The Fog

Creeping Fog in the Local Maps

A major mechanic in the game will be the Fog. Though never explained in explicit terms within the game narrative itself this malevolent force which has caused a worldwide apocalypse is cause by the very technology which the survivors rely on - the engine of their train. In their attempts to flee from the Fog which causes everything it envelops to decay, they simply bring it down upon themselves.

In game play terms what this means is that the longer the players remain within a local map instance the more Fog will gather, rolling in from the direction they arrived from and causing damage to their health, tools and the train cars if they remain within it.

Mechanically this will work simply by having a counter on each local map starting from zero and going up to 100%. As the counter reaches 10% increments a visual effect showing the Fog creeping in from the edge of the map will become more prominent. The grid tile objects would have a variable which would determine the 'strength' of the fog over that tile, informing both the visual effect and the effect on any Character, Tool, NPC Animal or Train Car on that tile.

The leading edge of this fog would be two tiles 'deep', and be at a 'strength' of 10%. Each tier after that would then be 10% stronger and also two tiles 'deep'. The leading edge of the fog would not stop at the opposite side of the map from where it started and instead continue, with any new 'tiers' after the tenth 'tier' also being at 100%.

Fog Speed
The rate at which the fog would advance is determined by the amount of time we intend players to spend within a single local map instance. During initial planning this is currently slated as 30 minutes, after which the Fog should have reached the opposite side of the map and be growing 'thicker' the entire time.

The intent with this would be that the players would need to be constantly moving the Train forward in order to keep it out of the fog, and without maximising their efficiency (or even if they do maximise it) would at the very least take light damage from the leading edge of the Fog as it catches up.

Damage to Characters from Fog

If a Character spends time on a grid tile which has a 'fog strength' above 0% they will take Health damage. The amount of damage they take over time from the Fog would be determined by the strength of the fog, with 10% being fatal from full Health in about 5 minutes and 100% being fatal from full Health in about 60 seconds.

This would literally just be the amount of damage being inflicted over time increasing in increments which would match a 60 second reduction in the time to kill.

Damage to Tools and Train Cars from Fog

When a Character spends time on a grid tile which has a 'fog strength' about 0% any Tools they are carrying will take a hit to their condition at a rate roughly a quarter of the speed that fog harms players.

That is to say: With the fog at 10% strength it would take about 20 minutes of exposure to completely degrade a tool from 100% to 0%. This might seem like a long time but is set high due to the fact that if/when players are caught in the fog they will most likely need to be using their Tools, inflicting damage to their condition, in order to escape the fog. As such the damage rate from the fog would need to be lower in order to give those players an actual chance of escape.

The Train Cars, however, would receive damage at a rate roughly half of what the Characters do - going from 100% condition to 0% condition in 10 minutes at 10% fog strength. This time is lower than the one for Tools as it would be expected that players would be constantly repairing the Train Cars and attempting to get them moving. While not as fast as the rate at which the Fog will kill a Character, this still instills a sense of urgency as if the Train breaks down completely the players will be stuck in the fog and receive a game over as they all die.

Long Term Effect of Creeping Fog on Local Maps

After the players have passed through a local map it will no longer be randomly generated if/when they return to it and instead will load the previously existing map layout and assets from a saved file. The exception would be the Level Gate Exit requirement, which would reset in some fashion.

Part of the reason for having persistent Local Maps is that the fog will be doing long term damage over time and eventually render all the Local Maps barren & lifeless to force the players into the end-game state.

Each Local Map will have parameters held by some sort of Manager which will determine how this takes place over time. Once a map has been visited and, regardless of the actually density of the fog within the Local Map while players were present, been enveloped by the fog, it will suffer permanent damage.

The manager will have four parameters which track the damage being done to the map: current degradation, degradation minimum, degradation tiers and time spent on map.

Whenever the players transition out of a LocalMap and the map data is saved for later retrieval on a return visit, the time spent on map is used to calculate a value to be assigned to current degradation (cDeg), ranging from 1-10. Whenever players transition into a map which already has been visited the degradation tier (dTier) is increased by 1, maxing out at 10.

If players return to a map cDeg is used to modify the assets which are loaded from the saved configuration of the LocalMap.

Quantity of resources such as wood, fish and berries

Quantity of resources available from animal NPCs and the maximum health/damage of those NPCs (they are weaker but provide less nourishment)

Visual palette for environment assets matching the cDeg.

Whenever the players enter a LocalMap all previously visited LocalMaps have their cDeg updated, lowering by 1. However, the cDeg cannot be low than the dTier, representing irrecoverable damage.

At 10 cDeg a map spawns no useable resources and the Level Exit Gate will always require a resource sacrifice to open.

Eventually every map would become barren and unuseable and the players would not have enough of the required resource to escape the map, leading to the End Game Scenario.

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