though: Reduce walking speed of unarmed players by half. Then eliminate armed mode movement mana drain during the day for protected players.
   
5. Add global announcement of players' sleep states during the day (not their gas, though). This should help make one layer of information more straightforward for everyone. Technically, sleep states are already easily learnable during the day with the right methods, so this shouldn't be a loss.
   
6. Remove the easter egg. It is silly.
   

It's interesting what a fresh batch of testing can do for my perspective. I'm still meditating on a lot of things here, though. Stay tuned.



I might end up going for v1.3 now, depending upon what I decide on...

Response to list.

1. Maybe it was too simple to just go around gathering houses. But I understand. I worry that most people will just go around collecting houses for no obvious reason -- which makes the game boring. I don't know if making it cost more mana will alleviate this.

2. Agreed to some extent, disagree mostly. Since houses are everywhere and can be recruited.. if u wanna wall in a person, just recruit houses or share vis w/ people you trust. When I was voted out and ready to be lynched, i felt quite claustraphobic due to azala unallying me and recruiting the houses around my manor.

3. That's what I said in my first post >=(

4. Don't know... probably not required, since everyone'd just arm themselves..

5. Doesn't investigate already do this? Seems kind of weird that the town will announce who's sleeping with who during the day.

6. b-b-but...

Comment from last play...

a. Clues actually work relatively well. I'm surprised, in fact... It works because there are random discrepencies between players (and even with almost full house, it was hard to be sure of who's the Mafia). It gets people talking and accusing, and gets the Mafia people worried so that they'll needa kill the person who's been speaking about them. Finally, smart mafias can just lie about the clues. ... Oh and fix it so that mafia don't get any clues...

b. Lynching doesn't work yet.. It gives the voted out player more things to worry about, which is a good thing IMO.

c. Hide for Mafia is wonderful. It is the function that really gives mafia the much required edge in the game. I feel that it should remove more of the sleep meter (gas). 3000 gas isnt' much of a difference when a well slept person has 17000 ... I'd say 5000-7000 gas is about right (warn players before they use it for the first time?)

d. the Investigate function needs more attention... I didn't use it once in the entire game.. I didn't know what it could do :\.. this could be just me tho...

Finally, I really like the way this is going.. .. I haven't seen duel mode or lynching yet... so.. yeah.. needa play this more

Well if anything it ought to stagger the time spent recruiting enough to maybe open up focus for other activities, such as using Investigate more. I'm still meditating on this.

By rights you should have been dead a lot sooner from being apprehended and lynched. I just hadn't realized how costly it was going to be to make a concerted effort to apprehend a specific player.

But actually I'm just doing this because such a large area allows too much activity in general outside of visible range at day, which just seems to confuse things more than they need to be. At least, that's my surface-level observation so far.


I'll withhold this change for now, though. v1.3 perhaps.

Well duh, I've known about this issue pretty much since day 1. I've just lacked a good solution to resolve it that fits within my goals.

They must be unarmed for recruiting and recharging ability mana. They won't get to stay armed for long if they're low on ability mana (particularly at night and with movement ore drain in effect). It's great for getting around at day, but meant to be used sparingly.

This'll be subject to balancing, of course.

Investigate only works right up against another player, which is basically pointless for telling if someone is asleep or not (since I shouldn't have to point out how obvious that ought to be anyway). Investigate is useful for telling how long someone has to remain awake, though.

This is just to keep that layer of information fairly consistent with everyone at day.

Oh all right, I'll just make them halluc Kakarus with 1 hp instead.

They're kinda harmless when shown to mafia, though. I just got lazy.

I'm probably going to bump up the bed sleep duration a bit. But I'll need a lot more data on this before I can be sure how to balance it right.

Working on this now.

Thanks. Hopefully it's starting to resemble something that could be playable for a change, now.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 31 2010, 3:43 am by Tuxedo-Templar.