Posted May 15, 2022 by acacGames
Hi All,
Last Week
I don't have too much to mention this week. I did find that bug, where if you have 2 obligations for the same outfit slot, the lesser one shows, instead of the greater one. It was my greatest fear in making this game. There are parts of the code that just have to be copy-pastes of lots of if statements (probably should have been a switch, to be honest), and I messed up some of those ifs. But, that should be fixed, now. Thank you to everyone who found this bug!
I also started work on a test harness to better test the officers and their scenes and obligations. I haven't finished it yet, though. This should help catch bugs like the above in the future.
There's a couple other things I did for the long term, but I'll keep them under wraps for now.
Next Week
Overall, I think I'm pretty burned out. I think I'll take a break for a bit. I've noticed I go into these cycles, of working on this game in sprints, and then burning out and taking a couple weeks off, and then repeating again.
Other Game Ideas
Since I'm taking my mind off of Delivery Pilot for a bit, I thought I might talk about another game idea I've had, but didn't really get a chance to flesh out or put into code. It's set in a similar post-apocalyptic setting as Fallout, and very inspired by the Brotherhood of Steel. You take the role of a captain. Your commander instructs you to take your company to a far off place, and do some recon on whether there's anything noteworthy there. You want to find something, because then you'll be in charge of long term operations there and maybe then in line for a promotion.
Reporting to you are 2 lieutenants, and later on, you can get 2 more to a total of 4. Lieutenants have sergeants who report to them, and then privates that report to sergeants. Your own personal degree of freedom is pretty limited. You give orders to your lieutenants, but then they in turn give orders to their sergeants, who then in turn lead their followers to carry out their missions.
Each of the actors will have their own personalities, that's similar to the moral compass in Dungeons and Dragons. For example, they can be either benevolent or malevolent. The former is more interested in talking and doing science, while the latter has less qualms about hurting others. They can also be outgoing or reclusive. If they are reclusive, they might prefer going to abandoned places and staying in the shadows. Outgoing leaders might make connections with villages or burn down raider camps.
From your perspective as their captain, you get a report on the different units and their talents, affinities and achievements. Each turn is a week, and you give lieutenants orders for the week. Then at the end of the week, you get a report on what everyone did. Then at the end of the month, you report to your superior, and try to justify your existence in the area.
H-wise, it won't be the central focus, but it will appear in the reports on what everyone in the company was up to. Maybe two of the members have a romance. Maybe one is harassing someone else. You might also be able to romance some of the higher level officers. I was thinking that you might be able to send supplies to specific lieutenants (platoons) or sergeants (squads), to increase their chance of success. But if you romance one of them, then you're obligated to give the supplies to their unit instead of someone else. I was also thinking you might have 3 actions between each week, and you can spend each of them to talk to individual officers, encouraging them, or romancing them, or even making one officer a prey for a different officer, making one group strong but another group weak.
Anyway, that would be the rough idea of it. Then after maybe 100 turns (so roughly 2 years), the high command recalls you from that tour, and either replaces you (kind of a game over) or promotes you (win the game).
What do you think? Cheers!