Callaxes
Arbiter
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2007
- Messages
- 1,676
An exclusive detective computer game where you hardly ever fight, where you don't have an Intelligence stat, but rather half a dozen different sub divisions of intellect.
I thinking on a mixture between a RPG and a strategy game where you're the head of a team of 10+ investigators. These guys can handle the grinding elements of the job, like digging up info on the victim, asking questions, tracing the stolen car the killer got away with or putting a surveillance on a suspect.
Your guy on the other hand has the job of putting everything together and analyzing the clues and events. Here's the first problem.
On one hand you can make everything stat-based and let the detective figure things out by himself. If you're team collects the info, then there's little input from the player other then waiting for the PC to figure things out. If the player is given the task to collect the info, you know just so he'd have something to do, then you'd just end up grinding in a scavenger hunt.
On the other hand you can allow the player to have a significant input on the reconstruction of the crime and let him take the right course of action. The problem here is that you'd have to design rather simple cases to solve, rather then come up with really original and hard nuts to crack, the kind that would end up on the Baker street irregulars.
Either way you end up with more of a Adventure game then a RPG, which would be a wasted effort. The detective work should be handled the same way combat is handled in RPGs. In combat we have a set of strategical options that are limited by our alter egos abilities. So first we define those abilities and limits:
1. There are no physical stats, you don't need them.
2. The two main stats that matter the most are Observation and Analysis
3. Observation determines how good you are at noticing the layer of dust in the room, the slight smell of dye in someones hair, the tone of voice of a witness or the exact personality of a person just by looking at him. Low Observation will notice the smudge of mud on persons shoes, a high observation will tell you from which part of the city the person was walking today by the color of the mud.
4. Analysis determines how you good you are at creating links between the facts. The better you are, the further you can connect people with events.
i.e. A detective with low Analysis will be able to connect a possible suspect with the murder weapon your team found, the fact that he is left handed and the shot that killed the victim was from such an angle that it would be difficult to achieve using the right arm and of course that his alibi is bullsiht. But you have to get more evidence to be able to convict him and sometimes your guy might be wrong.
A detective with high Analysis will connect the gunman with the victim, but he will also tie him with a robbery that happened 16 years ago which involved the same kind of gun caliber, a quarrel that might have ensued between him and the victims brother, money they owed to a Swedish mob boss, a receipt for 12 kilos of ice bags that he planned on using to freeze the body and even a third person that was present at the shooting.
Okay now the strategy part. Eh... I don't really know. The first thing that springs to mind is selecting your actions from a list like in a dialog, but again it feels like an Adventure game. Of course, there should be moments like this, were you choose from a list of options. For example, you're reconstructing in your mind the crime that took place:
He came through the door at 12:45, he saw the victim a started having arguing over the money.
1. They blame each other.
2. The victim offers to pay up and ask for just a few more days.
3. They put together a plan to kill the victims wife and blame it on someone else.
4. There is a third man in the room who provokes the killer.
Each of these options lead to different results in the reconstruction, sometimes just one is correct, sometimes more are. If you pick the wrong option then things won't add up in the end so you'll eventually get the right on. However, new things might appear so the wrong option might turn out the be the right one in time.
The whole reconstruction of events should be the result of hard work, good team management, hours (in an abstract way) of research and going through the facts. You'll have the mental dialog with yourself over the reconstruction atleast 14 times before you solve the case.
Except for that, I don't know how to create an emergent gameplay with lite strategic elements that leave it up to the player to use them in his way and multiple solutions for the same goal.
The second problem would be to procedurally generate these crimes so that the player would not rely on memory to cheat.
Any ideas?
I thinking on a mixture between a RPG and a strategy game where you're the head of a team of 10+ investigators. These guys can handle the grinding elements of the job, like digging up info on the victim, asking questions, tracing the stolen car the killer got away with or putting a surveillance on a suspect.
Your guy on the other hand has the job of putting everything together and analyzing the clues and events. Here's the first problem.
On one hand you can make everything stat-based and let the detective figure things out by himself. If you're team collects the info, then there's little input from the player other then waiting for the PC to figure things out. If the player is given the task to collect the info, you know just so he'd have something to do, then you'd just end up grinding in a scavenger hunt.
On the other hand you can allow the player to have a significant input on the reconstruction of the crime and let him take the right course of action. The problem here is that you'd have to design rather simple cases to solve, rather then come up with really original and hard nuts to crack, the kind that would end up on the Baker street irregulars.
Either way you end up with more of a Adventure game then a RPG, which would be a wasted effort. The detective work should be handled the same way combat is handled in RPGs. In combat we have a set of strategical options that are limited by our alter egos abilities. So first we define those abilities and limits:
1. There are no physical stats, you don't need them.
2. The two main stats that matter the most are Observation and Analysis
3. Observation determines how good you are at noticing the layer of dust in the room, the slight smell of dye in someones hair, the tone of voice of a witness or the exact personality of a person just by looking at him. Low Observation will notice the smudge of mud on persons shoes, a high observation will tell you from which part of the city the person was walking today by the color of the mud.
4. Analysis determines how you good you are at creating links between the facts. The better you are, the further you can connect people with events.
i.e. A detective with low Analysis will be able to connect a possible suspect with the murder weapon your team found, the fact that he is left handed and the shot that killed the victim was from such an angle that it would be difficult to achieve using the right arm and of course that his alibi is bullsiht. But you have to get more evidence to be able to convict him and sometimes your guy might be wrong.
A detective with high Analysis will connect the gunman with the victim, but he will also tie him with a robbery that happened 16 years ago which involved the same kind of gun caliber, a quarrel that might have ensued between him and the victims brother, money they owed to a Swedish mob boss, a receipt for 12 kilos of ice bags that he planned on using to freeze the body and even a third person that was present at the shooting.
Okay now the strategy part. Eh... I don't really know. The first thing that springs to mind is selecting your actions from a list like in a dialog, but again it feels like an Adventure game. Of course, there should be moments like this, were you choose from a list of options. For example, you're reconstructing in your mind the crime that took place:
He came through the door at 12:45, he saw the victim a started having arguing over the money.
1. They blame each other.
2. The victim offers to pay up and ask for just a few more days.
3. They put together a plan to kill the victims wife and blame it on someone else.
4. There is a third man in the room who provokes the killer.
Each of these options lead to different results in the reconstruction, sometimes just one is correct, sometimes more are. If you pick the wrong option then things won't add up in the end so you'll eventually get the right on. However, new things might appear so the wrong option might turn out the be the right one in time.
The whole reconstruction of events should be the result of hard work, good team management, hours (in an abstract way) of research and going through the facts. You'll have the mental dialog with yourself over the reconstruction atleast 14 times before you solve the case.
Except for that, I don't know how to create an emergent gameplay with lite strategic elements that leave it up to the player to use them in his way and multiple solutions for the same goal.
The second problem would be to procedurally generate these crimes so that the player would not rely on memory to cheat.
Any ideas?
