Fools Rush In - Part Fourteen
After completing the rough versions of the timeline events it's time to put them into place and play through the game. This is an important step, because even though we're nowhere near finished we need to start getting some feedback as early as possible to avoiding continuing down paths that aren't really going to lead us anywhere. In the Managing a Mod Project presentation I made a point of emphasising that you should 'Assess, Evaluate, Be Ruthless' for just this reason.
We're starting off inside the inner part of the bunker that I'm mentally referring to as the 'redoubt'. Here's Agnes, the Captain and boss.
Hmm, well, not much going on around here. Here's Lucy standing around outside. Hi Lucy.
And here's Anna standing guard at the front ramp. Hi Anna... oh, well, suit yourself.
It turns out that ten minutes is an awful long time when you don't have anything to do. It's all well and good having this timeline push the momentum of the story along, but the key to keeping the player entertained is giving her something to do. The secret is interactivity. We don't have an lot in the way of interactivity, at the moment and it shows painfully as we stand around waiting for the next event to trigger.
And here it is, the spider and the other two Angels, who have ostensibly been out on patrol. Here's a problem, the previous ten minutes of free time have enabled us to get up to the rise which obscurred the spawning of Sarah and Beth when we originally put the event together. Now we can see them pop into view. To fix this we're going to have revisit this event and start the girls much further back.
Spider dispatched, we can make our way back to the bunker. No signs of any pathing problems, the girls run straight in. Dandy.
Agnes joins us at the ramp. I've been playing with the scripts for the Angels in preparation for the next phase of work, so they have rudimentary orders at the moment. I think Agnes will debrief Beth and Sarah here at this point.
Dunno what we're going to do after that though. Here's Lucy come to join us.
Dum, de, dum.
*Taps foot impatiently* What are you looking at?
Hi Sarah. Nice hair.
Hello again, Anna. Nice, er, head.
Why Lucy, what big, um, actuators you have.
Captain Walker, the mean, moody type. Or maybe not. It's apparent that these two sections (let's call them 'Acts' to be subdivided into 'Scenes' later), before and after the spider event are going to need some serious attention. There's just nothing to do and once you've given the place a quick looksee, there's nothing new to discover.
This could explain why virtually every first-person action game in existence leads you through a sequence of perpetually changing geography. Moving from one place to another is a very basic form of interactivity and it's interaction that we lack.
Finally! Explosions! This'll be the artillery event kicking in then. Boom!
Ka-Booom! Wouldn't want to be out in that!
Here's some more basic scripting, the girls cowering in the redoubt.
Lucy cowers remarkably well considering the size of the model. I had to rearrange some of the furniture so she'd fit in, but it works well enough.
Here we are again, though. Listening to the explosions go off outside, but squatting in here for ten minutes isn't very interesting. I hope the dialogue can improve these dry sections because otherwise you'll all be switching it off before we get to the shooty bits.
The snipers get their curtain call.
Little camping git.
Right, let's take them out. We'll duck down past this big skeleton and put some terrain between us and the gunmen. See if we can't work our way around into assault rifle range without getting our buns shot off.
Softly, softly, catchee monkey...
Ka-pow! Campers never prosper!
Right, grabbed his sniper rifle. I've lost my bearings slightly and I can't remember where the other one is scripted to hide out so we'll take this Widowmaker back to the bunker, I think.
Ah, there he is...
Pop! Threat neutralised. We'll just mosy on out there and pick up the other sniper rifle.
...and we get back just in time to see the sandstorm start up.
...building into a right little squall. (S'alright, yeah, but I've SEEN it already...)
More sand.
Comes to something when even the bots look bored.
Did I set this storm to last for ten minutes or twenty, can you remember? If it was twenty then the surrounding Spooks will trigger before the storm goes away. Did you see something move out there?
Oh shit, here they come.
Good job the Angels can see in the storm, I'm having precious little luck hitting anything.
Ah, poor Beth. Guess we all won't make it home after all.
Lucy is off without a word. Maybe she's seething with an uncontrollable desire to wreak a terrible vengeance for her fallen comrade? Let's hope so.
Erk, she's got the flamethrower out.
Toasted! I wonder what the others are up to... can't see a damn thing...
Ah, here's Sarah.
Aw, crap, Lucy's bit the big one.
And now Sarah and I can't even see where the bullets are coming from. As soon as the bots went autonomous they went on the offensive. This meant leaving the shelter of the bunker and tearing off into the sandstorm. I frankly didn't have a clue what was happening where. We'll probably need to work on that quite a bit.
Who's left? Ah, here's Anna. Can't see Agnes anywhere though. Fall back to the bunker Anna, there's a good girl. Now then, what's next?
Aritomo, you swine, we meet at last.
Er, by 'swine' I actually meant...
Okay! Okay! God Mode, you know?
Aritomo is scripted to make for the bunker if I recall correctly.
Oops, another flamethrower. Must be in his default equipment, I forgot about that.
Vanquished! Take that, UberSpook!
Lots of his bodyguards still on the go, though. If I wasn't indestructible I'd be pretty destructed by now.
Ahhh, Anna. You must've caught a stray while I was dealing with Aritomo. Where's Agnes? She's the only one left.
The blue and green 'litter' indicates places where bots had trouble navigating and had to get a sneaky teleport when I wasn't looking. This might be the consequences of the mental pathnode network cropping up at last but on the other hand it might be that so many bots in the same area just got in each others way. In any case, it didn't exactly intefer with play, the failsafe teleport system worked perfectly to keep things going smoothly, so I'm not unduly concerned.
Here's Agnes. I guess it was too much for her too. Which is quite a concern, because I remember artificially inflating her hitpoints to a level I considered 'indestructible' as part of an experiment. Hrrrmph.
Now, then, where's my ride? Here it is.
...and coming in to land...
...and completely failing to trigger either the crew members or the door rotation...
...but managing to bring the 'Game Over' trigger with it. The End.
Well, some of that was fun. Some of it was like watching paint dry. Some of it was just plain broken, but at least we're starting to build a picture of how the game is going to play out in the end.
The most important point the test run illustrated was the woeful lack of opportunities for player interaction with the environment. Time is a funny thing that seems to contract or expand in a direct relationship with how much there is to do. It's one of those things that is blindingly obvious when you see it at work but something you wouldn't necessarily reason out of thin air. I mean, ten minutes is ten minutes, is it not? We need to make sure that for each scene there are enough options available for the player to pass the time between each event, something that's going to require a deal more creative thinking.
Let's stick to the plan and work through the next phase, the scripting for the Angels I've already experimented with a little. We'll look at that next time.