Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Category: kudos

“You think with a financial statement like this you can have the duck? “

I’m working on the code for restaurants yesterday and today, specifically how you get into the hip and trendy or expensive ones. This is code from Kudos 1, but I’ll be improving on it.

Great timing then, that last night ‘L.A Story‘ was on TV, which was the inspiration for the idea of hip restaurants in the first game. The best scene in the film is when Steve Martin is trying to book a table at a hip Hollywood restaurant called L’Idiot (pronounced ‘Lidio’). The evil French waiter (played by patrick stewart) is interrogating him to see whether he is the sort of person he wants in his restaurant. He scoffs at Steve Martins job (TV weatherman) and demands to know his bank records, the value of his house and where he takes his holidays, before eventually conceding he can have a table in eight weeks time as long as he only orders the chicken and not the duck.

Even better, is the scene later in the film where someone with an upper class English accent (Richard E Grant) books a table no problem with a 2 minute call. I love that :D

Kudos always had lots of factors that determine if you get to eat at the best places, but I’m really going to town this time. For maximum results, you will need to be a highly cultured french-speaking food critic with bags of cash, a smart suit and designer sunglasses :D. Hey it’s not normal game-fare, but we have slain enough dragons, we need games where the end-level boss is a pompous waiter now.

Blog crash and mega-playthrough

I’ve had database issues on my server which thankfully should now be sorted, and I won’t have to gnaw off my own leg in frenzied frustration every time I try to make a new blog entry now. It was something to do with SQL processing limits or some such. We never used to have these problems with text editors, grumble grumble.

Today, after doing a small bit of classic ‘work’ I did a very long play-through of the game (Kudos 2). The game was originally design to last 10 years, like the original. (With the option possibly to keep playing..maybe..not sure).

The thing is, having done a four year playthrough this afternoon, I’m thinking that’s possibly long enough. One of the things I’m concerned about is the long-term playability and re-playability of the game. The last thing I want is for the game to feel like a chore towards the end. I’ve already made enough changes and design tweaks to it that this is far less of a concern than it was for Kudos 1, but I’m still seriously considering changing it to be five years instead. The thing is, five years sounds weird.  The other option is to do ten years, and double the rate at which time goes by, basically by skipping every other month. Would that seem weird? Or I could change months every 3 days instead of every seven. Decisions…decisions…

BTW I got The Starship Tycoon data off that old disk. i’m going to attempt to tidy up a bit each weekend then release it one day.

New Sounds, New data… how big a deal?

I bought some new stock sounds for Kudos 2 today to replace some of the sounds that are still in there from the original game. I’m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I can imagine some people who own Kudos 1 will be annoyed if (for example) they hear the same sneeze sound from the first game. After all, you have paid for a new game right? But on the other hand, does it *really* matter? There is a lot of new content and art and features in the new game, but to be honest, the sound of someone sneezing is the sound of someone sneezing. Does it really matter? Did they change the MP40 gun sound between COD 2 and COD 1? I have no idea, and doubt I would care or notice, but obviously I want my customers to be happy.

Clearly
its cheaper and easier and quicker to leave in old sounds (and text where applicable) rather than pointlessly redoing things for the sake of it. I’d rather spend that time and money adding new stuff like the stand up comedy night, new books, new jobs and new sounds etc. I’m interested to know what people think, especially if you bought Kudos 1. Would recognizing some sounds and text annoy you?

Share dealing and Birthdays

So I took all the money that remained from my insane specualtion on marks And Spencers, and this mronin hrough the whole lot on the commodities market ‘Short Lead’, which as it stands is up 6% today (although it was already up 4 when I bought).

Charts:

http://www.selftrade.co.uk/quote.php?symbole=1uSLEA.L

It has to be a better bet than M&S, who amazingly dropped AGAIN today.

perhaps I better stick to trying to make a living from games? Today I have got some of the ‘year-end-summary’ screen looking nicer. This used to be a bit bland, but now it is effectively your birthday party, and even pleases or depresses you depending on how many guests show up. It’s like a once-yearly reality check for you to see what your friends think of you :D

This afternoon I plan a long playtest again.

BTW WordPress is causing me grief. very buggy. grrrrrrrr.

Balancing middle and late game code

I’ve been working on the balance of the game today. Stuff like how easily you put on weight, how much money you earn etc. I’ve made some big changes and hopefully tomorrows playthroughs will show an improvement in the long term balance.

The problem with testing a simulation game is it gets too easy to just play it the way *you* play those games. I have quite a specific style of management game playing. I tend to eventually gravitate to a single variable (like population size in sim city, or profits in Vegas:MIB, and almost ignore other aspects of the game as I zone out on trying to maximise that variable. When I play kudos, I tend to be very career-focused, so I need to ensure I don’t polish and tweak that area of the game to the exclusion of other areas. I also tend to never finish games, but keep restarting with different tactics, so the middle and late games can get a bit repetitive. I’m aware of this tendency, and keen to fix it this time around.

One of the ways I hope to do this is by unlocking content as the game plays. The mechanic for this is social events organised by you, the more you do, the more options you unlock. If you play the game naturally, this means you are still unlocking some new options after an hour or more of play, so the game stays fresh all that time at least. By the time the game is finished I hope there to be enough content and variety that the game stays fresh throughout all ten years.