Time and Seasons - game dev part 2

So now I have the gist of what People of the Dawn is, now for a few details and what I think might be "a bad designer, no Twinkie" situation.

Quote:
1.0 - Game World
People of the Dawn has a number of unique features that play an important role in game play and will offer the player a variety of interesting game challenges.

Each environment represents a different eco-zone and ecological diversity that the player's tribe must learn to adapt to and exploit to survive. Flora and fauna occupy predictable ecological niches and exhibit appropriate behavior as affected by yearly cycles and (sometimes unpredicted) climatic changes.

But of all the features, Time perhaps plays the most significant role in a world that will experience seasonal changes, affecting harvesting opportunities and increasing climatic hardships.

In People of the Dawn everything, the flora and fauna, age.

Tribal members have a lifespan.

Since time is so significant, I thought it best to elaborate on it so the basic world concepts could be easily understood later on. It's also one of the trickiest aspects to get right. Environments and switching seasons, although no walk in the park, are less problematic than aging the world. There is death in this game but it is not always at the hand of a master villain, monster or trap.
Everything can simply grow old and die.

Quote:
1.1 - Game Time
There are no clocks in the world of People of the Dawn, there are no hours, no minutes or no seconds. There is only the sun on its predictable path through the sky and the inevitable seasonal changes to illustrate the passage of time.

People of the Dawn takes the unique approach in abstracting these visual clues into distinct segments to help the player understand where they are in a given game cycle.

1 day = 1 season. The player has from sunrise to sunset to collect, harvest or trap what food or resources they will need to continue into the next day or season. Depending on the ecological zone, each season offers food and resources and varying levels of abundance depending on the time of year. Planning ahead is critical to surviving lean seasons.

4 days = the 4 seasons = 1 year. As a pattern develops and as the player becomes familiar with what the land has to offer, they can turn their attention to building seasonal strategies for the tribe and moving it toward stability.

Throw in a little chaotic variance through weather, disease or "life" and the player is kept on her toes. Nothing can be taken for granted and she will have to always be on the look any opportunity that will contribute to her tribe's survival.

Of course this is a level of AI that needs to be developed but I'll get stuck into that later on in the document.

Now on to the... tricky concept. I think it works within the context of the game but then, I'm perhaps too close. Opinions are sought and welcome here.

Quote:
1.2 - Aging
Time and aging for the flora and fauna, including the tribe, is handled differently.

1 game day = 1 game season = 1 Life year for every plant, animal and human.

This simply means that the average life expectancy of a tribe member in People of the Dawn is 12 game years. Baring accident or disease, a human will live for approximately 10 to 14 years before dying of old age. Translated in real world terms accepting that 1 game season = 1 life year, the lifespan will range between 40 and 56 years of age.

Flora is handled in the same way. Trees will age, grow taller, die and rot, as new ones take root. Rivers may grow or shrink. The landscape will change over time providing new materials or opportunities and perhaps new dangers in the form of fires and flooding.

Animals will give birth, age and become vulnerable to predators including our player's tribal hunting party. Fish will spawn, birds will migrate and vast heads of caribou, mammoth and bison will move to other territories, to return the following year. This impacts the behavior, structure and planning of our player's tribe in an effort to recognize the patterns and take advantage of these yearly predictable cycles.

This is perhaps the hardest and most confusing concept in People of the Dawn to understand or maybe accept as it breaks from the seasonal segments established in [1.1].

I wanted to see a tribe move through at least 2 or 3 generations without having to play hundreds of hours. As it stands now, if each game turn (day/season) lasts 15 minutes, we're talking a game year of 60 minutes or 1 hour. If a tribe member lives to 48, that's 48 hours. Ack! So I thought another layer of abstraction might be all right if not entirely acceptable.

What do you think?

The images are crude experiments and excuses to get back into painting, which I've been neglecting. I had fun :) so I'll be doing more I think.


Until next time