Dustgrave's Relationships and Records system

Hello everyone!

This Dev. Diary will cover the most important feature in Dustgrave: the Relationship System. Aren't you tired of NPCs forgetting what you did for them? Isn't it a bummer that you just saved an entire city and only got "+5 Relations" with the local noble?

Well, we have a solution! Thanks to countless hours of mental gymnastics and coding, we developed a complex system of records that the game can use to keep track of everything happening in the world. In particular, everything you, the player, do.

Stealing an apple? Ending a bandit's life? Trespassing? Saving someone's family? Helping someone with a quest? The game will remember everything, just like your former toxic partner.

By recording every meaningful deed, we can calculate relationships between characters and factions at runtime instead of relying on a simple score that wouldn't reflect a constantly changing world.

How the system works

Since no one cares about boring theory, let's start making examples. Let's say you, the player, a brave yet sexy adventurer, are traveling around the world and meet a group of robbers. They chase you and demand all your valuables to be handed to them. "Sir, that sounds like a felony." is what you say. "Haven't you read the game description? This is a dangerous land. Anarchy reigns supreme." A violent fight erupts. Thanks to being an actual person and not a foolish AI, you beat them, leaving their lifeless bodies on the ground. Only one of them manages to run away. In the meantime, many new Records have been created:

• A Killed record for each dead bandit;
• A Defeated record for the one that got out;
• Several Killed Faction Members records, directly related to the faction the bandits belonged to.

How do those records affect your relationships with the rest of the world? Well, for starters, the people you just killed aren't going to like you. Yes, they are dead, but maybe there are ways to convey with them in a fantasy setting. Just saying. All their relatives? They are going to hate you. You can be sure of that. That record alone may give you a staggering -100 Relationships with their closest relatives, and maybe a -35 if they were only distant cousins. Their faction will not like it, but they have so many unimportant bandits in their rank (at least twelve, I'd say) that they will only care a little. We can numerically define "a little" as something like -2 for each of them. That alone won't make their faction outright hostile, but will make any future attempt to repair things a little trickier. What about local authorities? Killing is considered by most people somewhat rude, but since you've been rude to their enemies, they will actually like you more for that!

Recording in-game events

Every NPC in the game will interpret any meaningful record according to their existing relationships and ethical values.

• Killed an enemy of mine? I will like you more (+25).
• Killed my friend? Reverse Uno card, but the same number as above (-25).
• Killed my rival? I will like you a lot more (+50).
• Just saved my wife? Guess what? I hated her. You only get a little gratitude so that the rest of the village doesn't judge me (+10 and some fake gratitude).
• Did an important quest for my Settlement? I will directly inherit your relationships with all my factions, including my Settlement (+20 with my Settlement, and therefore +20 with me).
• Killed an enemy of mine, but I am a pacifist? I will not like it as much as other people, but an enemy is an enemy (+12.5 rounded to +12)
• Stole something from me? I won't like that. But since the devs made me a dishonest person too, I will react less harshly compared to other people (-20 becoming a -15)

Dustgrave's database has more than a hundred unique Records we can use. For each one of them, we can define the impact on relationships and how people with different moral values react to those records. So, not only will the world remember what you (and even other NPCs) did, but every single individual will respond uniquely.

That's not it. Those Records can also be used in events and dialogues. NPCs will directly refer to the things you did for them, and special events may trigger in reaction to your actions.

Did you steal a lot of valuables from a merchant? They may pay some bounty hunters and put them on your tracks.

Did you save someone's life in the past? Well, you can rub that on their face and tell them it's time to pay back the favor!

Did you forget the game unpaused and stared for hours at a guy working in the fields? I mean, there is no point in making a Record for that. We are not tracking that. But we could do that if we wanted! So don't stalk people, not even unintentionally!