Blog Update 13: Some preliminary play has uncovered a slightly egregious oversight: Footprints kinda fuck things up for mafia. They can hardly go anywhere at night without getting easily traced during the day through townie 'investigate' use and then culled out through town votes. Not the substitute for clues that I was hoping for.

My solution? Well, I didn't spend too long thinking on it, but what I'll probably do is amend the Investigate ability a bit. Here's what I have in mind:

1. Investigate now uncovers footprints as units with the player color of the person who did the investigation. Not the person they originated from.
   
2. Investigate can be "chained" by reactivating the ability in sequence. You'll use up a lot of mana this way, but you'll cover ground semi-fast.
   
3. Players will know when they're placing footsteps with tiny footfall sounds. Moving slowly prevents footsteps from appearing, but takes up more time.
   
4. Multiple subsequent investigations on an uncovered set of footprints wipes them away. Investigate chaining allows this to be fairly quick, but it is still a slow and vulnerable process.
   

Draft #11.

I'll do as many as it takes.

Post has been edited 6 time(s), last time on Dec 6 2009, 10:44 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

is the footprint sound the one from counterstrike? =]

Immaterial. Any footprint sound will work.


Blog Update 14: Hmm. On second thought, I think I'm going to make the "stealth" walk an activate-able ability rather than a tedious movement pattern for the players to try to learn. I could also give an added benefit to using it, such as reducing virtual mana loss incurred from movement. Or making footfalls also give away position via. pings to nearby players, further justifying its use for stealth purposes. But all this is becoming very Snipers-ish, which I don't like.

I'll need to think on this. I have a feeling all of these measures are a bit short-sighted. They don't smell right. There's a proper answer lurking around here somewhere...

Okay.. So I just read your draft..

I haven't played the Mafia games of SEN, so I'm completely clueless...

But anyway.. Right off the bat, I think of "The Thing" ... So the pubbies and I will probably be basing my comparisons with that.... (not that you're aiming to please pubbies )

I wanna play this and try out

It's almost like The Thing, except (supposedly) more cerebral, dramatic, and structured. And turn based, in a sense.

You can read up on the actual game here, to get some perspective.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 7 2009, 4:38 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

Blog Update 15: Glad I took some time to think this through. I realize now that I probably won't need a mechanism to conceal/clean up footprints, really. Just so long as they can't be directly traced back to their owners, it would be just as well to expect players to employ movement strategies at night that obfuscate their footprint trails as it would to expect them to execute unusual movement patterns to prevent footsteps outright.

I think the real answer to this just comes down to getting moar game data, really.

Hey Tux,

So, i've wiki'd Mafia now, and I remember how it works now... at least in party games...

But what I don't get is how you're gonna make it so that the innocent wont' just hide in their houses during night and not get killed. Also, how're you gonna implement the Nurse/Angel and the Sheriff (that is.. if you are going to at all). And, If you're implementing the Sheriff and Nurse/Angel, what things can the innocent do during the day? ><"

Ouch. Sorry for asking a little question. You don't have to worry about me doing it again....ever

wtf?

• Houses can be broken into or even destroyed (including while people are in them).
  
• No special roles yet; that's for later version stuff.
  
• During the day: Innocents can sniff around for footprints, sleep (generally not a good idea, though), vote, recruit NPC houses, argue about who is/isn't mafia, or hunt people down who don't have law protection (or were stupid enough to fall asleep out in the open).
  

Depending on what data I collect from seeing this in action, there'll likely be lots of further changes/additions to this general formula.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Dec 8 2009, 3:53 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

PM me 30 minutes before you're gonna test on b.net

k.


Blag Update #fuckit: Right. So I got some RL matters to take care of at the moment, which are slowing me up. I've also spent a little time pondering what players around going to spend the bulk of their idling time doing, and I came the realization that capturing NPC houses won't do a heck of a lot to the gameplay on its own. So I've come up with an additional (and obvious, now that I think about it) idea for them: Added votes for the daytime b& vote. Every 3 houses you 'Recruit' is an extra vote for you during the day. Pretty swell deal, right? That'll give people something to do for a change.

I may need to balance that number, though. We'll see.


P.S. Because I'm feeling especially lazy I've reconsidered the workings of investigate a bit more, I've changed my mind about adding any sort of "chaining"... at least for now. This sounds like a tweak-ish sorta thing that I'd rather do when I have more game data to work with.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Dec 9 2009, 7:02 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.

lolblag: Sllooooowwwwwwww. That's the story of this whole project. I'm about to write off this iterative approach, "safe" as it is, as just a dumb idea. But maybe I'm just doing it wrong. Well whatever. It might still turn out. I'm definitely going to do things differently for subsequent projects, though.


Anyway. I didn't want to have to do it, but I think the time has become right to do one more iteration (lol) to address the Starcraft-ey end of things in this map. By that I mean the stuff players will really be doing instead of the heady game of wits they should be doing: Hide and seek, snipers, and all that shit. Well no matter. I have a few ideas for that, even.

Another thing I'm beginning to notice is this sleep meter concept isn't working out so well. I haven't yet gotten enough good data on how this element truly pans out in a real match, but the initial impression I'm getting - the one I always dread - is that players just aren't 'getting' it. Nevertheless, with my "Starcraft-ey" iteration, I have one final idea in store that should buffer out its bluntness a bit. If they don't 'get' it after this stage, that's tough dookie for them.



After that's done, screw it all. I'm going to open fucking beta. Sink or fucking swim. I can always try out other ideas.

srsly just release the beta already.

Shush.

Blogs n' shit: Wow. November 20: "Blog Update 6: Alright alright alright. I got it done finally. Fuck."

Kinda funny, really. Technically it's been done the whole time, but I just keep holding it back to mold its shape a bit more each time. Guess that's just how I work, really.


Well that's not the full story. Truth is, the final product here for its own value is immaterial to me. What I'm really trying to do is develop a process for making products in general (irrespective of whether it's a map, a piece of software, art, a functional tool... what have you -- a map just sounds more fun).


In the old days, I used to just settle with turning brain farts into maps. Nothing special. With Rush on up to Mechnogears, it was a sort of "stream of consciousness" process that led to some schizophrenic results that sorta danced around the vague, general goal I hoped I was aiming at. With Astrogears, it evolved into a more cohesive iterative process that got jumbled up with a shit-ton of reactionary decisions and (still) unfocused goals.

I think my main problem the entire time has been my lack of clear goals. Which is easier stated than understood, alas, since I've known this for a while. But really understanding goals is like having to already know the answer to a problem in order to solve it. It would seem the only right way to do it is enduring a laborious, chaotic, iterative process of trying on different sizes until something fits, and then seeing what you have to work with. And after enough iterations it's easy to get confused with what you think you want. "Oh, this shoe doesn't just slide right off like the others. I guess it must have been the one I wanted."

Bad analogy. My point is that I think one more ingredient is needed: Meta-goals. Goals for goals. An integrated philosophy, in other words. Which is my goal right now (heh). The only problem here is that this isn't the sort of thing I can discover by iterating my designs to find what's right with other people. Doing that will forever keep me bound in darkness to a linear, iterative path dependent upon others. That is certainly an option, and it does work, but it's a soulless, expensive one that's easy to get stuck with. And that's not what mastery is, besides.


This is, almost literally, a spiritual process of self discovery. Alright, maybe not that dramatic or special, but it's nearly true. The point is that having shaped this as best as it can be shaped (by reasonable means) with numerous iterations into the image I see with my goals, I can begin to understand what those goals really mean by finally seeing what they translate into. When I have to power to both meet and understand (and thus control) my goals, I can literally do anything! Including, in turn, iterating my goals themselves to mesh with the reality of other people to make products that they like.

But one must come before the other. So fuck you all until then.


See, this is the true definition of mastery as I see it. I'm sure some Zen Buddhist monk or something would have a better way of saying it better than I, so this is just my own clumsy way of putting it into words.







So in other news, I'm gonna try to have this done by Christmas. Happy Holidays, fuckers.

Post has been edited 8 time(s), last time on Dec 24 2009, 11:43 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

I don't get it.... Why not just write a list of what your map needs and put it all in there? That's what I do...

Because there's a difference between jumping through hoops, knowing which hoops to jump through, and, more importantly, knowing how to know. The latter is something I'm still wrestling with, personally.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Dec 26 2009, 7:09 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

Best of luck to you then, good sir. I see this issue goes far beyond the realm of mapping.

Why not just make a Mafia game that runs purely on EUD's and the whole thing runs on text. eh? ;D

Feel free.