So, I’ve been playing the Steam release for a time now and I begin to appreciate where the developers are taking the game. Other than keeping up the good work, I think I have what might be a fairly easy to implement idea.
We now have a zone, maybe 20 meters from all shorelines, which is safe and everything else is all bad and very terrifying. It would be nice if there was a little more subtlety between no fear, whatsoever, and abject terror. So, why not add another 20 meter zone, which would extend out into the zee, in which zailors are just plain scared and not to the point of defecating themselves? Also an indicator light with traditional green, yellow and red colors to indicate your current terror status would be nice. I’d make it a plain round light and put it top dead center screen.
In general, I have lots of other ideas for this game and I sure hope it’s highly moddable, eventually. A strong modding community could go to town on this game and its unique concept. I think I envy the developers just a tad… this is brilliant stuff here, even if it’s more than a bit rough.
*Edited for punctuation.
edited by Jethro on 7/6/2014
[quote=Jethro]
We now have a zone, maybe 20 meters from all shorelines, which is safe and everything else is all bad and very terrifying. It would be nice if there was a little more subtlety between no fear, whatsoever, and abject terror.[/quote]
[color=#009900]We originally tried something similar, with multiple different levels of terror gain, rather than the current none/slow/fast. In practice it was just too fine-grained - it was impossible to understand and react to the different lighting levels meaningfully, even if you knew the internal mechanics of it. A safe-ish zone is a slightly different approach, and might be worth a visit. We’ll pop it in the feedback machine.[/color]
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> highly moddable, eventually.
[color=#009900]The format we’re using is quite mod-friendly. We’ve always been very chary of promising anything like this, and I’m still not promising it, but with SS as successful as it’s been, formal mod support is a step more likely. :-)[/color]
Ahh… then, you already have three phases of incurring the terror penalty. Perhaps, then, an indicator light on the ship, itself, which will clue the player in as to just how bad the terror is affecting the crew. As it is, it’s not obvious there are three degrees of loss. It strikes most players as being all or nothing.
Also, great news about modding! The game is truly brilliant and has the potential to do great things. I’m looking forward to whatever’s up your sleeve.
There is a terror indicator but maybe it isn’t obvious enough. In the top left of the screen there is a round gauge next to the terror bar. If there are no lights you are not gaining terror points; when amber pips start appearing and you get one terror point for each time the pips make a complete circle. If you can get into a safe zone in time the pips turn green and go in the opposite direction so when they reach the top you have prevented that terror point. The thing is if you leave a safe zone while the lights are green they turn amber again and you have less time to get to the next safe zone. More obviously once you are in a terror zone you get bright green lights on your ship, maybe if they were red they might indicate the danger more,obviously but I’m not sure about that… I like the green :)
edited by reveurciel on 7/6/2014
Also, I don’t see it mentioned here, but when you’re REALLY gaining terror fast the amber pips around the circle turn red. But this only happens if you turn your lights off in the dark, or if you’ve been horribly mangled by some sea beast and are limping back to port with 1/4 crew or less (I believe?). And since currently there’s no real advantage to leaving your lights off, you don’t see the red pips very often.
As an aside, if you turn your lights off, even in a well lit area, you still gain “normal” amber terror until you turn them back on. Turns out the zailors you hired are WIMPS. :p (This seems kind of absurd to me tbh. I still don’t think turning the lights off near shore should scare the crew.)
The zee is wide and dark. You want it to be narrow and bright. To have reduce terror you must have it either VERY bright (two sources of light) or bright AND narrow (one source of light and near land)