It''s no surprise that in MMORPGs, when you exit the game, the game continues on. But what would happen if that was the case in a single player RPG, or even a long-term strategy game for that matter? Imagine installing an RPG with a simplified original quest of rescuing the princess. You start working on getting your character''s stats improved and do some exploration. You just finished buying some supplies in one of the outermost cities not far from an evil town when your world is shattered. "It''s time to go," you hear from downstairs. You exit the game and go on vacation with your family. A week later you return (having slightly improved your real life... let''s say... climbing skills ) and start up your game. It takes a longer time than usual to start up but sure enough you soon see your character just as you''ve left him. But wait, that''s not the town you remember being in. In fact, it''s not even a town any more. It''s rubble! What happened?! You find an active, friendly town after a long journey and a few conversations later you learn that several of the outer cities were destroyed by evil forces. In fact, of the 8 cities on the continent only 2 are left. All that because you went on vacation? If you haven''t derived it already, the game plays in "real-time." The extra time it took for the game to load was the simulation of the week that "wasn''t" played. Just because the player wasn''t there to participate didn''t mean that time stopped. Would this be a good or bad thing? Is it fair for the computer to help you either win or lose the game when you''re not using it? What would happen if you started up your game again only to stand in a town where everyone''s celebrating that evil has been vanquished from the face of the Earth? Thanks for your 8 minutes of gametime. Game over.

I think you should still give the player a chance to restart from the last time they saved, the setup works well if you''re gone for a day or two, but what happens if you come back to the game after a month or a year?

I don''t like the idea of gametime being tied to realtime; if I go on vacation, I don''t want to come back with the course of the game materially affected.

However, I think you''ve hit on something here. What if when going between "levels", some time elapsed, and things you had done to the world caused changes during the interim? Like, you break a window of a house; you complete the level and a cutscene tells you that a few days passed. Next time you pass the house, some guy is repairing the window. Or if the house is completely destroyed, perhaps after a year or so moss is growing on it.


Don''t listen to me. I''ve had too much coffee.

I really don't like the ideea of a computer playing the game for me. I mean, I like a good sim as much as the next guy, but I want to make at least some decision. It really wouldn't be funny if my avatar gets killed while I'm at the movies.

Anyway, in my opinion it's just not worth it in singleplayer. Because you'll have to double development time. Besides creating content for the playing part, you'll have to create a very believable simulation algorithm, which is not easy.

A good ideea though. One use that comes to mind is allowing avatars in current MMORPGS to do something harmless, safe, and which would give him a very small bonus (dunno, making arrows or potions, or studying spells, or training). But care has to be taken to balance this, so that it's way, way, way less usefull than real playing. Also allow this when the player IS in the game, but would rather waste his time chatting/watching the spectacular environment you created for him .

EDIT : I'm a newb, I have to get used to the forum commands.
Oh, and players will cheat by changing the computer time/date, if singleplayer.

[edited by - Ayr on July 22, 2002 7:05:28 PM]

I had a similar thought at one point. However not for an RPG type game, it was for a extreamly large scale strategy game. Instead of a normal real-time fast paced RTS game, there would be some kind of world map in which you could command your men. Rather than sitting down for a few hours and playing the game it would be like an application that you could open up, issue a few orders half way though writing a letter in Word or something. The game would run on a large server somewhere and it could interact with your normal like similarly to that Majestic game (whatever happened to that thing?) So if you had a Java enabled cell phone you could receive warnings of invading troops or rerout your men for a change of strategy.

I think this type of game would be quite interesting for some one who doesn''t have a ton of time to play games, but is still interested in a little bit of daily distraction. Plus winning a war after 3 months of "battles" can be quite an awsome feeling, I''d imagin.

-SniperBoB-

I think the reason for savegames in the first place is to make sure the player is aware of everything if you wanted to you could leave all your games on for ever and just hop on the computer and just contiue playing it where your charcter is waiting for you and it would be the same thing except you could die and in a save game you can''t.

effects of time passing are nice fixing stuff and grass growing mowing lawns that kind of stuff.

the only really good use of time passing in a savegame i beliave is present in seaman where his oxygen food and heat drops when you are away. that makes him like a real pet(he is there even if you aren''t)

so your saying apply tamagochi principles to a more complex goal oriented game you spend $50 on and get the enjoyment from playing the game not taking care of it.

may be a good idea on a self contained portable system which the player can caryy around, but basically its just a gimmick. real life weather could be spiffy (ie like in some flight sims (and i think black and white as well) which get real weather reports and then generate the correct weather in game).

seaman was worthy of this as well since it was to be a life sim where you take care of a "living" leanord nimoy in a freaky fish body.

go with time passing and effects that happen only while you play. taking such control away from the player means you are forcing him to play which is quite bad. i know i would hate to spend hours progressing through a great plot then find out the plot decided to go on ahead without me. the major flaw of the problem. to me a good rpg has a great plotline to go along with gameplay. you get rid of that quickly if you have a persistent world as you suggest.

Ayr, you''re right about the cheating. That''s the only thing I haven''t thought of a solution for.

As for the time dilemma, perhaps there could be a maximum amount of time that passes. If you''re away for a month maybe the game changes only 3 days. But most likely the best option is to make it an option.
While I''m away :
- Play game real-time
- Play game up to X days
- Do not play game
Other advantage to this is that if you know there will be a battle or something in 5 days then this way you won''t miss it.

But personally I do like the idea of things changing while I''m away. I would imagine that''s how I would play the game. I''d like to start a game where there''s been news since I last played it, kind of like waking up and opening up the newspaper.

In fact, if you want to push it a bit further, imagine the time away from the game as the time you''re sleeping. No one is going to make a game where you watch yourself sleep for 8 hours so this could be somewhat of the equivalent.

Personally I think this would work well in something that was not so much an RPG, but more of a "medieval sim"... a toy rather than a game, along the lines of Sim City or something. You''d fire it up every so often to see what had changed and what new events had arisen for you to deal with. If there was a decent system that auto-generated quests and events, and assured that things tended to work in a cycle so that the world was never reduced to ashes and dust, it could be quite cool.

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How exactly would it work though, you''re missing the technical aspects.

If I quit the game, turn my computer off and turn it on 3 months later, how can the game honestly be effected?

If it all just suddenly changes when you load it up again, its not a sim so much as it is a random event generator really...



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