The Spatials V3 devblog 2016-03-28
Internal development notes, very slightly cleaned up and commented a week later.
TL;DR: mind system with feelings, new display for stock items, more usable design for the info panel, a new enemy/weird NPC, a test disease.
Another week, another addition to new V3 NPCs. We are still deciding where to feature the mutant. The late stage of a disease, a terrible enemy from space, or a particulary strange VIP event are all possibilities.
The big item for this week was the introduction of the Mind system. Mind will be another vital like Hunger or Sleep. It’s mean to model the mind state of visitors and officers, and it will be influenced by many factors. Getting too hungry, having enjoyed a shower recently, are examples of conditions that will affect negatively the mind status of your officers, in addition to any other effect they may have (for example, very low hunger slowly decreases the health vital).
Modifiers for the Mind vital are called feelings, and they will be displayed in their own panel, to make it more visible what is worrying and affecting your officers.
- mandatory vs optional/menu info panels
make a fixed height area in the info tool for short panels, always displayed
the rest is for panels that are choosen from a combo button list
- vitals: add support for optional soft interpolation
'value is still queried value
vital-delta must check if interpolated, then instead modify 'target if required
a low phase system must interpolate all requred vitals
must has-vitals-c, use vitals registry for iteration
- vital bar: display soft interpolation target marker
- proto mind system
registry for feelings, to be able to sum/iterate
overall mind is a vital of 100 points, default value is 50
feelings provide contributions, both +/-, to calc the target value
it order to make mind swings not too fast, the game interpolates over time towards the final value
these feelings are provided/removed by the vitals bars at different points in the vitals bars, and other events
other feelings can exist that don't come from the bars, like diseases
- add at least 2 feelings to sleep, hunger, thirst, hygiene, health
check conditions for bad vs worst feelings in health, mutually exclusive
very low hunger: slow health decrease
- add a negative feeling to the test disease
The info panel design has been enhanced to fit more information in a more usable way. Now info panels can declare themselves to be able to either fit in the limited space of the column header, or as needing more height, to occupy a slot in a panel selector.
In this example we can see the new Mind panel, and what’s worried the officer recently.
- display items over nonwalkable/slow tiles as hoovering at a certain height
and with another style to make it clear they are stock
make it smaller, with text on right, with a line pointing to the stock object
- replace vline in impassable item display with triangle pointing down
The display for stocked items inside objects has been improved. Instead of covering the object they are now displayed on top of them, with a unique style to make sure they cannot be mistaken for items on the floor.
- simple disease test
add disease registry, simple disease system based on chances
gastrodisaster: spawns vomit
The health system now supports diseases. As a first, simple test, “Gastrodisaster” has been implemented. It causes some damage and makes the patient spawn vomit puddles. It can be cured by a doctor in an hospital bed.