Designer Notes – Game Mechanics

After one year of Planetrism development we can say that the preliminary phase is over. During that time we designed and implemented individual parts of game – environment, interactions, locomotion, visual style, parts of core mechanics. We tried and tested various solutions, accepted some and discarded others.

Although the core game play was not implemented during that time (in fact, it would have been impossible), it does not mean that there was no plan for it. On the contrary, in the beginning of the project we had a very clear plan and vision for this game. We knew what kind of features there would be, and what are the goals in game. Due to their complex nature and the infancy of Virtual Reality technology, you just have to do lots of groundwork before you can start to implement core game play.

All this time we kept that big picture in mind while developing and testing individual components. Now we are ready to continue with implementation of core gameplay.

Multigenre

Most important thing to understand about Planetrism as a game, is the multigenre nature of it. One just cannot put Planetrism into one tightly defined category, because as a game Planetrism is intended to be many things, just like things are in real life. This idea stems from our vision of Virtual Reality game, a game where you are present as individual, where you do and experience things in first person, but also manage things which are bigger that you. In this case you manage the everyday activities of whole colony. So, you can say that Planetrism is

• A first person experience and adventure game. Everything you do in Planetrism is experience through your player character. You are present as an individual, instead of “just looking things from the orbit”. You are on the planet ground and see everything through characters eyes, and also interact with everything in first person.
• A building game. One of the player goals is to build a working and prosperous colony. Player can do all building by himself or use robots and and non-player characters as additional workforce.
• A management game. Since the player assumes the role of a leader in the colony, it is his responsibility to organize and manage everything. He has to ensure that things run smoothly and efficiently, that there are enough resources, food, energy, equipment, machines and information.
• An exploration game. You are living on an unexplored planet, and in order to ensure your survival and prosperity there, you have to collect as much information about the planet as possible. Information is one of the key resources in this game.
• A role-playing game. Planetrism has a deep background and world history, and every character is detailed in RPG style. Both player character and NPCs have detailed traits and skills, and it is possible to advance in skills possessed or acquire new skills. Skills affect whether player or NPC succeeds in such tasks where outcome would be uncertain. NPCs have personalities, and sometimes player has to think carefully who is best suited for certain task, who can be teamed up with whom and how to keep the morale high.

Our main vision is to provide a game experience, that provides many angles to the life as a colonist on an exoplanets – hardship, dangers, survival, and also wonders, adventure and a triumphant feeling when player sees that all his planning, advancement, management and risk taking bears fruit. In many ways this experience resembles the life of frontier pioneers, who have to take matters into their own hands but who also have to be able to trust each other.

As a complex multigenre game, the planning of game mechanics was very important. There are so many things in this game, that there has to be integrity and coherence in the game system. As a result, the game mechanics of Planetrism resemble the game systems that are familiar from tabletop RPGs. It provides mechanics for character traits and skills, task resolution, resource building and transformation, environment events, weather etc. Biggest difference is, that in video game you naturally have to make things more compact and also more general in their nature.

One could think that all the intricacies of the game system described below are unnecessary or too complex. We however think that they are the bread and salt of Planetrism. All the little details in the game system bring realism into the game. They limit the actions just like in real life, and force the player to think his actions or plan more carefully every endeavour. Some actions also take longer time, and player does not get anything for free – he really has to work for every advancement.

Character

In Planetrism every character, both player and non-player, is more than just health and armor score. Every character has several basic attributes that describe both physical, mental and spiritual prowess. They are used as base scores to calculate certain transient scores like health and energy capacities, effects of thirst and hunger and also to resolve whether certain tasks succeed or not.

When character moves or does something physically strenuous, his energy will diminish. This means that player just cannot run all the time. When energy decreases, it will affect several things, like his movement speed. Encumbrance has an effect, too. More equipment character is carrying, faster he will get tired. Resting will increase energy level.

Characters health is an important factor, too. Injuries will decrease health, and that in turn will affect other activities and e.g. movement speed. Character has to eat and drink just like in real life. Again, physical activities affect how fast you will get thirsty or hungry. Hot or otherwise exhaustive environment will increase thirst and hunger even more.

Every character also has a number of skills, just like in real life. There are several categories of skills, on different levels. Player has an opportunity to increase his skill scores during play, and even learn new skills. Better the skills, more easily or quickly the character is able to do his tasks successfully.

Planetrism universe has deep history, and so do characters. Every character will have a detailed background history and some personality traits based on the life events and experiences. For example, character may have almost drowned in his childhood, and now bears aversion against swimming and boating. Another character may have a trait that makes people to instinctively trust him, which could help to ease out differences in opinion. Trait can be a knack, intuitive insight in something. In the game mechanics, these traits usually either hinder actions or give a boost, and in some

Tasks

Many actions in Planetrism succeed automatically, but there are lots of situations where the result is not certain. All these situations are resolved with Task resolution system. Game includes a database of tasks, that describe which character statistics, skills and traits affect the probability, how much time it takes, what equipment or machinery are needed and other factors. Depending on situation the difficulty may be higher or lower. Character may decide to try to do the job faster than usual.

Based on all aforementioned factors, game will calculate a probability and a random outcome is generated. It may turn out to be a success or failure, or partial success, or even a total disaster. An example of such task could be fixing a machine. Success means that machine is operational again. Partial success could mean that you now know, that it is possible to fix, but it will mean some extra work. Total disaster could cause a mishap that causes an electric fire in the machine, rendering it impossible to fix.

Risks in task resolution give player a strong motivation to learn new skill and increase his score in those already possessed. Also, some tasks are practically impossible without necessary skills (or tools). Thus player has to keep track what skills from the skill tree his colony personnel possess, and plan what new skills could help in the survival of the colony. Learning skills takes time, of course, but the rewards usually justify that investment.

One may think that this makes the game overly complicated to handle. It is true that it is more complex than match-3 games, but on the other hand all skill resolution is handled by game itself. In some situations player may allocate more or less time for the task, but otherwise player does not do much more than he would normally do. For example, if player tries to fix a broken machine, he just activates the task, chooses whether he wants to increase or decrease the time allocation. Otherwise, it is program that checks whether player has required skills etc, and does all the necessary calculations transparently in the background.

Resources

Basically everything in Planetrism is generalized as a resource. Water and minerals are resources, as are equipment and machines. Even data and information, robots and NPCs are a resource. This makes it possible to describe the flow and transformation of basic raw resources into more complex, manufactured resources in an abstract but unified manner.

Cycle of resources is an important part of this game. Player cannot build a colony without resources, and the colony cannot survive without resources. On the other hand the colony is necessary to transform some resources into more complex ones.

List of different resources is extensive and it would be meaningless to cover it in this text. Besides, it is mostly meant to be discovered during the play. Part of the available resources are familiar things, used in Core Worlds, but there are many unknown resources that player may discover during exploration trips. New plants, some of which may be edible or otherwise useful for medical purposes, for example. There could be new minerals, with interesting new properties.

Learning about necessary resources and their uses takes time, but player usually has lots of time. Planetrism is not a fast paced shooter where you need split second reflexes. On the contrary, tempo of the game is moderately slow, and there usually is enough time to study and plan what resources should be acquired for each task. Of course, time is an important factor. If player does not acquire necessary resources, then eventually his character will die of hunger, thirst, cold etc. And sometimes there are situations, where fast thinking and inventive use of resources is mandatory.

For each resource there are numerous attributes describing their rarity, physical properties, durability and most importantly, how and to what resources are transformed. Transformation is generalized too, and it covers everything between manufacturing to self-transformation like rotting, decay and growing from plant seed to actual plant. Although player can recycle many resources, there is always demand for additional resources. It is up to the player how ecological his choices are.

Environment

Planet’s environment is not just a group of randomly generated rocks, vegetation, animals and weather patterns. Generally, the planet has a clear ecosystem, and there are complex interaction chains where human is an intruding species. This ecosystem has several niches, each one of them partly or totally different compared with others.

Exploring and understanding these different environments is a key element in game. More information player collects, better are his chances to predicts events, like change of weather, occurrence of certain phenomena etc. Player will also learn why and when certain things may happen and how they may affect his plans. All this information is a vital resource for whole colony.

Whole environment is dynamic. Weather changes just like in a real world. Night and day cycle affects the behaviour of animals, some are active daytime, while others prefer darkness. Plants and animals are part of food chain. Depending on colony activities a new human population may have a considerable effect on environment and vice versa.

Player may encounter different radiation fields and other natural or artificial phenomena. Many of them are quite harmless, but some of them may be dangerous, even lethal. Some of them may provide clues to occurrence of valuable mineral resources and otherwise helpful things.

Cycle of Five

Together those aforementioned systems form a basis for a five sided network of activity paths for an exoplanet colony. These five activities measure the progress in the game, and should give player a good scale to balance his activities and plan for different goals. These five activity paths are

• COLLECT: Accumulation of resources (energy, materials, data etc)
• BUILD: Construction and manufacture of buildings, vehicles, machines and equipment
• GROW: Transformation of resources and energy into food
• UNDERSTAND: Refine exploration and scientific observation into knowledge
• ENHANCE: Transform experience, studying and exercise into better skills and stats

Mostly these activities involve tasks to collect, transform or maintain resources. Succeeding in those tasks depends on skills, stats and equipment which means, that player has to enhance them. Another way to increase the chances in tasks is information and knowledge about exoplanet environment. It is easy to see that although separated, all these activity paths depend on other activity paths when player wants to have better results.

Management

As the leader of the colony, player is responsible how those five activity paths are executed. Player is free to do many tasks by himself, but he has to delegate tasks to the whole workforce – other colonists and robots. On top of that, there is the well-being and functions of whole colony that has to be managed. Personnel, infrastructure, machines and other resources need careful maintenance all the time.

Player will soon learn that leading a colony is not just what should be done, but also how and why it should be done. Knowing the capabilities of personnel is one key to success. Delegating personnel to a task with appropriate skills will keep motivation and focus high and produce better results, instead of giving personnel a task they are not skilled with. Leader has to ensure that colony members have sufficient food, work, accommodations, energy, resources and also time for recreation and improvement. Managing personnel is important if player wants to keep morale high.

Most important is that player has to ensure the future of his colony. This is very complex, but usually it involves finding a balance. Player has to balance the time between resource collecting, exploration, scientific research, building, growing and collecting food. Player has to build sensors and data collection devices to get deep understanding of ecosystem etc. Player has to learn delegating tasks and to automate operations, but still be prepared to do things himself when necessary. Regardless of all accumulated knowledge and data, player has to prepare for possible problems and disasters by storing resources and having backup systems and solutions.

On an exoplanet player and his colony are on their own. Everything depends on successful execution on countless tasks, staying focused and keeping morale high. Nothing is served ready on golden plate. When player has ensured the functionality of his colony, he probably can appreciate the beauty and wonders of his new home planet even more, because he has earned it the hard way.