Worked on: Went to Games II class. We discussed pathfinding and compared Breadth First, Best First, Dijkastra, and A* as well as a brief stepthrough the general idea of those algorithms, followed by an interactive pathfinder demo software.

Started writing Stable 45: Blow Ups.

Idea: Someone is Going to Rob You. Briefly considered kind of a turn-based game in which time ticks by in fractions of seconds and there’s a 45 second time limit in which a character will (probably) attempt to rob the player’s character. The goal is to A: Survive the encounter and optionally B: Get away with all belongings and health intact.

The idea being that the player can create a character to a degree- Pick their proficiency at speech,  self defense, physical fitness, visual perception, sound perception,  depth of social connections. Maybe also have ‘backgrounds’ that affect those stats or give more specific benefits.  (I dunno. Like uh. Took a self defense course. Or having have committed theft/robbery at a previous time themselves. Being a scholar. Having a paid escort. ). This probably would also affect what kind of equipment the player’s character has available, like whether or not they have a cellphone, if they have their money in a wallet, is the money cash or cards, do they have keys, do they have pepper spray,  is all they’re carrying a camera and photo album? Do they even have money?

The robber in the scenario is generated randomly with its own stats and background and skills.

Gameplay would take place in a scenario in which there are multiple people. doing their own thing, and the player has no way of knowing which is the robber unless the robber acts against the player’s character. If the robber acts hostile towards the player, the player is free to respond in several ways, though there would be some dice rolls based on stats to gauge  response time and panic level before offering the player their options. It’d be turn based to allow a bit of back and forth between the player’s character and the robber and actions like trying to pursue via speech would take longer than an action like punching or shouting for help.

With the scenario of multiple people, it’s possible someone else might be robbed, or that the decided ‘robber’ might be detected in advance or simply decide that whatever they wanted isn’t worth the consequences. With the stats, it’s possible that the robber might attempt to threaten the player’s character with a knife only to be promptly disarmed, beaten silly, and have authorities called in for assistance. With the backgrounds it might be possible for a robbery attempt to start, only to end awkwardly when the robber realizes the person they tried to rob was an old childhood friend from school.

Either way, after 45 seconds in-world time passes (which doesn’t correspond to RL time), the player’s involvement in the scenario ends. Maybe since the player is viewing/playing through an electronic device, their ‘connection’ fades away? Or maybe authorities show up?  Maybe the robber panics and attacks self.

Weird idea, but it seemed like it’d work OK for a mobile game or something.