Plan For Diversity:
Joshua Wilson:
I have hopefully done many things so far to make the game diverse. Seann and I have been brainstorming ways to make to make the game feel a little bit more diverse. We received a comment on our IndieDB page today that really boosted our morale and hope into the project. I've coded a bit more into the quest system and have implemented the framework needed for random events. I.e: If you do something the world is changed in some way. This can either be a small change that only affects the immediate world or a change that effects(affects?) the entire world. We are working hard to complete what we have right now. We want to release the tech demo in order to get an opinion, but we don't want this to be your typical demo. We want people to be able to do everything they can do in the full game in the tech demo.
We will constantly update the tech demo and, initially, this will mess up saves, however in the long run we hope to make it a good representation of what the full game will be.
I also have plans on making random things in room descriptions. Very small subtle things that change and very every time you enter the room.
Seann Sutton:
As the main writer for CO:A, there are many obstacles that need to be adressed. One of these is diversity.Diversity may seem like an easy enough task, but when there's a project as big as CO:A there's bound to be repetitions. Luckily, I have a plan of action.
-Play other RPG games to see what they did right, and what they could have added to make things better
-Do some boring 'ol research and find interesting out-of-the-way things for inspiration
-Make sure every character in the game is a character, not a robot as in other text adventures
-Have each country have their own internal stuggles and cultures
-Have actions in-game have an affect on the experience, but in a reasonable way (for instance, Fallout 3's karma was a little odd, but Skyrim's bounty system was much better)
-Understand what the game will be like to different playstyles, such as the reader, the veteran, the noob, the philosopher, and the deviant in all of us.
-Real-life is diverse, and given the amount of fiction that can be used as inspiration, there might be enough fuel to go for a long time
And most importantly-Don't make every villager the exact same person or every shop-keeper emotionless (or even worse, all having the same character traits)Of course, this isn't a perfect system. This is where we want help from you as developers. We love feedback, it allows us to see our game from another perspective and the potential holes in the game. If you took the short time to write a synopsis of your experience, we'll take it into consideration. Keep in mind, however, we're still going to loosely stick to what we have in mind for CO:A
