1.3 Monster - Baumgaer/Game GitHub Wiki

No dungeon crawler without monsters, just that these are subordinate to the player. Besides own monsters, there are also free monsters, which can either voluntarily go into a dungeon, attack the own monsters or just exist. Each monster has its own needs, similar to SIMS (see figure 5).

Figure 5: Needs in SIMS

These monsters must be breastfed using existing spaces or gestures by the player or other monsters. In addition, each type of monster should possess certain manual and cognitive abilities. That would be, for example, a sorcerer is less suitable than a craftsman.

1.3.1 Needs

Needs want to be satisfied. As mentioned before, it can take place via premises and interactions. If any of these needs can not be satisfied, it may affect the faith of the player, or cause that monster to destroy or even leave the dungeon. Needs can become more robust over time. For example, it may take longer until the monster can ship or shit properly again. The energy plays a special role here. This represents the life energy at the same time. It regenerates itself only when the monster is resting, not over time as in many other games. The needs also affect combat power or working capability. If you have a full bubble, you can hardly concentrate and it may make it harder for a sorcerer to create a new curse (crafting system will be explained later). A lack of hygiene could lead to an epidemic, which several monsters suffer, causing the monsters to get sick and die.

1.3.2 Skills

As mentioned before, each monster has certain abilities. Not only those for fighting, but also for handicrafts or for sentry duty and the like. The monsters need appropriate workshops or buildings. A sorcerer would need something like a library instead of a workshop to develop a curse. Therefore, the craft workshops have to fulfill certain requirements, such as that the library is quiet. By using the respective craftsmanship, not only does the monster improve itself by gaining experience points, but it also helps other monsters to progress faster by sharing its acquired knowledge with the others and thus also getting experience points faster. But just if a monster is bad at one thing, doesn't mean that this monster can't learn this thing somehow. It just takes longer and can only be learned up to a certain point.

1.3.3 Artificial intelligence

Monsters should be able to manage their own needs. Not only that, but also the way that they do their own jobs, moreover, what they are currently creating/researching/developing. The player have the opportunity to punish or reward his monsters, depending on how they like the way monsters work. Based on this, the monsters should orient themselves slowly and do better job next time. Monsters should also have something like personality. Workers (Imps) should be rather disobedient, so you have to educate them first. Others can be adventurous or very lazy. Of course there are variations in the characteristics of behaviour and intelligence, but they should be related. Intelligent monsters are less lazy and vice versa.

1.3.4 Hero monster

The hero monsters should have affinities and be influenced by their environment. So a water-loving monster probably feels more comfortable in humid areas and can get gurt in dry, hot areas. They should be "all-rounders", but only individual professions or skills, not to the extent that they master everything perfectly. Everything else should be good, but not 100% usable for everything. Hero monsters are those who can enter an instance and can only take limited possession of those instances themselves. Hero monsters and God share their inventory in fact.