Okay, let''s see if we can get some serious RPG-thinking going again ^_^ Introduction I recently lost my position with the programming group I was working with... finished the AI I was supposed to do, and had nothing left there. So now I''m going to return to the holy grail of RPG games: To create a living world, that will automaticly generate quests and events for the player to enjoy, and will in general run as a "real" world would (and yes, I''m hoping to attract Nazrix to this thread as well... I just love his views on annotated objects ^_^ ). Economy Of course, this all sounds easier then it is. It''s not peanuts to create a whole world, and make it seem alive. I''ve psned countless weeks wondering on how to do it... and then I got bored, and player Settlers 2. Bingo. The Settlers is almost a perfect example of a modelled economy in a game. Mines require food, and produce ores. Ores are used to make tools. Tools are used by farmers. Farmers make grain, grain is milled by a Miller, the baker uses the flour to make bread, the miners eat the bread. Cycle complete. All of this would run in the background, probably when the player is Resting or loading a new map. A world without trading is a boring world. Merchants and trade are what make an RPG game tick. It''s often used by Dungeon Masters to base quests on: Caravans that need to be escorted, trade deals that have to be arranged, towns that are cut off from supplied by bandits, mines that are taken over so that there is no more iron, etcetera. This all can''t happen without a sound economy. My current proposal: work with "Factories". A factory can be a Mine (uses Labour, creates Ores (Iron, Gold, Silver) and/or Coal), a Bakery (turns Flour and Water into Bread), a blacksmith (turns Iron and Coal into Weapons and Tools). A Factory requires Labour to be present (ie, a Blacksmith or a Miner), and that the Labour is able to work (has enough food, and is happy and healthy). Each Factory in a city creates something, that is added to the "Town Pool", and requires things, that is added to the "Request Pool". Now, if town A produces Coal and Iron, but has no Blacksmith, and town B has a blacksmith, but no Coal and Iron, they need to trade. But how to do this realistically? Merchants. Each town is assigned a Merchant AI, that can talk with other Merchant AI''s. It can offer goods it has (gold, items that are created in the city), and request other goods. Based on the distance between the towns, a certain price would be added to the Caravan line. As soon as a Coal & Iron line is created to B, the Blacksmith there can produce Tools and Weapons, and town B can trade new things. An example of a quest that could arrise: a Bandit group could randomly appear between town A and B. This means that these two town are incapable of trading. Result: town B no longer gets Iron and Coal. The player enters town B and asks what is going on. The NPC''s tell him "We are not recieving Coal and Iron anymore". Perhaps they can also give the player info on where it is supposed to come from? When the player goes to town A to investigate, he will find the bandits halfway. Kill the bandits, quest solved... Off course, this is just a very basic overview of an Economy system that might work. What I am interested in is, do you think this would work? You don''t think so? How could you make it work then? Or do you think you can add something to this? ^_^ I''m getting a lame typing hand here now... I will soon post the other topics in here I''ve been thinking about as well, mostly AI systems that can control groups, and actually have Avatars in the game: a King, a Knight, a Mayor, a Merchant... and on how I think that, if we implement them to have real power in the game, we can give the player the option to "remove" them and take their place Well, this concludes it for now... I hope I"m not boring everyone ~Maarten

Hmmmz... This now looks like a silly post, with no point to it ^_^ Better post the overview of my plan here:

Overview:

This is how I envision a Freeform RPG game would be.

On the lowest level, there is the player walking around, killing monsters, getting treasure, stealing things, and helping People.

There are also NPC''s walking around, going to ''work'' (just a token, they don''t actually have to do something or produce something... when they are at the location, they produce Labour, and their Factory produces the good. It''s all statistics on the higher levels), buying food at the Bakery, drinking beer at the Tavern, chatting to the player about what is going on. This is where I would just love to implement Nazrix systems

On a little higher level, we would need quests. I mean, walking around killing monsters is fun, but not very rewarding. A quest would be based on either helping a City to regain balance (if a trade route is blocked, they are under attack, etc. etc.), or helping a certain NPC to do his job. There would also be an "Adventurer" factory, that would turn Labour, Weapons and Armor into Treasure on a higher level. On the lower level, where the player is, this means there are adventurers walking around, and who will want help to clear out dungeons. If the Adventurers disappear, the "Adventurer" factory ceases to work, the towns AI Merchant will get nervous, and cry for help to get the Adventurers back.

On an even higher level is the actually trading going on. Town A trades with Town B. If a trade route is gone (like, the player decides to kill all caravans between the two), one of the towns is bound to get in trouble (not enough food coming in?). This would cause a local AI Manager to get upset, and since it is a easy problem to find (the problem is between A and B), it can send Soldiers or Mercenaries to find what is going on. This would be an example of the players actions causing a quest-like reaction: kill your persuers.

Then there are the Manager AI''s. The highest one would be the local King. His tasks are easy: perhaps send a soldier unit to another town to simulate a war. But most of all: raise taxes to buy weapons for new soldiers. Then there is a Knight/Duke AI: he does about the same as the King, only he has to pay taxes to the king. Thus, he will asks taxes from his people, and also has to solve problems in his area: if a certain town looses a traderoute, he has to send soldiers to check. If a certain town is under attack, he will have to defend. THis would also be a great position for a player to be in.

Almost every group would have one manager AI, that has an avatar. For example, take a bandit group. The group just consits of a few bandits with weapons. They aren''t really smart, with just the NPC AI. But their leader is actually an Avatar for a manger AI. This Manager AI has access to more information, and can make choices: ambush the nearby Gold caravan? Kidnap a person? Then, once it has decided on a goal, the NPC ai''s would go and do it.

In conclusion: most of what I am planning is hidden for the player, and only runs during "extra" time. We don''t need a king in another country to plan a war in real time. But, when the player goes to sleep and wakes up, it might be so that the King AI decided to send troops to the city. Now, if the player is actually the local Knight, it is time to ride out at the head of your army! Or if you are a local adventurer: time to hunt down and kill the enemy general, and save the town by yourself (and perhaps earn the rank of Mayor!) ^_^

I''m have been working on something similar for the past 3 years. I''ve got rules in place and have a lot of coding done (as well as simple games based off the overall ruleset).

However, you seem to be taking a macro approach where as I''m taking a micro approach.

You said in your overview, "There are also NPC''s walking around, going to ''work'' (just a token, they don''t actually have to do something or produce something)". What is the point of them working? What reason does the player have to help/kill them if it has no real effect on the world?

I''ve wrestled with these issues for years and realized that trying to write code that macromanages a world is very restrictive and far from the "freeform" game thatI''d intended. As a solution, I''m working on an agent-based system. Each agent is programmed to survive using the worlds simple resources. They can interact, build relationships with eachother, create items and build homes and businesses.

The programming of one agent is pretty complex, but put 10,000 of them in one world and watch ''em go! =)

- Jay

"I have head-explody!!!" - NNY

Get Tranced!

The "factory" also requires Labour. What I mean by not working, its that they don''t literally pick up a piece of iron, a piece of coal, and build a sword.

What the player sees, is a smithy standing in the Blacksmith doing stuff.

As for the part that the macro-engine is interested in: Do we have coal? Do we have iron? Do we have a smithy? Okay, then we create x weapons a week.

Killing the Smithy results in the Blacksmith having no more labour, thus producing no more goods.

quote: Original post by Pouyakatka
What the player sees, is a smithy standing in the Blacksmith doing stuff.

... I think you mean "a blacksmith standing in the smithy". Anyway, it all sounds like a fascinating idea. I just hope the player will be forced to rest at somewhat regular intervals, or the AI management might get ... choppy.

Not really. I mean, I don''t expect a war to break out every 5 minutes or something. While a player is walking around in a town, not much will happen on the Macro scale. It''s usually when the player enters a town, that we need quests to be generated I think

allright so suppose you need chances to process high level game logic every once in a while.. u could have an internal clock counting out the different periods of the day. Much like zelda: majora''s mask, you could notify the players of all the different periods of the day, thus giving you a chance to process high level game logic as quickly as possible. whenever the player clicks the "sleep till rested" button or decides he''s going to rest, or any other time when there''s going to be a pause in the game, certain aspects of high level game logic can be processed.
only choosing certain aspects or to process would be for structure reasons. you don''t want the logic of the game to get all jumpy and create wars everytime the player rests, so having the regular processing intervals (twilight, night time, morning, afternoon, evening) and processing aspects of the logic that need a lil more attention at every chance possible (entering a city, sleeping, travelling on the world map, etc...) then you could keep structure to the game logic while also allowing it to be dynamic



"The human mind is limited only by the bounds which we impose upon ourselves." -iNfuSeD

Something like that would be the best way indeed...

Though I think it might also work to simply track how much gametime has passed between two "calculate moments". Say, if the player missed sleep a day, and went to sleep the next day, just calculate what would have happened the previous day as well...

The trick is, a lot of things happen outside of the players perception, so he wouldn''t notice the "jumpiness" Oh, and wars don''t have to break out often... unless the player is in a frontier area, or has rule over his own piece lang I think :D

I am currently working on a Modern Neo-Fantasy MMORPG, and we have been trying to come up with methods of encouraging socialising amoungst players and trying to create some storylines/quests within the system that are not repetitive or predictable.

We would like to allow players to create their own storylines and quests by perhaps giving them access to NPCs and modifying the game world. However we fear players will abuse this form and have been trying to come up with solutions.

We are currently looking at, once a player reaches a certain level they will have sufficient money and followers/PCs and NPCs to be able to use to make quests. So we will encourage high level players to make their own quests.

This provides a reward system for leveling up as well as allowing players to be put in the role of game master. We're still trying to think up ways of encouraging players to set up the quests since it will cost their character money and time to set it up with no personal gain.

Any input towards this would be appreciated.

Ammendum:

BTW, like you said with merchants we plan on create a world economy where the price of an object in one place is cheaper than than else where. This gives players an insentive to find the cheapest places to buy items plus provides an opertunity for trading.

[edited by - DragonWolf on September 20, 2002 7:42:07 AM]

Well... your post seems to be more a shameless plug of your own system, since it is the opposite of what I am doing (letting players make quests vs letting computer make quests), but hey, I''ve been where you are now (trying to design that ^_^ ).

My solution to your problem: have a real Hiarchy. As in, kings, knights, dukes. Players who level up, can also rise in ranks (higher ranks can promote people to a rank that is lower then their own).

THe Kings would be the Game Admins. If you got a rank, you are also required to spice up the game a bit. So, King A could contact King B, and say "Hey, let''s go to war! That is fun!" "Okay."

Now, King A would contact Duke Alpha, and say to him "Hey! We are in a war! Attack that city! You will get a sack of money." Duke Alpha now has a quest: capture the town. So he will gather his knights, and say "Oi, d00ds! Da Kingy wants us l33t knights to kill of that n00b city! I''ll pay ye''s real g0ld!", and the knights will gather some adventurers in their own towns (the adventurers suddenly notice a sign: "War party needed. Good pay". So all the Adventurer players now have a quest: let''s attack that town, and earn money!!! ^_^

Off coruse, the king needs money in the first place... but he is an admin, so he can spawn it And players who don''t follow the social rules: demote them