The Sinister Design Forums

I was just going through the prison break sequence and thought about how the dialogue was changed to include a part where the Hero struggles to come to terms with the fact that he killed a fellow human being. Given how this, and other subjects, including religion and death have been examined in TSoG, and how death count and all has been briefly looked upon in TPA2, I think it would be nice to include a "total number of beings killed" counter, as well as an additional counter for "total number of people killed by the Hero" specifically. The design is twofold: it can be quite thought provking, it might say something about the Hero's (or, rather, the player's) character, it may affect some events in the game and it is something players can compare and talk about, as it is statistical in origin. Given that it has been implemented before, I don't think it will be too hard for Craig to code in, though I am not sure about deaths coming from one specific unit counter (which I consider to be the more interesting one- as you often see a Hero in a series commit his first murder... then they become countless, like the Richard character from the Wizard Rules series by Terry Goodkind).
What are your thoughts on this, folks?

Becoming sick from his first kill, I don't see the Hero counting his kills.

It may be a way to remember all those he killed an to honor their memories?
Besides it really wouldn't be him recording every kill, but by a bystander with no biased opinion detailing what he/she sees.

I like the idea, and it may serve to show how the Hero evolves throughout the story, and may even detail how he's grown to like killing (as indicated with a certain dialogue with Set)

maybe arman can just record it on a board in his, set, and malis room

I ould go along with the idea not for a story perspective but for a statisics. I think it would be good if you could see how many epople yu have killed so you could tract your procress.

I honestly don't care how many people I kill.  My goal is to kill the boss or capture the space.

Well, given how the Hero of TPA1 also didn't care how many people he or she killed, the results were still recorded. It can be presented, as said above,as a simple stats from an outside observer. Personally, I am very keen on this idea, as it illuminates quite a few interesting traits seen in TSoG and can be used in a variety of ways in-game, as well as appeal to the many players who like statistics.

Quote from: KZ on March 16, 2010, 06:18:52 PM
Well, given how the Hero of TPA1 also didn't care how many people he or she killed, the results were still recorded. It can be presented, as said above,as a simple stats from an outside observer. Personally, I am very keen on this idea, as it illuminates quite a few interesting traits seen in TSoG and can be used in a variety of ways in-game, as well as appeal to the many players who like statistics.

I am saying that I am neutral, because it won't have any effect on my gameplay.

It would be nice if some dialogue options could depend on those stats.

I realize that, worry not. I am just commenting on what people wrote in general.

Ertxiem: that certainly would interweave quite nicely with the differn action options for the Hero which currently don't affect gameplay, but, it seems, will later on in the game. I think that kills-by-the-Hero may be a good stat to add into the mix. (e.g. reluctant versus maniac killer. Though it is impossible to judge the attitude by numbers only. One may kill one person in delight, or kill many, but with deep reluctance.)

It is, in my opinion, stats are generally nice to look at. Especially when you can compare them to another person. I think they should just be a little feature in the menu which you can look at from time to time, just out of curiosity. Its just the same when people compare their word count on a piece of coursework.

So far all feedback has either been supportive or neutral: Craig, what do you think of adding this small stat in light of what has been said above?

I don't think it would be difficult to count the number of beings killed by the hero (including teammates). Simply (at least it's simple to do in VB) perform a check to see if the characters' in the target range's hp is >= 0. If the return is true then increase a global variable by 1. The check would probably be a for next loop with the until value equaling the amount of spaces the attack takes up. Of course this would be all in an if-then block with it first performing a check to see if there is actually an enemy in the space. I don't think it should be that difficult to program.

On that note, I'm in favor of both statistics.

Quote from: KZ on March 25, 2010, 03:29:55 PM
So far all feedback has either been supportive or neutral: Craig, what do you think of adding this small stat in light of what has been said above?

We'll see. I have plans for a bunch of other variables that affect dialog--I'm not sure I want to add this onto the heap, but I'll consider it.