The Island: Heath and Science kits

The last week or so of coding has really done my head in. Took me nearly a week to wrap my head around making a Norn reduce pain over time while allowing it to be injected with pain as well. Anyway I shan't bore you with all the programming details, suffice to say I've finally got it working.

Which means I've finally been able to give Tiggy some 'life'. Still incredibly primitive and in no way resembles an actual brain or any other organs, but I've got enough interactivity in the code to start working on some advanced animations.



As you can see by the image I have some rudimentary kits in place, as well as having them interact with an actual Norn. At the moment Tiggy's hunger, tired/sleepiness and boredom will increase over time. His hunger and boredom can be alleviated by feeding or playing with him (no animations yet). As well as this the science kit will allow you to inject any of the listed chemicals based on a percentage dose.

The nice thing is this has been coded in such a way that additional chemicals and organs can be added with minimal effort. The way the chemicals interact however...that'll still be pretty complicated.

As well as this I've set up a tickle and slap function. Mouse over his head or his bottom and the little angel or devil symbol will pop up. Tickling reduces pain while slapping increase it. Again, nothing in the way of animations.

I've set up some basic animations of Tiggy for testing purposes. In this image he's rubbing his tummy, indicating he's hungry. He also has an idle animation where he kind of stands there and looks around a bit, and a tired animation where he bobs his head as if he's about to fall asleep.

Finally, the organ kit. A basic version of what is found in C2, different organs will take damage when specific chemicals are too high. For example in this image Tiggy has been hungry for a little while and as a result his intestine and body in general have taken a small amount of damage. Currently the damage organs take is set quite high for testing, but that'll be reduce later so Norns don't die in several minutes from basic needs.

Speaking of dying, when an organ reaches zero a message is displayed telling the user the Norn has died.

So what's next?

The next major chunk of work is going to be animating. I want to make it so he will play with a toy when you click the play button at the bottom of the screen. I also want the 'food' button to drop a piece of cheese to the side and have code that will make him walk up and eat it if his hunger level is high enough and the food is close enough. He will already reject feeding if his hunger is low.

I want him to fall asleep if his tiredness and sleepiness is too high.

Tickling and slap animations for the Hand.

A death animation.

Behind the scenes this will mean a more complex rig, specifically more advanced facial expressions.

Pretty up the kits so they don't look so much like prototypes.

The ability to select at least two Norns. This will allow the use of an owners kit where the player can name the Norn.

And a whole heap of other stuff I haven't even thought of. Any suggestions for what people would like to see implemented next?