So my final Australian play through for democracy 3 had me feeling that a feature I had mused on, but quietly and subconsciously thought ‘that would be a nightmare to do’ was actually something it would be almost cruel not to put in, after I had the idea. You can just about spot the feature below:
That row under the chart with the icons is the new feature. Now you may be thinking you’ve seen these before, and you kind-of have, on the polls screen, where everything that happened gets added to this ‘timeline’ under the polling graphs, but this is different for two reasons. Firstly, it’s for a simulation value or situation and ONLY shows up if your monitor resolution is big enough to squeeze it in. Secondly it is actually ‘filtered’ to only show events that directly impacted the item you are looking at.
So in the example shown, there were loads of icons left out because frankly they had no impact on GDP, and here you are looking at the GDP screen, so it makes sense to think that you want a more specific and limited view of what could have caused those graph changes. Now the problem is, as hardcore Democracy players will know, the simulation is not that simple. There are a multitude of indirect effects. For example, tourism affects GDP, and tourism is affected by crime rates and air taxes. So if you change air taxes, that will change tourism which will change GDP, but this is indirect and so you will not see any icons for that here. If you did, the whole filtering idea would break down, because indirectly, everything affects everything. I did worry a bit about this, but decided that actually it would still be helpful. A lot of the major impacts, that would show up on a graph ARE actually direct, and if you want to be reminded that you doubled corporation tax the day that GDP chart nosedived, now you will be.
That’s the last code for the beta though. Now it is in the hands of the mac and linux porting gods, in preparation for beta release.
Those who are excited about Democracy 3 could read this recent rock paper shotgun coverage or maybe this interview from rezzed.