Shark
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Concept of approval, and other important bits
🕑 Added 2020-01-24 21:59:26 +0000 UTCFriendship does not necessarily mean seeing eye to eye on every issue. Disagreeing with your loved ones is part of any human relationship. That's part of why I did not implement a few of Daisy's dialogs.
Approval and Affection
I wanted them to trigger as the player and Daisy got closer, but doing so with the current way affection worked would be weird. So, I decided to distinguish how close you are to someone and their overall view on you. Besides the important decisions, it's important to keep track of how the character views your interactions with them.
Here's how the solution looks: with every deed done alongside a companion, you earn a bit of affection with them (+2 in the number score); the approval, however, is changed via dialog choices and decisions. This way you can have a negative approval but still be developing your relationship.
The way Bioware did it, on some games, was tying story progression to relationship progression. While I want the character to talk about the new developments in the story, to me it doesn't feel like you should be blocked from relationship progression because you are not actively seeking the main story. So this system works nicely to overcome this. It also gives more meaning to deeds and to your chosen companion.
Other stuff
I have also put the finishing touches on the save base room, will delay the map room to when I start implementing the fog of war. I don't want the player to immediately see the entire area, that removes a bit of the fun of exploring the unknown.
Also, consequential to the affection thing, I worked on a few more parts of the deed system. To give you some insight: the system itself is done. What is currently being worked on is how to determine the circumstances of certain deeds,
For example: knowledge requires you to talk to NPC's outside events and learn more about them and the world. But that requires a way to keep track of which dialog was chosen, and throwing flags around is not exactly elegant or efficient. So, I am thinking and testing different simple solutions to this, which might be useful for other future systems.
Comments
Nification
I like the idea of separating approval and affection, it makes interactions more than a one dimensional affair, especially if you place some red line moments, as long as they are well telegraphed, do you do want to do or do you respect the character’s wishes.
