Colonists are fickle creatures. You must take good care of them or they’ll starve to death. Or join a cult and start murdering for Quag’garoth (as one typically does when left without supervision).
What I’m getting at is that we’ve got quite a challenge in making colonists act like little virtual people. Part of how colonists end up acting is up to how the player manages then, as it should be in this business of interactive media. But the larger part of the iceberg (to our perspective) is making this possible to say nothing of engaging in the first place, and that’s up to how we hook up the pipes behind the scenes to enable colonists to express varied, interesting behaviour based on stimuli which can be observed and often manipulated by the player.
Fishpeople hate landmines.
A sprawling example I’ve been dealing with lately is how to make colonists respond to danger. Fight or flight, easy, right? Well …
