paul
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this is kinda a personal thing but I always enjoy a game a lot more when you can
customise the appearance of your character e.g build, eye colour, hair colour ,skin colour ,face features .
The April update will include the ability to select a name of your own choosing.
I personally generally like to leave a physical description of the player character as vague as possible, so that players are free to imagine themselves however they’d like. However, if people would like to see more of those kinds of choices included during the intro segment, I don’t have a problem with including them. What do people think about that?
I don’t really care either way. Choosing your own name would be nice, but customising a character doesn’t really do anything later in the game, when you mostly forget about your appearence.
I’m very interested in the development of this game as I have tried (unsucessfully) to write western stories in the past. I did a great deal of research, so I thought I might offer some unsolicited technical/historical advice that you can feel free to ignore if it doesn’t serve your game.
One thing I noticed was the transportation options. Most historical writers don’t spend a lot of time describing the animals people used for transportation at the time, so there are some common misconceptions.
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It would be extremely difficult for anyone to travel huge distances like this with only a single horse. At minimum you would need one horse to ride and a mule or pack horse to carry your food and equipment. For example, you allow players to buy a single horse and still carry two hundred pounds of food.
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In addition to you own food you need to bring fodder for your animals. Grazing alone is not a reliable way to feed a 900 lb animal on the move. Otherwise you will have to stop constantly to let your animals feed. (this is something you can probably ignore as it won’t serve your game)
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Almost no one rides “uncut” stallions for long periods of time, as they can be very tempermental and difficult to control. You would probably want a mare, or even better a gelding (castrated male) for your primary riding animal.
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A thoroughbred horse is bred for speed and accelleration, not endurance. They would probably make a poor choice for riding long distances over rough ground. Similarly, a draft horse is immensely strong, but also not really bred for long distance travel.
@Vermander Thank you very much for the information! I may edit some of the choices available accordingly in order to be more accurate. This is very, very helpful.
Which horse did you buy which allowed you to carry 200 pounds of food? That’s definitely a bug. A character who relies on a horse alone shouldn’t be able to buy any food other than the 25 pounds of emergency rations. Has anyone else been able to buy the 200 or 300 pound pack of food without buying a wagon?
The main detriment of opting for a horse over a wagon is supposed to be that you can’t carry anywhere near the same amount of equipment and supplies as someone with a wagon. I may tweak this to be more obvious, as many pieces of equipment still register as weighing zero pounds. Ideally the game will be possible to complete without a wagon, but much more challenging, particularly for those character backgrounds without skills suited to living off the land.
I also found the choice of guns kind of strange.
Most of the guns available at the time would be either muzzle or breech loading percusion rifles. A little over a decade later the Civil War would be fought with both sides using primarily muzzle loading rifles. You may also want to differentiate between firearms that can be used for hunting (rifles and shotguns) vs ones that can be used only for self defense (pistols, including revolvers). It would be extremely difficult to hunt with a cap and ball revolver.
I might suggest the following options:
- an old smooth bore musket (medium reload speed, medium range, poor accuracy)
- a breech loading rifle (slow reload speed, long range, good accuracy)
- a shotgun (very powerful, slow reload, short range only)
- a Walker Colt (fast reload (six shots in a row), short range, poor accuracy)
Not sure which would be the most expensive, possibly the Colt?
Also, have you considered melee weapons? A lot of the early pioneers would carry a bowie knife or hatchet and even swords in a few cases.
As I said, feel free to ignore my comments, I know the internet is full of “armchair experts”. You’re the one doing the actual work here.
People always make shotguns short range weapons, but they’re guns. They aren’t short range weapons. The only time a shotgun could be considered that is if you’re trying to kill a large creature quickly with birdshot. Which you shouldn’t be doing anyway. Birdshot is for birds. Otherwise you should be using slugs.
That’s true for modern shotguns, but I’m not sure about a circa 1849 “scattergun”. Were slugs widely used in shotguns of that era? and if so wouldn’t it basically be the same as a smoothbore musket for gameplay purposes?
I think game designers use “short range” as a handicap for shotguns because otherwise they would be too powerful statwise.
@Vermander No need to apologize for being an “armchair expert”. I find this kind of thing very helpful, and I’m definitely going to incorporate some of your suggestions. I may well tweak the options available based on this kind of feedback. It’s exactly the reason I put the demo up even though it’s in such an early stage of development.
Let me give a little explanation as to why the available weapons work as they do. First off, one can purchase hunting and skinning knives, which includes a bowie knife which can be used as a weapon. There’s actually already a situation in the demo where you can possibly employ the knife in this manner, though it probably isn’t one most people will run into in their first playthrough.
Beyond that, guns within the game basically fall into two categories for gameplay purposes: guns used for hunting (the rifles) and guns used for personal defense (the revolvers). A Colt won’t be very practical for hunting, and it won’t be very easy to unsling and prepare a musket in time to wade into a saloon brawl. So, all options requiring a gun just check to see if you have a gun of the appropriate type. Buying a higher quality version of the gun gives you a small boost to your Firearms attribute.
I thought about including shotguns, but it seemed like it would be largely redundant with the function that hunting rifles serve in the game. I may add them back in as an alternative in the hunting guns category.
One last suggestion. I tried playing as a war vet and it mentioned that I recieved the Purple Heart. I’m pretty sure the modern version of the Purple Heart, given to troops who are wounded in action, is a 20th century creation. George Washington gave out another award called the Purple Heart for extraordinary achievement during the American Revolution, but I think that award ceased to exist following the end of the war.
Any veterans who read this feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
I promised an update in April, and I will deliver. Expect one by the end of the day.
Okay, this update may happen a little while after midnight, I am still working out a couple bugs. But it will be within hours.
The April update is up. This update includes the following:
*The redundant ‘title message’ is removed from the intro.
*You can now enter any name you like for your pioneer.
*The background choices and their starting stats have been tweaked for better balance.
*The church scene in Plainview is now fully implemented.
*The saloon scene and eating house scenes are now more fleshed out, with more choices available and more variation in results depending upon your stats.
*Various bugs fixed, including a persistent bug with the inventory system.
One result of this update is that every single attribute now has some influence on success or failure in an available choice, meaning every background has some advantage over the others. Hopefully this makes each one feel more unique even in the small slice of the game available thus far.
I was hoping to complete the Illinois segment of the game with this update, but I just didn’t have time this month. Moving took up a lot of my time. I should have more time to work on the game in May, and I plan to release an update by the end of the month which will include Illinois, as well as an extra scene for those who choose not to visit Plainview.
As always, comments, criticisms, and bug reports are welcome.
Ummm…I did the reverend’s path, and I went to church…where it said, “New Hollister’s reverend is new and ambitious, and has plans for expanding the town’s admittedly tiny church.” …Is this the guy who replaced me, or…
An error popped up when I was the merchant, male, and selected Benjamin as my name
line 307: It is illegal to fall out of a *choice statement; you must *goto or *finish before the end of the indented block
