On my ride back home on the bus (I never did get that car), I tried to figure out some better design for CGF. My previous attempts have been mostly in the "meh," category, but I feel like I had a sort of brain blast today.
The first major design change that I believe will be for the better is the transformation of the current fatigue system. Right now, you need to carefully track the health status of each cow girl, even though you are most likely repeating the same activities and have to switch out to rest after so much time. This makes the management system more tedious, rather than helpful. My proposal is changing the fatigue system to an "Action Point" system in which every day a cow girl's AP is restored to her respective maximum. You will be able to queue up as many activities as you can limited by a AP price per activity. The idea is, once your cow girl grows and becomes more skillful, certain tasks will reduce in AP cost and her total AP reserves will increase allowing for more activities. You will not run into the problem where your cow girl is suddenly too tired one day when she was fine the last day.
In order to take the best advantage of the AP system, I believe removing the shift system would be best. Right now it's forced with a training and work shift which have little distinction besides the available tasks. Throwing all the activities into a single pool for a day will solve issues such as at a glance planing and reduce the number of clicks to organize said day per cow.
These simplifications will allow me to build interfaces with greater utility and purpose. I would like to know if anyone has an particular feed back or additional opinions on these ideas. I'm planing in implementing these and other changes like it during my refactoring process.
As for a release, I'm working on it right now but don't feel comfortable on giving an ETA. My last estimations were just terrible. I'll try and update down here depending how tonight goes.
I Like most of these suggestions. I felt that the current system had that problem of too many clicks.
ReplyDeleteSometimes its better not giving an ETA. As long as there are progress updates made regularly I'll definitely be keeping close watch on this :)
ReplyDeletethis could end up being better than the things you were inspired by. I know it doesn't mean much but please don't put futas in your game, please don't. They're everywhere, but I understand you have honor paid requests,so.
ReplyDeleteHeh, I can understand your concern. Honestly, Futas don't bother me as much as they used to but I don't have any immediate plans to include them. But you are right, if some one wants them really, really bad, I might have to. We will see how things go.
DeleteI like this action point system a lot more. The shifts really never made in-game sense to me. the key will just be in balancing the AP values of a given task.
ReplyDeletethat systems has a lot of possibilities. lot more than the HP system. it will make add additional task/jobs easier too. if you need a beta tester look no further. (have beta tested lots of games both indie and professional[starcraft2, guild wars2, wow mop, and several others])
ReplyDeleteI thank you for your willingness to volunteer but I unfortunately don't have any particular tasks that need that sort of attention. You have given me an idea to build something that could use testing though. I'm thinking of a tool that can simulate the growth system I'm using in order to better tune the measurements to the dimensions. Basic input and output sort of thing. I'll think about this more and get back to you.
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