What have we been working on?

Last month we did an overview of all the new citizens we added to the world of Doctor Necrosis, including adding dialog options, random small talk, job mechanics, interactions, and schedules based on the day of the week, weather, and time of day. This month we added onto last month’s work by revisiting 13 of those citizens and revamping their sprites, animations, and AI to make them a little more unique. Over the next month, we will be posting social media updates on these citizens so you can get to know them a bit better. So keep an eye out for backstories on:

• The Farmer’s Wife and Son
• Grain Mill Operator
• Farrier
• Tinker
• Miner
• Forrester
• Carpenter
• Wheeler
• Madam Astrid
• The Brewhouse Brothers
• General Store Owner

 

Back at the beginning of the project, we did a very basic implementation of adding pets/companions to the game. Each pet will have its own AI system and special perks/abilities to aid you on your adventure to become the world’s best medical professional.

 

Speaking of pets, these are the real life pets keeping Doctor Necrosis running. Tank is our 6 year old Chocolate Lab/Corgi dufus, Tobias is our 7 year old Maine Coon/Mackerel Tabby “big boy” of the house who thinks he is a prince, and Chell our 4 year old Tortoiseshell Calico and the designated troublemaker of the house. We plan on making sure they all make an appearance somewhere in Doctor Necrosis, but in the meantime, here they are in all of their fuzzy glory.

 

We have continued working on our “medical” research to ensure we are as accurate as possible when it comes to in-game items used for crafting, brewing, or just consuming. This includes acquiring new historically relevant medical books and journals to ensure our game is accurate.

 

What’s Next?

We will continue building out the quest and disease generation and building out the citizens, so we have at least 30 central story citizens and additional background NPCs that will have mini-quests. Adding all of these citizens includes creating schedules, generating quests, crafting storylines, and writing dialog for each one.

We plan for an alpha release by the end of Q1 2021, and we will be releasing updates throughout the entire development process and posting gameplay videos whenever possible.

 

 

Chat with our team and stay updated with the development of Doctor Necrosis on social media:

Discord  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Instagram  |  Youtube

 

What have we been working on?

Last month we did a complete overhaul on the disease generation because the amount of disease variations was becoming overwhelming. You can read more about our overhaul in the December 2020 blog (WARNING: I did math). This month, we continued working on this overhaul by integrating it into the game’s main framework and mechanics.

A couple of months ago, we posted a dev updated about adding dialog options, schedules, and AI to the citizens in the world of Doctor Necrosis, which was a massive step in the right direction. Last time we updated on this we just had 4 citizens partially configured. This month we did a lot more work on the mechanics of the game by adding an additional 23 main storyline citizens! We say “main storyline” because we also plan to add additional NPCs that function as starting points for side quests. During this update, we added 23 citizens, including adding dialog options, random small talk, job mechanics, interactions, and schedules based on the day of the week, weather, and time of day.

What’s Next?

We will continue building out the quest and disease generation and building out the citizens, so we have at least 30 central story citizens and additional background NPCs that will have mini-quests. Adding all of these citizens includes creating schedules, generating quests, crafting storylines, and writing dialog for each one.

We plan for an alpha release by the end of Q1 2021, and we will be releasing updates throughout the entire development process and posting gameplay videos whenever possible.

 

 

Chat with our team and stay updated with the development of Doctor Necrosis on social media:

Discord  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Instagram  |  Youtube

 

What have we been working on?

Last month we gave all the current citizens some dialog options and started working on the actual questing system (which we have exciting plans for the larger quests). Part of the quests is the central part of Doctor Necrosis, which is diseases and how to cure them. Since the beginning, we wanted all diseases to be procedurally generated to maximize the number of diseases a player would have to cure. The plan hasn’t changed, but we have taken a much different approach to it.

Originally, the plan was to have diseases with 2-10 ailments/symptoms. Each symptom would be pulled from a master list of 45 symptoms. Each symptom would have a varying degree of severity depending on where it was selected in the list. Mild diseases would have 2-4 symptoms, Medium would have 5-7 symptoms, and severe diseases or plagues would have 8-10 symptoms. If you’re good at math, then you will start to see the problem here. With 44 ailments and even just selecting every combination of 2 ailments, that comes out to 946, which isn’t bad. The real problem comes from when you start doing all non-repetitive permutations with diseases up to 10 symptoms. Here are the amount of disease possibilities per amount of symptoms:

• 2 Symptoms: 946
• 3 Symptoms: 13,244
• 4 Symptoms: 135,751
• 5 Symptoms: 1,086,008
• 6 Symptoms: 7,059,052
• 7 Symptoms: 38,320,568
• 8 Symptoms: 177,232,627
• 9 Symptoms: 708,930,508
• 10 Symptoms: 2,481,256,778

For everyone currently breaking out their calculators, that’s 3,414,035,482 total diseases! This number seemed a little unreasonable to me, and that’s when we decided to be a little more methodical about how diseases were generated.

For this new method, we separated all the current ailments/symptoms into separate lists depending on the severity and came up with 21 mild symptoms, 14 medium symptoms, and 9 severe symptoms. Then each disease type will have a certain amount of mild, medium, and severe symptoms associated with it which can be seen in the chart below.

	Mild Disease	Medium Disease	Severe Disease
Mild Ailments	2	2	0
Medium Ailments	0	2	1
Severe Ailments	0	0	3
Diseases	210	19,110	1,176
Total	20,496

 

So, in the end, we have a possibility of 20,496 diseases with the current symptom list. While this is a lot less than the original plan, this gives us a better way to categorize all the diseases, make sure players can cure the symptoms they are presented with, and to make sure a mild disease doesn’t have severe symptoms like seizures as one of a disease (that actually happened during our testing of the first algorithm).

 

We have continued working on our “medical” research to ensure we are as accurate as possible when it comes to in-game items used for crafting, brewing, or just consuming. We have added more new items this month into the game and continued to work on how each one is useful to your medical profession.

What’s Next?

There’s still much work to be done on Doctor Necrosis, including adding in 30 central story citizens and additional background NPCs that will have mini-quests. Adding all of these citizens includes creating schedules, generating quests, crafting storylines, and writing dialog for each one.

 

We plan for an alpha release by the end of Q1 2021, and we will be releasing updates throughout the entire development process and posting gameplay videos whenever possible.

 

Chat with our team and stay updated with the development of Doctor Necrosis on social media:

Discord  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Instagram  |  Youtube

 

What have we been working on?

Last month we introduced you to some of the not-so-talkative citizens in the world of Doctor Necrosis. This month, we have been expanding on what the citizens can do, including making them talk your ear off. Well, maybe not talk your ear off, but they do have something to say! We played around with a few ideas for the best way to format NPC dialog for small talk and starting quests, and we think we landed on a perfect yet subtle way to achieve it.

 

We have also been brushing up on our history and “medical” research to ensure we are as accurate as possible when it comes to in-game items used for crafting, brewing, or just consuming. We have added many new items into the game and started working on how each one is useful to your medical profession.

What’s Next?

There’s still much work to be done on Doctor Necrosis, including adding in 30 central story citizens and additional background NPCs that will have mini-quests. Adding all of these citizens includes creating schedules, generating quests, crafting storylines, and writing dialog for each one.

We plan for an alpha release by the end of Q1 2021, and we will be releasing updates throughout the entire development process and posting gameplay videos whenever possible.

 

 

Chat with our team and stay updated with the development of Doctor Necrosis on social media:

Discord  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Instagram  |  Youtube

 

Another month and another update for Doctor Necrosis is ready to be shared! This month we have been focusing on adding more citizens to the town and improving the world to fit their daily tasks like blacksmithing, fishing, farming, etc.

What have we been working on?

Last month we reviewed that most of the citizens will have a set schedule of tasks they perform every day at specific times like working at their blacksmith shop or farm, while others might be more elusive, and you will have to search for them around town. So this month, we have been expanding on that mechanic for more citizens. Let’s introduce you to the new citizens in the world of Doctor Necrosis:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s Next?

There’s still much work to be done on Doctor Necrosis, but we plan for an alpha release by the end of 2020 or Q1 of 2021.

We will be releasing updates throughout the entire development process and posting gameplay videos whenever possible.

 

Chat with our team and stay updated with the development of Doctor Necrosis on social media:

Discord  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Instagram  |  Youtube

Our past couple of months have been amazing, and we have received so much encouragement and support for our project. We have more collaborations planned with other games, and we can’t wait to work toward more!

What have we been working on?

The team at Doctor Necrosis has been hard at work again this month, primarily working on mechanics and improving our wallet linking process to make it a little more streamlined. We have been working on many new items while doing our historical research and have hit 100 unique in game items that will be used for crafting, brewing, or just consuming as is.

One huge aspect of Doctor Necrosis is interacting with the people around town to start quests, gain insight into the quests, or even just to gain some knowledge about the world around you. Every citizen in Doctor Necrosis will be interactable to a certain extent. Some might not know you very well, so they may only speak a couple of words until you strengthen your relationship and others are more outgoing.

We have been working on and improving the mechanics around the citizens so you will be able to interact with them as they live their daily life. Whether that’s running into them in the high market, strolling along the beach with them, or visiting while they are working, or visiting friends and relatives. Most of the citizens will have a set schedule of tasks they perform every day at specific times like working at their blacksmith shop or farm, while others might be more elusive, and you will have to search for them around town, in shops, or possibly lost in the forest.

What’s Next?

There’s still much work to be done on Doctor Necrosis, but we plan for an alpha release by the end of 2020 or Q1 of 2021.

We will be releasing updates throughout the entire development process and posting gameplay videos whenever possible.

 

Chat with our team and stay updated with the development of Doctor Necrosis on social media:

Discord  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Instagram  |  Youtube

 

Before we begin showcasing what the Doctor Necrosis team has been working on over the past month, we want to thank everyone for their support so far. Over the past month, we have been bombarded with support and interest. We are so excited and happy about all the support and encouragement we received from the community!

What have we been working on?

We have been working on a lot of mechanics for Doctor Necrosis to make sure everything functions as it should, and we have been doing a lot of research about various items that have supposed medicinal uses to make sure the game is historically correct. Like did you know they use to grind up human bones to cure epilepsy? If you didn’t, you do now.

Animals and Pets

During our testing of animals and pets, we noticed one thing they had in common, their AI/decision making system wasn’t great. We have fully overhauled the entire pathfinding and decision making system for all the animals and pets in the world of Doctor Necrosis. Pets do a better job of keeping up and following you around, and animals, monsters, and insects are starting to create more complex decisions based on their environment and the doctor’s actions. We have finalized the loot system during the rebuild of the pathfinding system when animals and monsters are killed. Every mob will have its own loot that can be picked up and used during crafting.

What’s Next?

There’s still much work to be done on Doctor Necrosis, but we plan for an alpha release by the end of 2020 or Q1 of 2021.

We will be releasing updates throughout the entire development process and posting gameplay videos whenever possible.

 

Chat with our team and stay updated with the development of Doctor Necrosis on social media:

Discord  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Instagram  |  Youtube