Proven Lands - Update#3, Traits & Multiplayer

Here is the third update for Proven Lands were the developer thesetales talks about the mood, trait and ambition system, and shares a little information about multiplayer.

A mood and trait system 

The idea behind the mood system - which is influenced by old Rogue-Likes and more known games such as The Sims, Project Zomboid and Crusader Kings - is to make your main character less predictable. I think these type of details are much more important for a survival game like ours than a Metroid, Zelda or Titanfall. So basically an AI is constantly managing your moods and traits in the background – like “sick”, “tired”, “thirsty” or “very thirsty”. Give the pre alpha tech demo a try to check this out. Instead of just showing bars with a “strength of 5” I’d like to display your mood and traits with icons and warnings. Tom already did a couple first spacesuit sound alerts for this (see below). Like in real-life you do not see your current health at 90% or hunger at 55%. Instead you notice yourself being “injured”, “sick” or “hungry”, sometimes as a placebo effect. Zomboid for instance did great at placebo effects, where you sometimes don’t even know if you’re sick because of a cold or the zombie virus (big plus to the devs, imo). This is where we are heading: We already have advanced moods/traits in the system. However, some moods/traits make no sense without proper 3D assets and subsystems. I’d like to make this system as dynamic and pragmatic as possible (with modding in mind) because it’s fun when your character doesn’t behave exactly the same way you do.

An ambition system 

The ambition system on the other side, as of yet, isn't a part of the demo due to the quest subsystem. However if you know Crusader Kings 2 you probably get the idea behind it. Your character will have one ambition at the same time – sort of a major quest. For instance: “I need a new spacesuit”, “I’d like to be alone” (for 3 days?) or “I hate those guys over there. Let’s kill them all”. If you do not pick an ambition manually, the AI will assign a random ambition to your character - which could interfere your plans. All ambitions have a deadline, a negative effect (if failed) and a positive effect (if achieved). For example: “depressed” or “happy like a butterfly”. The Sims uses something quite similar. Proven Lands is not The Sims, obviously, but you probably get an idea of such a system. You might be wondering: Why ambitions? The goal is to have some sort of a very basic Black & White behaviour instead of a linear and predictable Metroid (great game though, really. Just a different gameplay). So, in fact you do control and manage your character in Proven Lands, but from time to time he/she will do something unpredictable that might upset you.

Multiplayer 

I’d like to be careful about multiplayer. I have years of experience with servers, however, multiplayer is an own dev step. But: We will have a multiplayer for sure, one way or another, don’t worry. A higher funding (see stretch goal) just speeds it up a bit - thanks to an additional coder for less complex issues and tasks. We’ll start with basic co-op and then we’ll see how it feels to all of us. I definitely think that Proven Lands needs a multiplayer, perhaps with the beta or release, as soon as we have all subsystems, a better terrain engine and a few other important improvements – “even if it’s friend-friend co-op without the bells and whistles of a true MP server environment”, as Mochnant mentioned. ;)