When a widescale cataclysm occurs, yet the player’s POV is microscopic, what should the player see or be told? A description like the one in the intro would be great for setting the mood, and maybe providing helpful tips.
Or should they see the lowering pH/darkening background/whatever and infer what’s happening, rather than have their game interrupted?
I think to make it REALLY obvious that a disaster happens, there could be some sort of camera shake along with a flash of fiery red lights. Maybe then it’ll get darker. Therefore the player knows for sure that something bad just happened.
That would only be applicable for violent and hot events such as eruptions or meteor strikes. In addition, there should be some kind of damaging element present such as the aforementioned lava or meteors. A snowball earth scenario or some kind of vortex would have to use different visuals.
I know the plan is for compound clouds to plummet in availability not too long into the game. Any idea what the indicator for this would be (other than the dwindling resources)?
I don’t think that needs an indicator other than the player finding less clouds, and some text about it in the tutorial or in some help menu. Because the change should be gradual so we would have to like constantly bombard the player with messages like “compound density has now decreased by 14.5%” and then a while later “compound density has now decreased by 19.25%”.
There could be a message system, where players receive a message signal, then pause the game to read the message itself.
The messages could be disabled during game setup (so the player would rely on in-game cues). Could even be locked on higher difficulties.
I like this concept. I would imagine some kind of active feed on the screen where two or three “Alerts” or “Messages” could be displayed chronologically by some general image. Say like different colored exclamation marks to depict a general meaning like good, bad or neutral, then hovering the mouse over the symbol for a more detailed description of what happened. And applying this like a setting, varying by difficulty that would ultimately just be locked on the highest difficulty.
edit: sorry to come back 5 months later, I am new just flying through old threads to get updated but really enjoyed this idea