Hacking Based "Combat"
Mission: Find a combat replacement that fits the space/hacking theme I chose.
Following one of the main goals, this game is meant to be the starting point of a bigger project that
would contain various different games in the future.
This defined the space theme and also added the hacking component. These constraints helped
create a different type of combat system where the
player needs to hack the computers in order to defeat them.
Strategy:
In this combat system each computer has a level of vulnerability (replacing an enemy's health) and a defense (that could be a firewall of some sort).
The player attacks with hacking attempts using a system that is lightly base in Dungeons & Dragons:
- Each computer has a defense attribute (armor class) and a total vulnerability (hit points)
- The player has an attack chance that is defined by a sort of die roll. Random number between 1 and 20.
- If the attack chance is higher than the enemy computer's defense attribute, the attack hits.
- If the attack hits, the player rolls their attack die, choosing a random number between the parameters minimum attack and maximum attack (defined
by the player's current hacking level).
- The randomly chosen number is then taken from the computer's vulnerability.
- Repeat all steps until the computer's vulnerability reaches 0.
Each victory gives the player hacking experience and a reward. There are various types of computers with different rewards.
- Code cracking computers: when defeated grant the player a code that opens doors in the level.
- Beneficial computers: when defeated always give the player an upgrade or positive effect.
- Negative computers: when defeated always give the player a downgrade or negative effect.
- Random computers: when defeated can grant a positive or negative effect chosen at random.
- All computers reward "hacking experience" when defeated.
Code Locked Doors
Mission: How to link the hacking mechanic with the level navigation?
Create a navigation system that fits the main mechanic: hacking.
Strategy:
To add further meaning to the hacking mechanic, I decided to link the level navigation to the hacking rewards.
Each room has a defined amount of doors leading to other rooms to explore. Each room is linked to the next via a hallway and a code locked door.
In order to explore all the rooms, the player needs to crack all the codes available.
Just like in the original Rogue, exploring all the available rooms is not a requirement to find the elevator that takes you to the next floor.
However, it is expected that the player feels the curiosity to uncover all the darkened rooms before leaving the floor.
The fact that computers were spawned at random rooms as part of the procedural generation of each floor, represented a technical
implementation challenge that borrowed some of its complexity from Operations Research when we faced the problem of "computer A" being spawned in a room
that could only be reached by opening doors requiring the very same code that "computer A" rewarded. See more in the Technical Achievements section.
Finite Resources
Mission: Define a resource the player has to care for and that can trigger a game over.
Given that the combat system designed prevented the enemies from taking health from the player, a new finite resource had to be added.
Strategy:
Decode() is about an astronaut fulfilling a special mission: activating an important computer at the deepest
section of a heavily damaged Spaceship.
Computers are passive and waiting to be hacked, however the game needs a defeat condition.
So the space suit autonomy was added.
I had recently finished playing the awesome game Outer Wilds, so the survival characteristics of
space travel were very fresh in my memory. And my creativity took advantage of it.
The player has a finite amount of suit autonomy. If they run out of it, they die.
Therefore, the goal goes from:
- Reach the deepest room in the spaceship and activate the last computer.
- to...
- Reach the deepest room in the spaceship and activate the last computer before running out of autonomy.
Autonomy lowers every step the character takes, every time a hacking attack misses and as part of the negative rewards a computer can give.
Total autonomy increases every time the player increases their hacking experience level.
Adding this mechanic gives the game a little touch of strategy as it prevents the player from crazily hacking all and every computer they find. They need to start
being conscious about their autonomy and try to avoid negative effects or unnecessary interactions.
They also need to search for the most efficient route to avoid unnecessary steps.
Difficulty Progression
Mission: Create a progression system using the elements already designed.
How to make the higher floors more and more challenging?
Strategy:
To increase difficulty on the higher floors the following elements were tuned accordingly:
- Amount of codes needed to explore all the rooms
- Defense and total vulnerability for computers that contained the more advanced codes
Thought process behind these choice:
- A more defensive and less vulnerable computer meant that the player would require more turns to defeat it, spending more autonomy in each encounter.
- Requiring more colors to explore the whole floor meant that the player would be forced to hack more
computers (trigger the previous point) but also gave a higher chance for the elevator to be more hidden than usual.
These changes were play tested to ensure that, even though the player would arrive at the higher floors with a higher level and therefore more
total autonomy, the computers should represent a challenge anyway.
This is a topic that could not be deeply explored within the Game Jam's time frame so more balancing and tuning is definitely needed.
