Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Neonivek]

I hope this one won't be abandoned too.

I can agree, I think I've seen four attempts at this?

To admit it is tougher to make well then it seems. Especially since it had a tendency to fall into boringness.

[bloodrizer]

I hope this one won't be abandoned too.

As long as people would be interested in it, I will continue development :3

To admit it is tougher to make well then it seems. Especially since it had a tendency to fall into boringness.

This is the biggest concern I have about SKRL. Killing NPC sounds fun at the first time, but it is kinda boring in a long run.
I have several ideas how to deal with it.

1. Introduce score system. Award points for chain killing, make penalties for uncreative kills or letting eyewitness escape. Also, possible leader board.
2. Make game hard as hell. Also, make difficulty grows as player progress game. E.g., doubling police patrols after the first crime, introducing curfew, sending FBI agents to investigate houses. We can also let player booby-trap his house (fun fun fun, construncting something is allways fun).

3. Make game a mix of traditional RL and SK simulation. SMT Persona series plays this trope quite well - one part of the game is a date sim, other is a pure RL, and both parts affects each other.
4. Combination of 2 and 3. As you progress the game, it slowly turns into classic RL. For example, bloody kills can awaken the Old Ones and turn game into some kind of Lovecraftian horror. (Not sure if I'll stuck with it, but conception is promising).

[Leatra]

Well, I'm interested

Will there be special personality traits that you can choose from start? Like, player has a bloodlust and has to kill more often and kill in a more bloody way or the player only wants to kills criminals. Maybe a character creation system like the old hoax videos.

Will player be able to take day jobs to finance his or her... hobby?

[Neonivek]

What you can do bloodrizer instead of just simply making crazy things happen... is just slowly make the PC go more and more insane which can overtime drastically change the layout of the game and thus crazy things happen.

The end game being defined by exactly what your killing pattern is.

[DrPoo]

Hey, Angel of Death wrote a really, really intricate Serial Killer PnP, maybe you could use some of his ideas?

[Gatleos]

The end game being defined by exactly what your killing pattern is.

Yes. Yes yes.

Yes. One thing I think you should focus on is spreading out to include every "class" of serial killer. You've got the smooth operator sociopath who murders in patterns and gains people's trust (maybe even starting a cult, Charles Manson style), the bloody psychopath who kills randomly and messily, and even the holier-than-thou "vigilante" who murders in a karmic fashion.

Actually, that last one sounds morbidly hilarious. You could roleplay as some guy that dresses up in a costume and acts like he's Batman, tracking down and murdering people who litter in the park. Later on you start getting illusions of grandeur, hallucinations of these people being criminal masterminds and supervillains that you're fighting.

The game probably won't be able to detect more complex behaviors, so you might want to have the player choose their type of insanity from the beginning and base the hallucinations (at least partly) off that.

[Biag]

The game can totally track complex behaviors. For victim preference: store the victim objects and reference them every time the player makes a kill (or an unprovoked attack), perform some basic statistical analysis to find patterns. Then, highlight potential victims based on these qualities to encourage the further development of the pattern.

For other things: every good roguelike already has an events log of some sort. Store a private log for player events surrounding a particular victim, and pull out the most common events as rituals (extended conversation, taking trophies, etc). If you don't want to worry about trying to figure out which NPC the player is targeting, have them designate specific NPCs as targets until you get the more interesting bits of the system running.

These are things that should be implemented for effective autonomous police investigation; the only extra you need for this is whatever system highlights victims who fit the pattern and/or alters the gameplay as a result.

Of course, I'm not the dev, and this is only a vague suggestion that can be greatly improved as an actual design. I personally like the arcadey "points" idea the most- I feel that an emphasis on short, fast-paced games (maybe with randomly-generated starting conditions) would keep me coming back to this long after I would be exhausted by long-term play sessions.

[bloodrizer]

Biag, Getleos, thanks a lot for your feedback
Personaly, I dislike the idea of limiting player to certain actions. If player want to kill criminals, that's ok, but he should be able switch playing style wherever he(she) wants.
So only passive tracking of player style is an option.

Will there be special personality traits that you can choose from start? Like, player has a bloodlust and has to kill more often and kill in a more bloody way or the player only wants to kills criminals. Maybe a character creation system like the old hoax videos.

Character generation will be probably implemented in an upcoming build. Killing criminals is a good idea. I made a simple crime background generation for the NPC's with a shot list of crimes they ever comittied. As for the perks, I think they should be something random and fun. Like "Paranoia", when every npc has aggression marks on them. Or "Postman" perk, when police will most likely never suspects you.

Bloodlust is OK, and something like killing frenzy when you lost control over your character for a given amount of time will be most likely introduced. But whole Sanity/Bloodlust system needs to be planed carefuly.

Will player be able to take day jobs to finance his or her... hobby?

Yep. I think it would be something pretty simple, like standing in an empty room and skipping turns for 8 hours in a row. (Insert post-modernistic joke there).

Hey, Angel of Death wrote a really, really intricate Serial Killer PnP, maybe you could use some of his ideas?

Could you please give me a link?

[SeriousConcentrate]

Hey, Angel of Death wrote a really, really intricate Serial Killer PnP, maybe you could use some of his ideas?

Could you please give me a link?

+1. Also, posting to watch. This looks promising, and I'll have to download it/give it a whirl in the morning.

[Svarte Troner]

Wow, keep up the good work. I'm glad to see someone making actual progress on this game now that the other one has died out (presumably).

[Angel Of Death]

Hey, Angel of Death wrote a really, really intricate Serial Killer PnP, maybe you could use some of his ideas?

Could you please give me a link?

+1. Also, posting to watch. This looks promising, and I'll have to download it/give it a whirl in the morning.

Yeah, the mass murderer PnP I made was never put on any forum or anything at all. I was going to run it on Bay12, but Toady said it would be best not to.

[Leatra]

Hey, Angel of Death wrote a really, really intricate Serial Killer PnP, maybe you could use some of his ideas?

Could you please give me a link?

+1. Also, posting to watch. This looks promising, and I'll have to download it/give it a whirl in the morning.

Yeah, the mass murderer PnP I made was never put on any forum or anything at all. I was going to run it on Bay12, but Toady said it would be best not to.

You got me curious too.

[Brotato]

Another little idea for you.  Along with policemen you could have other people trying to bring you to justice, especially if the game becomes more randomly generated, sometimes the cops might be corrupt or too weak to deal with you.  In this case vigilantes and other private citizens (or even mobs searching for you) will attempt to dispatch the horror visiting their neighborhood.

[Neonivek]

Another little idea for you.  Along with policemen you could have other people trying to bring you to justice, especially if the game becomes more randomly generated, sometimes the cops might be corrupt or too weak to deal with you.  In this case vigilantes and other private citizens (or even mobs searching for you) will attempt to dispatch the horror visiting their neighborhood.

Well I know it is cliche but a lot of countries actually have multiple tiers of police forces.

For example where I live there are the Street Police, Heavily Armed police, SWAT, Mounties SWAT, and then you get the Army. (I made up a few names)

Plus since you are essentially playing the "Villain" some of the people who are against you could be steriotypical "Slasher fiction survivors", "Detectives", or other characters usually set against you. THOUGH I don't know if this is where the creator wants to go. Since while that would make this still a Serial killer roguelike... It would be more like "Fictional serial killers" like Jason then what this game is aiming for.

[Leatra]

Cops attacking your safehouse, having to search for other safehouses and maintance costs for safehouses would be nice too.