Action Paths and Assignment

Last time we were talking about the priorities of each philosophy and how we would use those to create guidelines for what actions would get you a result of each philosophy.
Currently the plan is to have the player play the first three levels without a tutorial and without instruction and to monitor their actions throughout the levels. After each level we would do a small assessment of the actions from that level and mark the player as K, O or U. That happens again after the second and third levels. So for example, the first level is simple so we were able to create a small matrix.

      key:
K -- kantianism
O -- objectivism
U -- utilitarianism
chest -- a treasure chest (with money inside, instead             of loose coins all over the map)
minion -- going to rescue the minion in the far corner                of the level
speed -- the amount of time it takes the player to                    reach the goal in the level (will be measured              in greater than of less than a certain time,                  but that specific time is not determined yet)

Based on the order in which you did the actions in the chart, after level 1 the players is marked as K, O or U for level 1. There is another (slightly different) scoring system for levels 2 and 3. After playing the first three levels the player would have 3 "scores" each K, O, or U. If the player has the same letter for two of the levels (scoring U in levels 1 and 2 for example) then we run a final check (for exceptions). If the player passes the exceptions then the player is marked as that philosophy and is informed of the great news! (keep in mind that the letter scores for each level and the exceptions are all managed internally and the player has no idea)
The exceptions
Even if you score a certain philosophy twice, there could still be a certain action that you did that means you would never be labeled as that philosopher. For example a Kantian would never end the life of another person. So even if the player was evaluated as a Kantian in the first and third levels, he would not be a true Kantian if he killed the minion in the second level. So if the player scores K in at least two of the levels it it would set off a flag to check the exceptions for Kantianism at which point it would check if the player had purposefully killed anyone throughout the first three levels (again all of this is managed without the players knowledge). If the player had killed someone during the levels then he failed the exceptions (not a big deal, just means he is not a Kantian). If the player fails the exceptions then they will get randomly assigned to one of the other two philosophies. This probably isnt a perfect way to handle the exception cases, but it will do for now until we find a better option.

This post was a little different because it had a a lot of thought that normally goes into the programming, but is skipped in the blog. But it seems important to understand the way the game is going to work (more than just on the surface level)

Hopefully soon we will get into aesthetics.

Action Paths and Priorities

hello!
We have decided (at least for now) to have the player play the first three levels without any instruction and not assigned to a philosophy. After the first three levels we will assign the player to a philosophy. The new story supports this idea and it is set up in such a way that it does not seem like a test (even though it is). The assignment to a philosophy is based on actions the player does in the first three levels. So it goes like this:

1. the game starts(yay!)
2. the player is in level 1 (there is no longer a tutorial) 
3. there are no instructions 
4. we monitor the actions of the player
5. based on those actions they are grouped into one of the philosophies
6. then they learn more about that philosophy and have to be consistent with that 

The best part is that the way the new story is set up, all of that makes total sense and (ideally) noone would question why any of that is happening, but more on the story next week.
Because the assignment is based on the actions in the first few levels we had to decide exactly what actions would constitute each philosophy. In order to do that we created a list of priorities for each philosopher. We then used that list to create an action path for each philosopher in each level; it is rough sketch rather than a rigid set of rules. Whichever path the player matches with the most will be the philosophy they get placed with. Some of the priorities had to be exaggerated from the original ideals of the philosophy, but that is to be expected since it is a game.

Priorities of each philosophy
This is intended to be a rough guideline for the philosophy. For example, the priorities of Objectivism might be something like speed, independence, absolutism and happiness, but most of those would not be priorities of Kantianism. Some of the priorities of Utilitarianism would include happiness and community, but not independence of absolutism.
Since one of the priorities of Objectivism is speed, we would monitor how long it took the player to go through the level (if the player explored the whole level it would take longer than if the player just breezed through quickly).