Yesterday I wrote about my new system to find out what need is most prevalent for a character and that worked by deciding which needs passed a threshold and then picking one based on a level and a priority. Well, I found out that I forgot something.
Imagine walking around in the desert and being both very hungry and very thirsty. Luckily there's some food lying around right next to you. You're going to pick that up and eat it, right? Well, that's not how our worked in Holocene. You see, you have 9.1 out of 10 hunger and a staggering 9.2 out of 10 thirst. This means that thirst is more and hunger and thirst have the same priority in deciding what to do, so you'll try to drink. There's no water, but your mind is set. So you die.
The problem of course is that the decision what need to satisfy does not entirely depend on which need is biggest, but also which needs are most easily satisfied. Like we programmers often say (and rarely do) we should mind the low hanging fruit too. In this case even quite literally. Hunger is prevalent too and easily fixed, so we should focus in that too.
Now how does this work? Well when the character triggers picking the need to satisfy, they make a list of needs that hit the threshold to be prevalent. Then the list will be cleansed of needs that cannot be satisfied right now. From what is left, the most prevalent need is picked and action is taken. Unsatisfiable needs will trigger some warning in three UI when implemented, so that the player can check them.
In our example, the needs for food and drink are both added to the list. Then drink its removed because there's no water. Food is there, so the eating routine starts, which involves moving to the food, picking it up and eating it.
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