Difficulty axes

since 0.5.0 Simulation, audio and XR

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Difficulty is four numbers rather than a name a genre has to interpret: how much the player is hurt by, what their own attacks are worth, how quickly the opposition reacts, and how much of whatever help the genre offers is switched on. A game reads the axes it has a use for and ignores the rest.

Step 1: Scale a hit by a difficulty #

damageTaken is a plain multiplier on whatever a genre already computes.

/// A hit a genre would deal at `normal`, scaled by one difficulty.
static double _incomingDamage(Difficulty at, double baseAmount) =>
    baseAmount * at.damageTaken;

Step 2: List the four that ship #

Difficulty.offered is gentle, normal, hard and punishing. A game free to invent its own difficulty is not limited to these four; they are a starting point.

final lines = <String>[
  for (final Difficulty level in Difficulty.offered) _lineFor(level),
];

Step 3: Compare the extremes #

final onGentle = _incomingDamage(Difficulty.gentle, 10.0);
final onPunishing = _incomingDamage(Difficulty.punishing, 10.0);

The same ten-point hit costs less on gentle and more on punishing, because damageTaken is a multiplier and the two settings sit on either side of one.

Step 4: Fight it at each level #

An opponent lunges at a player over and over, and each lunge takes the same ten points off the bar above the player's head, scaled by whichever level is chosen. On gentle it swings slowly and barely hurts; on punishing it swings faster and the bar empties in a few blows. The number that changed is damageTaken and the pace is opponentReaction; nothing else about the fight is different.

// The same ten-point hit as ever, scaled by the level.
_hp -= _incomingDamage(difficulty, 10.0);