Don't worry everyone, I'm still incredibly cranky and stressed and hating my job and not getting any writing done, but I've been doing some thinking about a project I'd one day, eventually like to get back to. It's basically an extremely stripped down version of a much bigger project I started years ago.

The big 'puzzle' to solve is simply making a certain amount of gold in a certain amount of time, and I wanted there to be multiple ways for the player to accomplish that. There's a big focus on crafting and fishing and mining, etc. You gradually earn enough money to buy better tools which allow you to earn more money, which is where my question comes in: is that sort of thing just a tedious slog to most people? I mean while you get different results depending on several factors, you literally are just typing things like 'bait pole with [whatever]' and 'cast line' and 'reel in' over and over.

Does typing 'search bushes' five or six times until you luck out and find some eggs in a nest or a rare seed or a rabbit hole sound like a good time? Theoretically all the randomness and the variety of approaches to take in earning gold would give the game a lot of replayability, but then again maybe I'm just in denial and this kind of thing does not work at all in a text game.

Thoughts?

You should have a play of World of Warcraft or similar that use that type of mechanic. Tbh I found mining / picking herbs etc a bit tedious. It's the sort of thing you do whilst moving between quests. With games like Skyrim the graphics were that good that it was a joy to explore and pick herbs on the way. I doubt that'd carry through to a text based game. Imo.

I don't like naysaying. It would be nice if you could dedicate one of the panes to minerals carried etc. I think to make it work you'd have to make it less of a grind than it can be in graphical RPGs and give lots of interesting stuff that can be done with the ore. It sounds an interesting experiment.

The Harvest Moon games are probably the closest to what I had in mind. There are going to be NPCs to talk to and a few things to do around the village, but it's mainly supposed to be a pretty laid back experience where you have a certain number of days to do whatever. If I ever actually get that far I'll probably include 'difficulty settings' regarding how long the game runs and the amount of gold needed by the end of it all.

I have played a game series that does it very well, so it can be done (people'll enjoy it), but you got to really make the rewards for doing it, very worth it.

I think there has to be a 'good reason'. Resource management games obviously do work in IF. The first thing I think of when this subject comes up is people trying to replicate a sandbox minecraft type thing which I don't think would work at all in IF.

I think having to "grind" can be ok, if done well. I didn't mind it so much in Runescape because you could see progress at each step. You were constantly being rewarded, even if in small doses. I don't think I'd enjoy grinding in your bush case, where I could spend perhaps a significant amount of time for little or no gain.

The bushes were perhaps a bad example...I was drawing on memories of a MUD I played once where a certain character class could forage for food in wilderness areas. Success depended on a skill check, and even then it wasn't terribly useful, except there was this slim chance of finding valuable herbs that made it worthwhile to just stand there and spam the same command awhile.

...then again that's pretty much the definition of a grind and maybe not something I should be trying to emulate. I doubt I'd have the patience to sit there and get all worked up over text flowers now that I'm not a retarded 14 year old with too much time on my hands anyhow.

This whole discussion is almost entirely theoretical either way, good to know other people think the idea may be workable though. Balancing it to actually be fun is something that can come later once the basic mechanics are in place.

Of course, still got that damn fairy game that has to be finished before I can consider doing any serious work on this...

And the scifi one.

Silver wrote:And the scifi one.

Hush, you.

The scifi one is still firmly in the 'random fooling around with scripts plus a text file about the plot' phase, I don't consider it something I've dedicated myself to finishing yet.

So there.

Mine seems to be that too and it's the only thing I'm working on.