Achievements

I've mostly been working on some miscellaneous things lately. I've implemented attributes, resistances, modifiers, and I'm starting to work on items and inventory. There is nothing really groundbreaking to say about any of that, but I may highlight my implementation in the future. For this post I'll be talking about what I plan for my achievements system.

I mentioned in a previous post my idea of the library, and how it would fill up independent if your current adventure. It would persist through all of your characters. Adding to that feeling is my achievements system (tentative title).

If anybody reading this has played any games on the Xbox360 you will notice every game has achievements. These are things you can do during the course of gameplay that give you some gamer points. Gamer points are pooled from multiple games, and each game has a hard limit on how many gamer points they can give out. This is nice in several ways. First it gives you tangible evidence of how much of the game you've experienced. It gives you goals that are independent of just finishing the game. They may highlight parts of the game you didn't know existed, or never thought about. They encourage you to play the game in different ways, or on higher difficulty levels. All in all they cater to the completionist in everyone that plays video games.

The most obvious achievements are those that are story related, beat a specific boss, finish the game, etc. These can easily be transferred over to mirage. I can have achievements related to the library as well. Find a certain book and get an achievement. Unlock the entire bestiary, obtain 75% of the library's knowledge, or even discover the library itself (since it won't be accessible from the beginning), and get an achievement. The possibilities are endless!

This system will provide tangible evidence to both the casual and hardcore player that they are indeed accomplishing something within the game. One of the primary complaints against roguelikes are that they are too hard. Most people lose patience and can't seem to progress very far into the game. With an achievements system it would push those types of players to achieve many small intermediate goals, which would naturally lead them into some of the harder to obtain achievements. If a player knows that if they kill 5 more goblins, or finally manage to unlock the power of the cursed ring and be emotionally awarded for that accomplishment, they will be more excited to continue playing.

There are several things I have to watch out for however. I can't add too many achievements or it will become overwhelming. Also, I can't add some super complex achievements or people may become frustrated. It's also my opinion that I can't have any "hidden" achievements, because if nobody knows about an achievement they won't strive to get it.

I'd like to hear people's comments about this system, and what they think its implications will be upon the game. It's a system that can be easily added to any game, and is basically completely independent of any actual game related code. I'm excited to see how it ends up working out.

The Library

I've still been too wrapped up with real life stuff to be able to do any heavy development (my girlfriend just left for Australia!), but I've still been kicking around some design ideas in my head. These ideas are mostly feature related at this point as I'm still trying to flesh out what the initial game will encompass.

The subject of this blog post will focus upon a mechanic I like to call the Library. As in the real world the Library will be a source of knowledge. It will contain information on enemies, items, spells, locations, and other yet to be determined topics. These will be categorized into different books within the Library, and will only be available if they contain some information. There will also be a book recounting the history and legends of your ancestors (previously played in game characters). There will be hidden books throughout the world that you can return to the Library to gain some benefit towards character.

So far the Library sounds pretty straightforward, so you might be wondering if there is anything unique about it. There is! The Library will be persistent across all of your characters. Information uncovered on one character will be available to all future characters, and discovered books will remain discovered. To gain the bonuses from a previous character you'll have to locate their burial place (where they died) and pray for them. You will then become imbued with their knowledge.

This will serve a few functions. It will add a sense of history to the game, and provide the feeling that your characters actions persist through generations. It provides an intermediate goal to the game, because if you find your previously created character you will instantly become more powerful. It also provides goals to any character, since finding a book inside or at the end of dungeons can be a powerful motivator. Also, it provides a different mechanism for improving your character and a collecting mechanism that may attract some gamers. The collection mechanic will tie into my achievements system, which will be the subject of a future post.

There you have it. I haven't gone into any specifics one what the books will contain, mostly because that hasn't been decided yet. Some surprise is always good I guess. I'd be interested in knowing other's thoughts on this game mechanic, and any additions people might find interesting.