Activity System (Implementation)

How can I implement a system that's easily expandable which gives the player the opportunity to start activities, so they have more options to accurately simulate their daily lives?

In the last devlog entry: Activity System (Concepting), I talked about how I came to the conclusion that the game needed an activity system. In this entry I explain how I tried adding this to SugarVita.

Research Methods

Workshop

Prototyping

The first step is to make some sort of way to activate an activity. As I talked about in the last entry[1], I chose the bag for this. It can be seen in the screenshot below as "Activiteiten". When pressed, the player gets the option to choose their activity. (UI is not finalized)

After making a decision on the activity, the player gets sent to the corresponding map. In this case a party map.

All of this gets managed in a class called ExcursionManager (activity is called excursion in code). When an activity gets chosen, certain parameters must be filled first in order to determine which map to move to.

Each map has their own unique properties which determine what happens every tile. For example: the entirety of the forest walk map, you are walking and the consequences of this will be reflected in the blood sugar levels. It is also possible to choose different routes that have different lengths. Because the movement works with ID's and the end tile needs to be determined, I need to check which route you chose as well in order to determine the end tile.

All of this gets done in the ImplementExcursionVariables() method which gets called every tile.

Results & Validation

The result is a system which is easily expandable with more activities. It gives the player more options to simulate their daily lives. An example of how it would work in game can be found in the stepping stone: Activity System.

This system has not been validated with end users yet, but because there are just more options in the game now, in theory, it should at least give some players a more accurate simulation of their real life and at worst, wouldn't add or take away anything for other players.

Usage

The system is created for developers to easily add new activities. The activities are important for people to be able to have more options to simulate their life.

Sources

van Eijl, D. (n.d.). Activity System (Concepting). Daan van Eijl Graduation Internship Portfolio. Retrieved 10 June 2022, from https://daan-van-eijl-graduation-internship-portfolio.webnode.nl/devlog/activity-system-concepting/[1]