Sketchbook #005 - Chapter 2 Pt.1 (Patreon)

New chapter, new mechanics. How were the levels for Chapter 2 planned? Partially through jotting down ideas...

WARNING: CHAPTER 2 SPOILERS!

Turn back if you haven't played the alphas yet and don't want to be spoiled on the operations!

Kobold MediTech cannot be held responsible for any emotional damage resulting from the ignorance of this warning.

2-1

The first operation of 2-1 has several design points:

Skill check. There's nothing majorly new here. Instead, there's a combo of stuff you've seen before. Multitasking is emphasized.

COND threat. The implant is "fragile" and thus has a very low amount of COND. Triaging is more demanding, especially with the double Vitals modifier.

Some more animal anatomy. Chapter 1 was limited in this (ruminant stomach), so the patient being a smaller rodent partially addresses this.

The SMG (Sled MiniGame) shown is not actually in the game. At least, not yet. Instead, SMG::CALIBRATE is reused; there isn't really enough time to tutorialize a new SMG.

Storywise, Conway and Emily are mostly spectating.

2-2

2-2 involves installing the LYNX-01, the procedure of which is roughly based off of real-life cochlear implant surgery.

Here's where the first "real" weird animal anatomy operation occurs. Camera movement is introduced, allowing you to pan your view side-to-side to see the entirety of the giraffe's neck. (Though in these notes, you might notice I initially ruled it "X no, for now".)

(Originally, camera movement was meant to be introduced in 1-4, the tumor mission (which was originally 1-3), but I deemed that too many new things to learn all at once.)

The concept of attachments for the Driver is also introduced, starting with the drill bur. Most of the work for 2-2 was on implementing this new Driver mode.

Finally, SMG::SYNC is introduced, though it only uses 2 of 3 possible parameters.

You get to spend a bit of time with Emily in this one, as she replaces Spark as your Technician.

2-3

Compared to 2-1, this operation is more on the "puzzly" side. It was conceived to compliment the story, as Conway is subbing for Brooke. The story calls for him giving you increasingly unhinged instructions until he eventually has a sort of crashout, after which Brooke easily covers for him.

This is achieved through "riddly" instructions. Brooke's instructions, by comparison, are straight to the point.

In the bottom-right, you can see some notes for future operations spilling over.

2-4

This operation is meant to introduce CE:ROM's take on Triage. Originally, it had one organic-focused and one synthetic-focused patient. The former would also introduce burns.

The first actual implementation of 2-4 instead featured a turtle whose shell you had to reform, and the giraffe from 2-2, whose neck you had to heal and implant to repair.

It was a colossal mess, with something like more than half a dozen new mechanics being introduced and explained. (Multipatient triage, species crossmatching, 3D scanning, 3D printing, 3D graft securing, carapace shell tying, toxic electronics vapors, ...)

I scrapped it (saving the majority of the pieces for later operations) and redid it, while adding a "bonus" third patient to introduce the DUCC. (Defibrillator / Unmanned Chest Compressor) What better time to introduce a defib than during a multipatient ER scenario?

Also shown is the sketch for the camera movement UI. I more or less went with the first version I designed (A 8-direction "radial" menu with a minimap in the center).

Fun fact, camera movement used to be continuous; in other words, you could very granular-ly move the camera wherever you wanted it within a certain area, much like in Trauma Center. I scrapped that and decided to go with a few pre-defined camera positions. Do you really want to have to wrangle precisely moving a camera around when you really just want to "look over there"?