Tutorial

I started with the tutorial. The tutorial is the first thing the user sees of a game, so it's very important to do it well. It has to get the player hyped for the game while still conveying all information the user needs.

It is also a baptism of fire for the scripting engine, because tutorials are always heavily scripted. And bugs will not be forgiven, because a buggy tutorial will alienate many players before they even took a look at the real game.

I created the NPC Firyafoni as a framing device for the tutorial . Her name is an anagram for "Info Fairy" which is a pretty accurate description of her. I plan to use this character whenever I need to give some meta-gaming information to the player.

Fairies are creatures which are capable of existing in many places at the same time by creating clones of them self in remote places. When the fairy doesn't concentrate on a clone, it disappears, but most fairies are capable of handling dozens of clones at the same time. All clones of them form a hive-mind - everything one clone of them sees or feels is also noticed by all others. The individual clones are capable of interacting with other creatures normally. It is, however, impossible for the clones to interact with each other. When two clones of a fairy perceive each other, it's a very unsettling experience for the fairy, which leads to one of the clones disappearing. For that reason, fairies are also afraid of mirrors.

Equip defense

I haven't done any development for a while (curse you, Kerbal Space Program), but today I again did something: I implemented equipment defense. Each piece of equipment can now have a defense value. Optionally, it can also have a different defense value against specific elements. When it hasn't got a specific value against an attack, the general defense value is used.

When an attack hits a player, each piece of equipment removes a random amount of damage which is between 0 and the applicable defense value.