Design document

Design document TODO

One of the primary priorities of Cataclysm Bright Nights is fun.

Gameplay is more important than realism.

Realism isn't inherently wrong. But it often comes at the expense of the new player experience. So the fundamentals of Game design are a priority for Cataclysm Bright Nights

There are six principles applied for content created or ported from CDDA:

1.Things that are useless should be either made useful or removed.

2. Weird/wonky mechanics should be either reworked or removed.

3.Each mechanic/item/monster/etc. should fill its own niche or have its own purpose, e.g. there shouldn't be many different effects that penalize the character in the same way, or a dozen of guns that differ only in name and +1 to damage value. If such variety is desired, it should be relegated to mods.

4. The gameplay should be less about pressing buttons and spending time in submenus and more about interacting with the surrounding world and progressing (achieving results).

5. Different play styles should be balanced against each other, with their own upsides and downsides, so that you can actually choose a different play style and have it not suck just because "realistically, firearms are better than everything else", but actually be playable and have a different feel to it.

6.Rewards should be proportional to amount of effort spent on achieving them (e.g. weapon with harder craft recipe, or one that requires rarer components, or rarer ammo, should deal more damage).