Hey all!
We're at the point in the game development now where I'm trying to allow the player to choose a character to play as.
This really won't do anything yet because the game has no content yet
but I figure it's getting to the time to decide:
What stats can a character have?
What do the stats actually do?
How do the different dinos compare when it comes to stats?
There are a couple of things to consider when designing character stats, the most inportant being:
Avoid stats that players will want to max out just because it makes the game less annoying when it's higher.
A good example of that would be something found in so many games: the ability to use a temporary powerup on yourself. While I don't know if such a thing will exist in this game, I do know that stats that increase the amount of time that such an powerup is active is very annoying and people will want to max it out just so they don't have to bother using the powerup as often.
That's the sort of feeling I want to avoid.
How does this relate to our game? Eating and stamina. Our game will have a food and stamina system that works like this:
A player has X points of Stamina, say, 100 for example, when they create their character. Stamina is used up when performing certain abilities but it also runs out over time. The lower the stamina of the player, the poorer the player's abilities perform. Stamina is recovered by eating. After eating, the stamina will NOT drop over time until a certain amount of time has passed. Stamina will still be consumed when using abilities that require it to be consumed but it won't drop on its own until a certain amount of time after eating. This amount of time hasn't been decided on yet.
What we should probably avoid are stats that increase this length of time. Everybody will want to max out this stat because it means we won't have to 'bother' eating as often. Therefore I say, we just give everyone the maximum of this 'stat' to begin with and save them the trouble
(in other words, don't make it a stat at all, but a hardcoded number that won't change unless we come up with a really good reason to change it).
Anywho, if anyone has ideas for stats, please feel free to post em up here!
Here's what I have in mind so far:
Strength:Strength affects the following aspects of the game, among others we may come up with:
-The amount of damage you do to an enemy.
-The maximum weight of object(s) you can push, carry, etc. Some larger objects can be carried or moved by getting a team together with enough total strength.
-How long you can carry an item before it costs you stamina and how heavy an item you can carry without losing any additional stamina.
Resilience:-Increases your resistance to extreme temperatures, which may cost you stamina and even render some areas of the world impassable.
-Increases the rate at which you gain Stamina when you level up.
-Decreases your chance of getting injured when trying to destroy or move (by charging into it) a hard, heavy object.
-Increases the maximum distance you can fall before taking damage.
Agility:-Slightly reduces how much speed you lose when climbing a slope.
-Increases the maximum slope you are able to climb without sliding down.
-Increases the maximum distance you can fall before taking damage.
-Slightly increases the rate at which you gain Stamina when you level up.
-Improves the dino's ability to stealth and sneak around.
-Increases your chance to dodge an attack while in combat.
Health Points (HP):When your character reaches 0 HP, you are dead. That simple.
What happens when you die?
I'm thinking you could wake up from a dream, back at your nest, perhaps losing some experience points.
You can lose HP from combat, falling too far, etc. Your HP will steadily drop as long as your character is at 0 Stamina.
Stamina:Stamina is your fuel, basically. It functions like this:
at 100% stamina, your character functions normally and abilities work to their full potential. As your stamina drops below certain thresholds (determined by your "Toughness" stat), your abilities and skills become less effective and your movement speed will start to drop. At the lowest levels of stamina, you will be unable to sprint, lose the use some other abilities and even begin to lose HP gradually once it hits 0.
Stamina can be regained by eating.
Toughness:Toughness is a stat with one major purpose: to make your character more able to function in low-stamina situations. The higher your Toughness stat, the lower the thresholds are before your skills start becoming ineffective.
-Increases the rate at which you gain HP when you level up.
Size:Size has an effect on some functions in the game. For example, a small dino cannot assist in moving a very large boulder (to prevent a huge team of flyers massing up enough strength value to do so). Also, there will be cases where players will be able to rescue others from dangerous or sticky situations. In some situations, small dinos will be physically unable to save the large dinos. Other roles of this stat will come into play, I'm sure.
-Smaller dinos lose more speed when climbing hills than larger dinos.
Abilities Swimming:This affects how fast your character is able to swim both on top of the water and underwater. Anyone with 0 swimming is completely unable to swim and will lose HP, as well as some physical control, if they enter water too deep to wade in.
