A full and tiring day working on the Taskforce game art. It's amazing how few textures there are in this game. Everything looks a lot better now. Here is the face of a 2004 zombie vs. a new 2020 zombie:
And a 2004 vs. 2020 woman. She still looks rather chunky, but much better. These characters are more like game pieces than real people anyway. Realistic proportions tends to make humans look thin and weedy in game environments, which is why so many game characters look bulky.
I need a new font and title graphics next. I also have to think of any rule enhancements... I could leave things as they are, which would be the easiest option. Even a slight change might take weeks to test and test to make sure it plays well. I have a few ideas:
1. There are currently up to 12 player units per map. Originally there were 6, but every mission is quite difficult with just 6, and most are quite easy with 12. I could make the difficulty level correspond with the amount players may select. That said, players set their own difficulty level anyway, so can optionally do this voluntarily.
2. I could make deaths of units permanent as missions progress. If Mackintosh McQuaid dies on Mission 1 then he's not choosable for missions after that. Players could go back and play Mission 1 again if they wanted. I like this idea. I'd need to store a chain of who is alive at what stage. The downside with this is that it can fundamentally change the difficulty of the game and would need a lot of testing.
3. I might do something about Spider multiplication, as this can cause exponential problems; missions that are way too easy or way to difficult through no fault of the player.
Anyway. As you can discern, I'm very focused on the game now and ignoring Covid-19 and the general world. I'm pacing in the garden during break times. It's been just over two weeks of the lock down but feels longer. I miss Deb dearly and worry for her. It appears that this lockdown will last 10 weeks or so, if Wuhan is anything to go by, depending on the governments whim. We really need lots of testing to be sure about things like this. It appears that many people don't become immune to this, which makes everything much more difficult.
In these circumstances, testing can be a de-facto cure. Imagine if everyone who had Covid-19 were blue. We could instantly avoid them, and they could isolate. In practice, testing is not that ideal; it's slow, unreliable and can only be done once per person at great cost. An electronic multi-use tester would be a great tool. Perhaps one based on spectroscopy would be possible. I wonder if a spectrographic machine could shine into a very mouth? A cheap, mass produced, reusable test would be as good as a vaccine.
