Mudtato
Just doing it
I came across Photopea today. It’s a Photoshop clone that runs in the browser, written in javascript by one person. At first glance it’s a seemingly inhuman feat of engineering, but after looking into it it’s really quite simple, and it’s the same story behind most successes - just start creating something, bit by bit, don’t stop, and eventually there’ll be a result equivalent to the effort put in.
I’m sure if the creator of Photopea had said in the beginning “I’m going to build an almost feature complete clone of Photoshop that runs in the browser and is only 1.5mb of javascript” people might have laughed, or at least thought it’d soon become an abandoned project. Well, to the creator’s credit, he saw it through.
It’s this same attitude that I’ll need to bring to this project, Arid. I have a huge vision, and after putting it off for years because of a lack of confidence technically, and not thinking it’s a worthwhile project (I have a love hate relationship with games…), I’m finally committed.
I did a bit more thinking around death in the game. Perhaps if a player dies within a certain proximity of a settlement they’ll be revived at the nearest settlement. Venturing out into the world alone and far from others would therefore carry a big risk and would encourage preparation and forming a party. A player could be revived by a party member in this case - or they could just have their gear stolen and be left for dead.
I also like the idea of certain creatures destroying or consuming a downed player, preventing them from being revived. While I don’t want the game to punish players, I do want it to be brutal in its consequences for venturing into a hostile wasteland unprepared.