Game Design
Project Highlights
- Quirky game designed with the technology limitation in mind.
- Utilizes the tricky UNIX terminal "curses" library
- Arcadey keyboard "simulation" of a Doctor's job.
One of my earliest coding projects was Terminal Illness, a Linux console game, and even though the technology is relatively low, I tried to create an orginal and unique game within those limits. You play a doctor as he sets casts, saves heart attack victims, chases down morphine theives and more, by pressing keyboard keys in the correct sequence.
Technical Constraints
Due to the fact that I was tasked with creating a game that ran in the Linux console, I was severly limited to what I could pull off. But in a way, I was excited about the limitation: good game design doesn't need flashy graphics or great sound. And with a terminal game there was certainly no chance of graphics, but if I could avoid the scrolling nature that is standard in the console, I thought that I could pull of something interesting. I was quickly pointed to the curses library. Hey - if it was good enough for Rogue, it's good enough for me!"
The curses library, which is terminal control library for Unix, not only allowed me to locate my text where ever I wanted on the console window (thereby conquering the scrolling issue) it also allowed me to use colors and to capture key strokes.
The Hospital
The role of the player is that of an Emergency Room doctor. Patients arrive and are seated in one of five waiting rooms, each plagued with an ailment, and it is up to the player, as a doctor, to save and cure each person. People you cure will help your score, people you ignore will subtract from your points. Either way, as soon as a room empties out, expect more patients to show up quickly, the ER is not a place where things are idle for very long!
Patients and Illness
When new patients are seated into the hospital you are given some time to address their problem; at the beginning there is no rush to help the patient, and this is indicated to the player by displaying the room in Green. Suturing a cut or mending a broken bone are example of these casual ailments. Over time, the patient will slowly grow impatient and the color of the room will turn Yellow and then finally swich to Red. If at this point you do not help the patient another doctor will take care it and you will lose those points for your disregard.
Some ailments, however, are Emergencies and will automatically start in the Red state, like heart attack victims and people dying from bullet wounds. It is often wise to drop what you are doing with a less important patient in order to save these people.
Any patient that dies or is helped by another doctor will hurt your score, while saving and curing people will raise your score.
The Screen
Waiting Rooms
When patients enter the hospital they show up in one of five different rooms. In this shot, the player is currently helping the suture patient in Room 3, indicated by the shape of the box, while a Heart Attack victim is dying in Room 2.
Patient Status
Any time a new patient arrives, a patient status changes, or a patient is cured or dies, a remark about it will be posted in the Status window. This scrolling block of text is also color-coded for ease.
Pressing Keys
Keys that need to be pressed turn Blue. Incorrect key presses will be marked in red and will lower the points gained for the ailment.
Victory
The player wins the game when their Doctor Rating (basically their score), a bar on the far right-hand side of the screen, fills up. You raise this rating by helping out patients. Each time you cure a patient a meter appears to track your progress. Accuracy is the key for a good score, each wrong press will lower the meter and correct keys increase it, and the final score is added to players Doctor Rating.