Update (15-May-2022)
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!
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Hey, good to hear about another update, I really appreciate keeping us in loop with those weekly updates :)
One tiny suggestion as a fellow programmer I'd assign each outfit part type a number so that evaluation, comparison and modification are way easier. But I didn't see entire code so my approach could have lots of weaknesses. Anyway, glad to hear issue is resolved :D
Test harness sounds useful.
Wise choice on taking a break while being burned out, don't push yourself too much ;)
Regarding new game - doesn't sound as enticing as Pilot one :P But nevertheless will give it a try, may turn out to be more fun than currently advertised.
Thanks! :)
"Regarding new game - doesn't sound as enticing as Pilot one :P"
Aaaand, that's why I'm glad I brought it up, before putting too much work behind it, haha. xD
Btw, I don't mention it much, but if you're interested, I have another game on NewGrounds, called Darkmorrow Arena. I think that game is a lot more matured than the Pilot game. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that one. Maybe I should post it here on Itch, although I haven't worked on it for a couple of years, now.
Checked Darkmorrow Arena and once again prefer Pilot game :P as I've always preferred sci-fi settings to fantasy ones. I have to praise you for big progress between those 2 games game-dev wise.
To not start a tirade DA felt way more difficult, unfair and linear when compared to DP.
Also clothing choices other than stats increase didn't feel like they did anything in DA, while in early stage of DP it already feels to have slight impact, and world around you reacting to it.
When I thought parts of DP UI were obstructive, DA was just horrible.
Relation scenes felt way too long in DA, much prefer approach in DP.
So yeah lots of progress :)
It's sad to hear that you're going for a break, but it is also understandable. It is always hard to keep the focus on a long going project. I hope you will really come back to this project, because I really like it so far. It would be good to release your current version before your break, mainly to get rid of the clothing bug that is really annoying.
I had another successful run on hard this week, and I have a few more thoughts about balancing.
In order to not get biased towards any kind of officer, I re-rolled the boni until I got the bonus on two base types (industrial and research). I tracked my money and the officer's levels after each week.
- It was an easy win. Mostly my spare money went up, except for a few weeks where I had bad luck and the best paying officers did not have a job for me. Having a high level officer in a base with bonus gives you a lot of money. Maybe the base bonus is a little bit too high.
- Captains and Majors feel pretty balanced now. A high level Captain can compete with a freshly unlocked Major. If a Major has no job available, in the most cases it is better to take the job of a Captain instead of waiting one day. Thus, you will have progress on the Captains after unlocking the Majors, and due to the missions with higher base pay (Civilians, VIP, ...), it really pays out ot get your Captains to a high level.
- Starting with the Colonels, the difference to Majors and Captains is too big. Having unlocked the Colonels, you decide your mission by target (where you can get a Colonel mission) instead of payment. It is sometimes even better to have an empty flight back to a Colonel instead of a low paying mission to another starport. I guess the main reason is that you give the bonus not only for the direct subordinates, but to all subordinates.
- Let's see what happens when you change the bonus to direct subordinates only. The Colonels only have 50% more base payment than the Majors, while the Majors have 100% more than the Captains. Now, you have to decide whether you want to push your freshly unlocked Colonels, or work on your probably better paying high-level Majors. However, neglecting the Colonels would probably lead to later failure. I unlocked my first Colonel in week 32, where you need about 25k per week, i.e. 5k per day. A sleazy Colonel with 40% subordinate bonus would start with 4200 per mission. In contrast, I unlocked my first Major in 10, where you need about 10k a week, i.e. 2k per day. The average Major starts with 2800 per mission. Regarding these values, you maybe should give the Colonel a base payment of about 4k. Then, it's the same factor from Major to Colonel than from Captain to Major. Similar math holds for the General, maybe 8k is already too much, but I think it should be at least 6k.
About the H-scenes: at the end of the game, I had 2 officers at level 4 (one of them was friendly), 1 at level 5, and 1 at level 6. From the two clothing obligations, only one officer asked for the maximum clothing obligation. That is, the high level obligations only play a minor role in the game. I'd like to see an endgame where you struggle because your morale is low due to all your obligations. There might be several approaches how you can achieve this:
- Make the game longer. At the moment, a hard game goes 250 days, whereas medium goes 300 days and easy goes 350 days. You could change the initial debt according to difficulty level, such that all difficulty levels go for about 350 days.
- Increase the relationship level faster. Starting from level 3, you only need 3 missions for the next level. Of course, this would reduce the overal difficulty a little bit, but this part is still in balancing.
- Maybe the officers should always give highest level obligations if available. That is, a level 3 officer will always add a level 3 obligation, and a level 5 officer a level 5 obligation. You might even go further and say that if a level 3 obligation just upgrades a level 1 obligation, the officer gives you an additional level 1 obligation. As there are 7 different clothing slots with 3 levels and 3? more with one level each, I do not think you will run out of obligations.
I'm looking forward for when you return to the project, and I'm willing to do some more balancing experiments.
Thank you for the kind words. I won't be gone for long. I actually commissioned some more work for this game, so if I went for long, it would be for waste, haha.
I'm glad you mentioned those things! It parallels a lot of balance thoughts I've had, and highlighted some more that I should think about.
I've got a question. Do you play the web version, or the client version? What are your thoughts on the two?
Thanks for taking the time try out this game and giving me your feedback!
1. Flying back will get you to a high relationship level for this officer very fast, which is good. On the other hand, the flight back does not increase the relationship with any officer, which is bad, and gives you some morale boost. We will see what has the better effect on gameplay. As long as serving only one officer is not a working winning strategy, I think it is okay.
3. I guess my main advantage was that both boni kicked in right from the beginning of the game, whereas other boni take a while (Major / high relationship bonus), and it is a race whether they first kick in or you first run out of money. Reducing base payment would make the game really hard if you do not have a station type bonus. I would rather nerf the bonus a little bit, maybe to 25%.
4. A faster increment of the relationship might not be sufficient. My level 6 officer would be level 8 or 9, the level 5 officer at level 6 or 7 (he was closer to 5 than to 6), maybe one of the level 4 officers would have been level 5. However, this is fine tuning, I would first increase the relationship speed and then check whether there must be additional adjustments to the game length.
My browser is to configured to delete page content on close. As you do not play the game in one go, shutting down my PC deletes the save games. Therefore, I play the client version.
If it not too much effort, I would keep both versions. While my browser settings are common, the web version is good to have a quick look at a project. I rarely download client versions before testing them as web version.