🚀 go-pugleaf

Khan writes:
>
>>3) Should the player's ship be stronger/faster/whatever, or equal to the
>>   other ships? Currently it is equal.
>
>I think they should start out equal, but as game play progresses they
>might be able to enhance their ships' capabilities. For example, if you
>land on Planet Xargathia, the engineers there can install a faster drive
>system for your ship. Something like that.

This reeks of "power-ups."  I'm not flaming the idea, but it is another
one of those topics--like scores in text adventures--that's worth a little
thought.

In principle, the idea sounds like a good one:  as the enemy get more
powerful your capabilities also increase.  Traditionally (IMO), this
was accomplished by the player's skills improving.  There was no way
you could beat the Rabid Limes on level four the same day you bought
the game.  But after some practice, you learned some strategies and
honed your skills and soon you were making limeade.  This makes sense
to me, and rewards the player who takes time to play the game.

But I think most games are designed to give both you and your
opponent equal firepower throughout the game.  At first, you throw
ping pong balls and he throws ping pong balls.  Then you throw rocks
and he throws rocks.  Eventually you both toss nuclear weapons around.
Unfortunately, this negates the whole concept of difficulty and has
resulted in the current crop of games which people are "solving"
in ridiculously short periods of time (one of several factors,
actually).

--
James Hague   
exuhag@exu.ericsson.se