Rolling the dice

Welcome back! It felt good to do the initial announcement so I'll keep doing occasional devlogs here to explain a bit more about the game as I develop it. Today, let's talk about dice!

In Quest Machina, many areas you explore will contain actions that require an attribute check to complete. In some cases, you may select that check and retry it later if you fail. In others, the check occurs during a one-time event and the outcome is permanent.

The attributes

1. Strength: The raw muscle to move and lift things

2. Dexterity: The finesse to dodge objects and unlock caches

3. Intelligence: The mental capacity to translate and grasp complex ideas

4. Endurance: The fortitude to endure punishing conditions

5. Charisma: The ability to charm and convince other characters

Inspired by DnD! While I understand and respect the distinction between Intelligence and Wisdom, I think that can be unclear for some uninitiated players (and also for the AI, which decides what attribute an action will check against).

For the action above, the player has chosen "Inspect Caramel Stalactite" (forgive me, this particular world was candy-themed). The AI has decided that will check against the character's intelligence. But how do we decide if it succeeds or fails?

The math

The math has some small modifiers, but is roughly this: If the checked stat plus a d20 roll is greater than the action's difficulty rating, you succeed. Otherwise, you fail.

In Quest Machina, success could mean new equipment, new cards, or access to a new area. Failure can mean damage, a curse, or that action becoming locked temporarily.

In determining how hard the difficulty rating should be, we consider: - How deep into the area is this location? Deeper locations have harder checks and better loot - Objectively, how hard is this thing to do? We query the AI to see if we're jumping over a log (easy) vs jumping over a gorge (very hard)

Re-rolls please?

Steam post image

As you venture through the world, you may find a cache of quicksilver. This substance can be used during a failed check to re-roll with the same chance of success.

As I was developing this feature, I was curious if it would slow the game down too much to have the re-roll option keep showing up. But as a big fan of Baldur's Gate 3, I felt even their much more involved attribute checks were able to keep the tension going. I'll include this mechanic in the demo coming soon, but always looking for feedback!