Edy Zahid Blog The Thoughts of One Game Developer

Dream City: Life Events – November 2009 Update

Development for the game is a little bit slow on early part of November because I was concentrating my effort of writing strategy guide for Blade Thrust Tactics. But since I've already finished writing it, then I can go back to this game project.

The major improvement I've made on the game is overhauling the diary system. Nathan Chin has been complaining about this stuff last month so I guess I have to do something about it. The avatar graphics right now is repositioned to the right to give room for diary text.

Karma System

The other major improvement I've made is introducing karma system. Whenever your character perform a good deed, her karma will increase and vice versa. Keep a high karma and there could be high chance your character will be rewarded with something in which case your karma will be exchanged for the reward. Having a high karma also will prevent you from ending up in trouble or disaster as some of your karma will be exchanged with the trouble or disaster.

Yes, this game revolves around morality. Everyday we face this kind of situation. Think karma as some sort of moral currency. The more karma you earn, the more good reward you can exchange or more trouble/disaster you can prevent in the future. I get the inspiration of karma system from Fallout 1 and Fallout 2.

The karma system is not yet properly balanced because I don't add enough events that improve karma. So your character most of the times will not get any reward derived from karma and will suffer disaster or bad events due to lacking of karma.

Job Overhaul

I also make a lot of changes in term of job. You can now quit from your job. You also earn salary increase if you stick working for the company for certain amount of time which mean loyalty is rewarded. You can't apply new job or get promoted during economic recession. I also flesh out more details about the job. For instance, if you apply for fashion designer job, the company is called GA Apparel which involves in chic casual dress market. By giving more details to the company, I can think up a lot of events related to the job such as product launch, brand war and lots of interesting stuff.

Lifestyle

I also made some changes to the transportation gameplay. If your character want to use scooter, small car, sedan car and luxury car, she will have to buy it in full price. I was thinking to use more realistic system on down payment and monthly installments but the system is way complicated to execute at this point. Buying it can be done in Buy Asset Panel. Once your character buy it, your character can use it by choosing the option in Lifestyle Panel. So it is possible for your character to buy it but not use it.

Assets depreciation does not yet work.

Activity Overhaul

I also overhaul activities by introducing weekend activities in addition to evening activities. There are a lot of weekend activities you can do such as window shopping, going to the spa, chatting on the Internet, watching soccer match in the stadium, go fishing and the boring part time schools. Yes, there is no more evening part time schools. All part time schools are carried out at weekend.

The scoring system also has been overhauled. If you finish the game, you'll get total score:
1) 1 - 199 : You have a terrible life.
2) 200 - 399 : You could've done it better.
3) 400 - beyond : You have a good life!

The new version is Dream City: Life Events 0.21 released on 16 November 2009. It still come in a small download file. I welcome any feedback.

Dream City: Life Events website