FPS: first person social-interaction?

Impossible · 2002-11-23T02:06:14

With the announcement of the GeForce FX Nvidia has of course released a bunch of cool demos showcasing it''s capablilities. One of these is the Dawn demo. For a while, Nvidia and ATI have been releasing demos featuring one really high detailed character and perhaps a very simple background and the general consensus is that they look amazing. But then people ask "why don''t with see games with characters of this detail." My idea is that almost all of the major PC and console genres are games that either require a lot of characters on screen (RTS, sports), very fast movement and complex environments (FPS, 3D Platformer''s). The only games that have approached this kind of detail are fighting games and volleyball games, because they can get away with minimal detail in the environments, and usually only have 2-4 characters on screen, but these genre''s don''t exist on the PC. If adventure games where still popular they could get away with it, and Residental Evil (basically an adventure game) has character''s with this detail, but once again, you aren''t seeing those on the PC. I''m thinking that games that focus on social interaction (ala the Sims) would benefit a lot from this because they are more character based than environment based. The problem with the sims is that it is very abstract and you have to deal with a lot of boring mundane tasks. This doesn''t really appeal to hardcore gamers for obvious reasons. The idea I have is a social interaction game that''s a lot more cut throat. Instead of trying to get the most kills or frags you''re trying to get the most influence\power and money\material items, to make it more interesting you can only do this through illegal means, so effectively you have a freeform crimeboss game. Combat would still be there, ala a normal action game, but constantly fighting would get you nowhere. Most of the game would be focused on making deals and not getting caught. One of the problems with doing a game like this is that there hasn''t been a decent conversation system to support the gameplay. Currently I''m thinking a information based system, where events in the game a literally treated like objects that are traded between characters would work well. So, for example, if you kill someone, you have get the information object that you killed person X. If you give this information to the police, you end up in jail, if you give it to your boss he''ll give you money, etc. The cool thing about this system is that you could come up with fake events (lies) and pass that information around. Telling a bad lie with lots of holes could get you in trouble (or be seen as a joke), telling a good lie could change everyone else''s perception of what happenening and be accepted as the truth. I think the information system will work because there are only a limited amount of actions a character can perform in the game. The problem with the system is I can''t think of a really good intuitive interface for this. Maybe something along the lines of a "trading system" with a way to search or browse information based on category, time, event type, etc. The total amount of relavant information at any point in the game should be pretty low, so it shouldn''t be a big problem. The other aspects of the game would be pretty straightforward, it would rely on a pretty complex relationship system. In order to build relationships you would of course have meet people, do favors, etc. You would have a number of social actions you could perform at any given point depending on your relationship with that character and they would be performed in similar ways as combat, in fact, combat should probably be treated as just another social action. This system could (in theory) be extended to other games, including games that don''t have combat to spice things up. It would be interesting to see a political game or a dating sim that was set up in a similar way.

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by Impossible November 20, 2002 09:35 PM

11 comments, last by Impossible 22 years, 1 month ago

Impossible

Author

134

November 22, 2002 01:22 AM

I''d love to see it, considering I''ve been planning on implemented something similar for a while now.

Sean99

122

November 22, 2002 09:57 PM

Is it ok if I email it to you?

Sean

"we need common-sense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God. And those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench." - GW Bush"no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." - Article VI of the US Constitution.

Impossible

Author

134

November 23, 2002 02:06 AM

Yes, but don''t use the email address listed, use either scottan@telocity.com or smanders@uiuc.edu. I should really update that...

FPS: first person social-interaction?

This topic is closed to new replies.

Popular Topics

Recommended Tutorials

FPS: first person social-interaction?

This topic is closed to new replies.

Popular Topics

Recommended Tutorials

Reticulating splines