So! Here's a good chunk of my GDD for some of the game mechanics - would hell love input on this if anyone feels like it. I think some of it is bad, much of it will work (with polish) and some of it I quite like.
Be brutal.
Well, don't really need to say that do I hehheh :D
Oh, also added some more art to the front page - portrait creations system mockup (stole the idea from that awesome looking game Bunker) and an early draft for the token based supply kiosk and some other junk. Mostly eye candy.
So here goes;
EQUIP, STATUS & STATS (S.C.I.L) WINDOWS
The three buttons (1) in between REST & MENU select between these three windows on the right hand UI pane.
The slim MOVE & INV buttons (2) that split the movement buttons and upper pane can be clicked to switch between either the movement keys or the main inventory in this lower pane.
This should prove useful during combat whereby the player can bring their inventory and/or medical panes up to apply healing during combat - while the main attack buttons remain visible regardless of any panes selected.
This should allow the player to keep fighting while multitasking with other management.
EQUIP WINDOW
So this is where you equip the armor and accessories the character can wear;
- Helmet/Mask
- Goggles/Implants(?)
- Jacket/Armor
- Pants/Greaves
- Belt
- Boots
QUICKSLOT BELT
Slot 5 pictured here is reserved for a “quickslot pouch belt” - when equipped this belt gives the player the advantage of a small row of quick use item slots along the main UI window, right below the event window.
Different belt types would give more quickslot spots, perhaps the larger being scrollable.
The quickslot itself, apart from being handy for healing items etc, will also be able to hold additional pouch, packs and bag items.
The addition of pouch and pack items can be set down in the quickslot, these items will then act as separate, extra inventory boxes for smaller items.
Medical items, ammunition, keys etc can be organized through the use of belt pouches in the quickslot and will also keep the main inventory less cluttered if used this way.
The inventory window for these pouches themselves, unlike the main inventory and quickslot bar - would be movable popup panes that appear over the event window.
Being smaller pouches and packs, these mini inventories will only be able to hold smaller lightweight items as an organizational tool. Weapons and larger items would still have to be kept in the main inventory -
although the quickslot being a belt itself makes sense to be able to equip weapons there (tucked into your belt) but these of course would be too large to be held in the pouches.
STATUS WINDOW
Like most of the stuff here I outlined these systems almost to be as simple as possible, within reason. I think the way bleeding and irradiation would work is, while not strictly realistic, a fairly close enough approximation for our purposes.
Combat and irradiation damage can’t just be hand waved away, they have consequences. This will hopefully force the player to make hard choices and create strategies that prioritize certain things; radiation can be ignored - but only for so long.
Wounds can be treated; but require actual treatment and rest eventually, as well.
Regaining hit points/healing would be done* through “resting” the character, or making camp like the TSR/Westwood titles**.
STR attribute number would set the base HP gained during resting. Applying bandages, first aid kits etc to various body areas/hitboxes would add to the base healing rate of those parts during resting.
6 hit point boxes, for the body parts (basically like Horrosoft’s Elvira/Waxworks games).
If hit points get low/hit zero for any specific body part;
*HEAD - damage causes reduction on combat accuracy, 0 = lowering/loss of vision(?)
*TORSO - damage causes no special effect, 0 = dead/unconscious
*x2 ARMS - damage increases weapon "cooldown" time, 0 = loss of use of hands/weapons
*x2 LEGS - damage lowers movement speed, 0 on both = complete loss of movement
Assuming enemies would have a “to hit” chance to hit Ego when attacking, after that dice roll is determined another would take place before the
Each of the hit point boxes (I'll just call them hitboxes from here) can have the status effect of bleeding, and/or irradiated.
BLEED/IRRADIATION STATUS
Any hitbox has the ability to suffer bleed status from say, a heavy hit etc, this sets a damage counter on the hitbox indicating the eventual loss of points to this box - or blood loss, in red.
This number counts down as the body part bleeds out, eventually, removing a number of hit points from the hitbox according to the bleed severity.
Bandages, tourniquets, first aid and medkits are applied directly to body parts via the status screen before resting or to staunch bleeding or treat radiation burns.
A bandage or tourniquet will staunch bleeding and/or temporarily halt radiation damage, and also add a point or so to the base healing number during resting.
First aid and med kits can also be applied to staunch bleeding/treat irradiation, these would have an even higher + to the base healing rate and also have the ability to heal crippled status limbs (if we want to add that too).
Of course actual healing can only be done over time by resting or insta-heal in combat with rare stimpak-like items.
For the radiation itself, I was leaning towards simpler mechanics generally; radiation clouds or fields would emanate from various sources at varying strengths - small reactors, scattered yellow cake, spent fuel rods etc etc.
These hazards would irradiate all your hit boxes mildly, generally speaking.
For enemies I thought it would be interesting to have them generally full body irradiate you if you get close (some could have radiation fields, too) or if you attack them in melee combat without protective gloves/gauntlets,
your arms would become extremely irradiated, for instance. Pools of radioactive runoff on the ground would work the same way - only irradiating your leg hitboxes without protective pants/greaves.
Radiation would basically work a bit like bleeding, a counter appears on the body parts and also does a slow countdown over time, removing the indicated number of hit points from the relevant area as it dissipates.
Unlike bleeding (which can only bleed the max number of HP leaving that limb useless at 0 HP until healed) radiation would stack exponentially - a highly irradiated arm would never heal/un-cripple back from zero with rest,
it just stacks, and keeps irradiating until removed. Obviously with 0 torso HP = death, a highly irradiated torso would be a big problem that could only be put off for so long.
Chemical showers (rare) would remove all radiation, as would rare, single use anti-rad drugs.
Bandages and medkits on the area would halt the radiation damage ticking down, although unlike bandages on bleeding - the damage would just be halted until you rest -
the counter would resume after you finish resting and you’d have to find a chem shower or just deal with the damage.
Bandages, kits, etc last 12 hours game time once applied to a hitbox - so perhaps like 12 minutes. Like EoB it’s an extremely slow healing process until you really make time to find a safe place to rest and regroup.
A few other ancillary ideas could be painkillers and local anesthetics to restore damaged limb movement/action temporarily, and anti-radiation meds to prevent or reduce radiation status.
Possibly bed rolls to increase base healing? Medical beds increase base heal even more?
Rare decontamination showers could be a way to flush large radiation doses from your system.
As it is IRL, regular clothes and combat armor would give some protection against rads, as chem suits would give some minor resistance to damage.
Making unique/rare armor with combinations of these traits is where it will really get more interesting.
I think it could be an interesting choice between going full combat and dealing with radiation/damage (mostly Operator and somewhat Meditech) or going with a more cautious Engineer class and mostly wearing chem suits and
using more traps along with lighter/energy weapons. Mixing and matching these modes of attack/defense could be fun.
S.C.I.L. WINDOW
(I haven't written a GDD for this yet but here's the general jist of it thus far)
"S.C.I.L." system based upon Strength, Constitution, Intelligence and Luck.
Strength - governs melee damage and serves as gateway for higher tier ranged weapons ("tag" stat for Combat class)
Constitution - governs HP gained per Level, irradiation resistance and HP + Rad recovery ("tag" stat for Mechanic class)
Intelligence - governs creation of items, medical and otherwise, also governs mechanical creation (traps, barriers drones etc) and serves as a gateway for using higher tiers of these items ("tag" stat for technician class)
Luck - the wildcard stat, governs to hit at higher or lower end, governs item drops at higher or lower end also affects critical hit + miss
NOTES
* At least one exception to this rule I think should be rare "healing potion" (stimpak) items of varying strength that insta-heal Ego, and can be used from the quickslot belt on the main UI.
** Perhaps resting could be subject to the same randomized wake up encounters that EoB had - you're more likely to be awoken by monsters if you say, rest out in the open or a corridor.
If you don't set barricades or traps etc etc. I think this could add a lot of flavour and def leans to the survival horror aspect I think. Like Resident Evil saferooms but you'd have to set up your own.
RANDOM MECHANICAL IDEAS
- I think items - having such tiny sprites - we could have a larger sprite version you get when you hover on an item to actually see wtf it looks like. So it brings up a little popup window on your cursor with a larger sprite pic and some details about the item, bonuses it bestows, etc.
- Weapon degradation and maintenance - do we want it?
- Might be nice to have animated overlays that just sit on top of the event window and loop anime of “weather” in the larger internal spaces, light rain for hydroponic domes, large drips and rivulets in the steams wet coolant passages
- Randomized extra flavour SFX might be really nice to have here and there - exploring dank corridors and hearing sudden random, distant clangs and shuffling. Muffled odd voices and cries etc.
- Hacking turrets and robots or security stations? A thing?
- As above, what about also stealing SS2’s great security camera mechanic? Where if you get spotted by security, hordes are sent out to find you… Too much? Possibly might be far better to have enemies be able to spot you or hear you and run off to tell others etc, then coming back with “friends”.
- For enemy attacks I think it’d be cool to have them lurch forward and appear fullscreen for melee attacks and you see a close up view, like the masked guy I painted, perhaps this just happens with a death blow for Ego though. Will want blood drip effects down the event window for this I imagine - although of course I assume we’d also have hit blood FX like this for combat all the time, too.
- Being able to create disposable drones to act like the Wizard’s Eye spell from DnD might be cool to have. Maybe even “scutters” that could go in a room for you and collect items? Maybe not lol.
- I think being able to construct barricades as an engineering skill would be a great mechanic to have. Then if, say, you know an enemy has gone off to bring a horde back on you, for instance, you could set up a trap or two and some barricades to prepare somewhat.
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