Survival

You’re wandering around a forest. You’re don’t know where you are, but you aren’t lost. Where you are isn’t something you are concerned about, but where you are going to get your next drink of water, or bite of food is.

I’ve added some basic ‘Survival’ mechanics to Nano. As you move from location to location you gradually build up Hunger and Thirst. Meat and Water Jug consumable items have been added to sustain your character. If a character reaches a certain hunger or thirst threshold they will begin taking damage whenever they move to a new location as they slowly dehydrate or starve to death.

Currently the only way to get your hands on Meat or a Water Jug is to win a random encounter with an enemy, and then hope that enemy drops the consumables. This is causing a bit of an issue because there is currently only a 10% chance a character will get into a random encounter, and on top of that there is an 20% chance the enemy will NOT drop a consumable. Meaning, consumables are fairly rare, while starvation is common. It’s like a virtual 3rd world country.

So next up is adding more sources of food and water. One thing I plan on adding is environmental sources of sustenance. Rivers, streams and lakes that provide water, and edible plants to reduce hunger. I hope this will keep vegans off my back as well.

Score

I also added some simple Scoring mechanics. Currently, a player is awarded points for every combat encounter that they win. The value of the combat is determined by the type of enemy encountered. Soon I’ll be adding more ways to up one’s score, such as points for discovering new locations, or perhaps acquiring hard to get items.

The idea of having character’s maintain a score is that eventually there will be a leaderboard. Where players can compete to be top dog. Aside from that I’d like to have a character history page. A page where a player can go and see all of his/her old, deceased characters, along with the character’s score upon death. This will allow players to try to beat their personal best score as well as compete against other players.