This is a summary of my earlier musings about hostility and intimacy.It leads to the introduction of attitude which allows an actor to choose actions that make relationships better or worse.
Each item in the gameworld has a list of opportunities. Those are interactions that an actor can do with them. Each opportunity has an intimacy value associated with it. This intimacy value expresses the intimacy of the relationship that is desired to perform this interaction.
Items can be environments, inanimate things and actors.
An object is an item that advertises its list of opportunities to all actors.
Each actor has a relationship with each object which is expressed in a level of intimacy. This level can be positive (friendship), negative (hostility) or neutral (indifference).
About each relationship, every actor has an attitude. This attitude is the way in which the actor plans to continue its relationship: towards more or less intimacy.
Relationships, including their intimacy and attitude, are shared by both members of the relationship. For reasons of simplicity, asymmetrical relationships do not exist in the world of Drama Princess.
Each actor also has a degree of enthusiasm. Very enthusiastic actors will choose opportunities with intimacy level that are far removed from the intimacy of the relationship. If the attitude about the relationship is positive, the actor will choose an opportunity of a much higher intimacy level. And vice versa. A less enthusiastic actor will be more careful and choose opportunities that are only slightly higher or lower than the intimacy level.
Every interaction impacts the level of intimacy of the relationship. Choosing an opportunity with a lower intimacy level than the relationship will decrease the relationship. And vice versa.
The bigger the difference between the enthusiasm values of the actors, the bigger the chance of a break-up. At least in good relationships. In bad relationships, there is no chance for a break-up. The relationship will simply get worse as actors keep interacting with each other.
Seperation of an actor from an object will cause its relationship with this object to slowly evolve towards neutral. I.e. a bad relationship will get better, a good one worse.
Shock is an external event that can cause a break-up, disregarding the level of relationship.
A break-up resets the relationship to neutral intimacy. When the relationship is more or less neutral, the attitude can keep changing. Only when the relationship has started to develop in a certain direction, will the attitude be fixed in that direction.
Posted on July 3, 2006 at 11:29 pm
Their level of enthusiasm makes actors more or less compatible with each other. An actor with high enthusiasm will always seem to push the relationship a bit too hard for an actor with low enthusiasm. The relationship’s intimacy would still improve after a positive interaction but the risk of break-up is as big as the difference between levels of enthusiasm.