ya damn kids

[alenxa_classic]

My Virtual Villagers traumatized me earlier this evening. I had set the game running and quit it to do other stuff, something I don't usually do. When I fired it back up, I had just enough time to notice that my most elderly elder had died...right in the spot where the kids like to gather for games of tag.

...Yeah. All 20-odd of them. It was a very bad day to be Tuana.

There was no time to assign any adults to burial duty; I'd just have dropped them on a kid and triggered either story time or lessons, both of which take place in the same spot. I just sat there, horrified, until one of the adults waded into the commotion and brought out the remains. It didn't even occur to me until hours later that I could probably have picked up the little skeleton and moved it somewhere else. Anywhere else.

:shudder: Not letting it run while closed anymore. Like, ever.

Comments

[wayens.livejournal.com]

You play Virtual Villagers? lol I came across it last year at GDC and tried it out. They actually die pretty fast if left alone. Definitely not recommended to have a closed run. D-definitely.

(AI's pretty good if they do their own cleanup though, that I didn't expect. lol)

[alenxa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know they're incredibly stupid and death-prone starting out. People do still let the game run at that stage and then make whiny posts about having to start over. But once you get to the point where you've got like 80 people, and group A will fish and group B will do science without having to be told, it's usually OK to let it go for a while. The one I'm playing is VV2, so there are randomly appearing collectibles to watch for and alert the kids to pick up, but sometimes scanning the map and watching the Fish Parade gets a little boring. So, for the first time in the 63-game-year history of the tribe, I left it running. And found out why I don't.

The workings of the AI when it comes to villager death are sometimes screwy. If you haven't bought cultural advancements, at least in VV1, they won't necessarily bury their dead. Once they do, you can make the living "Honor the dead," sort of pacing around the graveyard; I have one villager (and only one) who always gets stuck flickering in the same spot halfway through the rites. But the real freaky stuff is what happens in the online versions on Shockwave.com, where it doesn't allow you to buy the cultural advancements. If you drop skeletons on each other, the game tries to make them interact...complete with voice. And once in a while on online VV2, if you can keep a game going long enough, all your headstones will disappear at startup and the dead people will be walking happily around the village. A few minutes later, they turn into headstones wherever they happen to be. Even in the swimming pool. Somehow I don't think the online version was designed to be run for very long...

[wayens.livejournal.com]

Creepy! I'll go for the online version. ;p