Topic: Crypto Kingdom Game Design - page 5. (Read 9449 times)

Most definitely interested in testing this out when possible!

The design of the Health Challenge

This was originally intended to be secret, but due to the opening of the development side with new guys etc., it is not possible any more and would just create a situation where some people pay more due to less information, so it will be published here.

There is only one "type" of health challenge, it includes everything, food, drinks, living conditions, age, sicknesses, happiness factors   
Health challenge is generated to player characters in year_change and evaluated in the next one, giving them a year to Alleviate it.   
   
Implementation requirements:   

New field in item table: healthiness (encrypted field, or another way to give some items this property and me to edit it)   
New variable in Char table: frequencyBonus   
New variable in Char table: remainingHealthChallenge (int)   
2 new variables in Char table: eat_left and drink_left (or script)   
2 global variables: A, B (initially both 0)   
script: item_consumed_already (per char per item per year) gives yes/no   
script every hour: each char with frequencyBonus < 40; frequencyBonus += 2 (part of coming Hourly script)   
   
Determination of the initial value of remainingHealthChallenge   

1000 + A + randbetween(200; min(age; 90)*30 + B)   
   
Rules in the HealthChallenge from player side   

When the HealthChallenge is determined, the only way to combat it is eating and drinking.   
Eating (consuming edibles, quota = 200 instances)   
Drinking (consuming drinkables, quota = 200 instances)   
First time to consume a certain item this year, there is a bonus, making it reasonable to consume   
different items, and make the first act of consuming each with a sizable quantity (up to 50)   
   
New command: HEALTH (parameters ignored)   

print: "You may still eat eat_left units and drink drink_left units this year. Your    
remaining health challenge is remainingHealthChallenge_text. Your overall health   
is Health_text."   
   
Alleviation of HealthChallenge upon Consuming items   

syntax: CONSUME item_id quantity   
check if quantity exceeds quota, if so, print: "You may only eat/drink eat_left/drink_left units any more this    
year. Your remaining health challenge is remainingHealthChallenge_text."   
(in the above case, no items are consumed)   
if quantity >= frequencyBonus;    
   Bonus = frequencyBonus
   frequencyBonus = 0
else   
   frequencyBonus -= quantity
   Bonus = quantity
if item_consumed_already=FALSE   
   find variety_multiplier in Variety_lookup_table for the corresponding quantity
else   
   variety_multiplier = quantity
effect = floor(effect_multiplier * (bonus + variety_multiplier * item_id:healthiness) ; 0)   
remainingHealthChallenge -= effect (cannot go below 0)   
update eat_left or drink_left   
print "The eating/drinking felt effect_text. I feel the remaining health challenge to   
be remainingHealthChallenge_text. I could still eat eat_left and drink drink_left this year."

Variety Lookup Table (the other tables are secret)

The Ultima Engine

Originally meant a compact and fundamental classification of implemented objects and their relations, with a complete resource-based economy where money is used for trading. About like this:

Living things - people (PC/NPC), animals - have sustenance needs, and produce Time(in PC, called Action Points=AP) that can be spent to generate Labor. The Labor types available are unlocked with Skills. Some Items (etc.) increase Labor/AP. Time can directly be spent on some activities, Labor can be sold in the market for money or spent in your own Factories.

Factories - collection of resources (Items, buildings) to facilitate the conversion of Labor to Changes (in the status of the game). Again, the terminology is clumsy but well-defined. Factories are everything that can create items or repair them (including those where existing items are consumed in the process). Depending on the Change in question, a Factory might not require any tools nor skill (common gardens exist for growing veggies in between boroughs) or a load of both (Printing Press is both a capital and skill intensive business with high initial and fixed operating costs). All the economic subgames we have enjoyed in the past, will be implemented Factories, with widely different requirements for player skill and micromanagement/playtime, and investment/risk/reward characteristics.

Logistics. Every item is localized, which means that it exists in a space - if it is important that the location is a certain voxel or even a side of it (smallest possible resolution for a flat object is 1x1 m side of a voxel, for space object 1x1x1 m voxel, but it can also be inside a Container), it can be this exact, but there might also be 1,000 DEER of whom we only know that they roam around in the County of Naoned, this being their location until someone goes to hunt for them and they will localize to rural boroughs and even to voxels (voxel at zero-elevation is also called pixel in 2D). The current locations of living things change according to their desires, the others need to be moved, for which methods are available.

Heating energy is not implemented (assumed to be there) but Mechanical energy is needed in some Factories, and can be provided by wind- and watermills, animals etc. It is also used in Logistics.

Items have a variety of uses, generally financial items are a way to bet on the game's success. Collectible items are a hobby for many but may rise in value. Personal items add flavor to your character and many categories of them are needed for decent gameplay, with extra adding to status. Cultural and Scientific items give bonuses to skills generation, labor conversion, and increase the Character CUL/SCI output. Weapons will be all the more needed. The complete chain of food and drinks generation from tilling of the ground to uncorking the bottle is there. The sustenance requirements drive the necessity of obtaining the basics: Food, Drinks, Clothes, Buildings. The higher-advanced players have the chance enjoy the higher pursuits (which we already have seen in the first year.

END.

The engine is really that simple. (Well I am aware that hundreds of conversion formulas especially for factories need to be created and balanced, which in the beginning is a lonely task but later on other guys will get the experience needed to make those as well, and they can be tweaked at the instant exploits seem to stand out. And the UI for many of them, with a CLI with a library of hundreds of commands.)

Now the challenge is that to have it work beautifully as specified, there needs to be thousands of active players. We are talking minimum 100 times the current number. Wisdom is needed in the timing as well as the direction. Crypto Kingdom was started with little appeal to masses, because we wanted to get affluent, strategic, investing/management oriented people in the game, and sure enough, every other approach, with not having the robust playerbase, would have lead to closing the shop already due to the difficulties we have had.

I don't believe moving to the above system before getting a much larger number of players is the right way to go. This game is not intending to compete with existing games, lacking their strengths and diluting ours in the process. Instead, my thinking is that we now move to the 2nd year with a clear focus of gaining new commoners with a game that is fun, yet in a way that clearly targets above-average intelligent people, those prone to optimization, continues to appeal to adults, to cryptocurrency enthusiasts, and to the people that our current players might find in their friends circle.

2nd year Goals (this section is especially a primer for discussion)

- Increase the playerbase to 10,000 PC or more
- Retain the social coherence with having both play-for-free players, depositors and investors, in the functional proportions
- Develop the software and increase our development output
=> Unlock the possibility to move to 3rd phase with Ultima engine and even more open world

2nd year Means (this section is especially a primer for discussion)

- Enable effortless New Player registration with several modes (visitor, later prompted to become character; advanced start with customization of character at start and deposit option to boost you with new skills, even promotions).
- Keep it social - Tribes and Guilds as explained in game thread.
- World (town) full of things - wandering around lets you meet people and lots are full of features which give you bonuses and opportunities.
- Leverage the Agora Marketplace to the full. Trading is just fun.
- Cleverly designed sustenance system keeps players checking back regularly, and caters to desired target audience, enabling but not requiring micromanagement (can be done in 5 minutes per week in one go, but doing it "optimal" by spending 10 minutes every day saves about 50% of the money with same result - for nobles whose life is not depending on 2 XMR per week, this is not a chore, but many of the commoners cannot allocate even 1 XMR for sustenance, and also enjoy playing nimbly).
- Get the word out.
- Tune down the importance of buildings. The Ancient Era was all about buildings, initially it was not intended to have any economy happening before moving to Online, and start this part there (remember: the DB originally intended to be scope of the Online version was done by PJ in the first 2 weeks, it is this economy that takes time). Now the spending of a commoner is only 20% buildings, and that of a noble not really higher (other expenses: food, drinks, suits, horse&carriage, items, also scale up significantly for nobles and for each rank of them). Buildings represent less than 10% of the game value also. It is possible that fast-building will be enabled with formulas creating the resource and work requirements as a direct result of typing in the expected effects of the building, without the need for floorplans or facades, which can be created later when it is more clear how they will be visualized, saving a lot of work that currently cannot be seen and is unsure if it can be used. Instead, the new Building datatype will have a few fields, most importantly the clear listing of bonuses how living there profits you, and pool shares which will be updated with a system script occasionally.

Hello!

Crypto Kingdom has grown so big that the main thread is difficult to follow as it contains so many different topics, including gameplay and player announcements.

Development thread is for those interested in the technical development (coding) of the game and implementing modules via API and other ways.

This thread is aimed for strategic discussion about the game and its design, and of the core features and modules. It is moderated to keep it on topic, which means purging away CK content not related to the design, and of course all other content and non-content as well.