Societal Needs - Revisited

A while back I posted about what society needs organized into their respective priorities. In terms of the whole concept, the categories are vague enough to work, but when used to organize specific resources, they tend to breakdown. In summary, I want to simplify the model. Even though doing so seems counter-intuitive, the reasoning is that by simplifying categories which are already vague, each category can be implicitly broken down into their exact components later on. Instead of making many categories that could potentially overlap, fewer categories can end up being more specific.


Needs such as work or purpose can be combined with exercise.
Risk, safety and regulation, and social security can be worked into a tax category (along with income or property taxes).
The need for company, religion (or charity), education, and the arts can be combined into one social category.

The new breakdown reads as follows:



Primary - each primary need must be available as an easily accessible, unpolluted, and temperate function of life.

• Water
• Food
• Shelter

Secondary - although not absolutely necessary, providing for secondary needs allows small groups to exist in one location over a long period of time.

• Clothing
• Work
• Electricity
• Recreation
• Waste

Tertiary - these needs allow for many large groups to coexist with others harmoniously, and for even denser urban areas to function over longer periods of time.

• Goods
• Transportation
• Communication
• Healthcare
• Taxes
• Social
• Savings

Expressed as a budget, with resources allocated to each need, one would use their income to take the difference, and then arrive at their savings.

Winter 2016 Projects

I am going to finish my tower defense game.

The game lacks a unique punch; I thought the salvage mechanic would be enough but since some time has passed, I can clearly see that yes, it is unique, but not enough so to totally differentiate itself from other generic games. In summary, I'm going to finish out the salvage mechanic in a much simpler way than previously planned.

And then I'm going to add multiplayer.

Yes, that's right. I've done it once before, on a prototype game that never saw the light of day, so I know it's possible.  I'll have to experiment with Android's platform to determine the viability of this idea, but I imagine, at least on a local basis, that it shouldn't be too difficult.

Let me elaborate: I want Tower Seven to have the ability to put the player up against the computer, or up against another human. The other person will have to be in proximity - I'm really not comfortable with a wide-area networking solution yet. The players use resources not only to build towers, but also to send units of their own towards the other player - much like the mechanics of a versus Wintermaul in Warcraft 3. Players send units at each other until one falls behind and gets overwhelmed.

If it's easy enough (it won't be), I might also add cooperative play.

Okay, so maybe it's not that innovative, but I am going to try this. If it's totally unfeasible, I'll come back and own up to learning more.

Prospects!

I've been working on a game currently called Panopticon, which is about a guy in a special prison. This prison works primarily through surveillance, and only punishes the player for smoking. It's a simply 2.5d platform game, but there's good narrative and environmental appeal. It's also my first game in Unreal 4, and I'm slowly making friends with the blueprint system.

Fortunately, I haven't done too many job applications yet - I'm not burnt out. I really want to be good enough at my work that people recommend me, so if I do apply for a job, I can at least get an interview. If I burn myself out just doing job applications, I feel sorry for my first employer.

Also, my work in the foreseeable future seems to be mostly virtual-reality-related. When I was much younger, this was my dream job - inventing the ultimate virtual-reality system and games. I still want to do this, but I also feel that my education hasn't been directed towards being on the leading edge of that technology. At this point, and despite my reservations, I am grateful to have gone back to school to really build skills in programming, design, and using game engines to make experiences.