¶ Dev Spotlight on NDCowdy!
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Writer Implementation CPD Daddy |
History with the Team
- Writer and Implementation for Sim Settlements 2, Chapter 2
Dev Q&A
¶ Where are you from?
- North Yorkshire, UK.
¶ What other hobbies do you have?
- Outside of playing and modding computer games, I spend a lot of my free time creating, running, and occasionally even getting to play, tabletop roleplay games. Although, in recent years those tabletops have tended to be virtual ones, which has rather blurred the lines between the two pastimes.
¶ What other games do you play?
- My favourite games tend to be open-world RPGs and strategy games. Over the years my gaming hours have always been dominated by Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, with a notable mention for Mount & Blade: Warband, the only game other than Fallout 4 in which I’ve broken the thousand-hour mark.
¶ What is your favorite thing to work on for SS2? and why?
- My favourite part of working on SS2 has to be writing the Commonwealth Police Department. From when I was first given their brief outline I had a huge amount of freedom in creating those characters and their storylines. Building their world in words was great, but what really made it special was seeing all the other people in this amazing team adding their unique parts. The editing, coding, casting, voice acting, sound processing, artwork, outfits, implementation, set dressing, animations, effects, testing, and all the other things that need doing behind the scenes to make ideas come to life. Seeing those first few fully completed scenes play out in-game was an incredible feeling.
¶ What was the most difficult thing you worked on in SS2
- That would be the disease database. What seemed like it would be a simple bit of background detail, turned out to be a much more involved task.
There are forty different diseases that SS2 makes use of. Each needed a summary, a detailed description, information about treatments, and finally a vaccine or equivalent.
The real-world illnesses needed researching, condensing down to readable size, and tweaking to fit the mechanics. Then with the Fallout illnesses, they mostly have just a name, a possible source, and a stat effect to work from, so believable details needed inventing from scratch.
But I was really happy with the end result, especially after I got to work with Cynical_Bounce to include comments that fit the characters who are supposed to be writing them.
Hopefully, some players will actually find them and read them.
¶ Do you have a story about working on SS2 that you'd like to share?
- My first writing task for the team was to create the stage acts. But at the time, I, like most of the Sim Settlements community didn’t know that we were about to be treated to SS2. I was writing them thinking they would be part of SS1 and Conqueror, so there are various points in the performances and dialogue that allows for the fact that there might be raiders amongst the audience and that the protagonist might be running a gang. Here’s hoping we can make it all fit properly again in Chapter 3.
¶ What's next for you?
- Currently scribbling away for more Chapter 3 content.
Some of My Work