It seems to me that the pinnacle of computer roleplaying games in our age will be the unification of roleplaying and simulation. We used to talk a lot about the Holy Grail of CRPG''s, and how it would simulate a living world that reaches far into the cookie jar of immersiveness. We even discussed methods in which this might be achieved using our current level of technology. I was always keenly interested in this idea because I would like to be a fan of CRPG''s like I was many years ago, but with maturity comes higher standards, and the market still caters to teenagers and very young adults — unless you''re a sports gamer, of course. Which I am not. Lately, I''ve been playing a lot of strategy games — mostly Age of Mythology — because a) they''re among the few games that run well on my Athlon 550, and b) they concentrate on the gameplay elements I like, which are strategy (obviously) and cooperation. When it comes to roleplaying, a computer is the last thing on my list of viable gamemasters. I''ve got friends and a dinner table for that sort of thing. For the record, I''m not big on MMORPG''s either. They''re basically the same as single-player CRPG''s, but with a lot of morons thrown into the mix. I am a veteran of the Big Three, so I know what I''m talking about. Last night, I had one of those moments of clarity that are so seldom in a developer''s life and yet so cherished that we base our very practice on them. It occurred to me: a roleplaying game is basically a story with two or more sides, and you get to play out your role as one of the actors. Are strategy games not the same thing except on a higher level? Rather than play the pawn, you play the grand-high poomba who leads all the pawns. In the end, it breaks down the same: it''s a story, it has at least two sides, and the goal is to see how it ends. The other thing that occurred to me in this coveted moment was that strategy games basically have the most advanced AI in the industry. We''ve been talking for years about how NPC''s lack the AI that we''d like to see, but I think we were barking up the wrong tree. I think what we really meant was, games lack the level of responsiveness we''d like to see. Such a general term can refer to any aspect in which the game reacts expectedly and realistically to user-input. But I digress. Here is my proposal: It should be possible to create a game world that essentially funcions like a strategy game. The highest agents (we''ll call them kingdoms) are controlled by CPU agents and operate about as you''d expect from a strategy game; in other words, their primary objectives are survival, expansion, and conquest. They possess and are capable of acquiring new territory, armies, and resources. They can be divided into several levels of control if that''s your thing, like the military chain-of-command. The precise mechanics of it are subjective, but the general idea is that you''re basically making a really big, large-scale, slow-motion strategy sim. At the very lowest level, you have the player. He functions as a pawn, the lowest level of unit in the grand scheme of things. To the CPU agents, he is essentially nothing — until he builds a name for himself, of course. At various points in the game, the player is capable of inserting himself into the mix — becoming a piece on the chessboard, if you will — and influencing the tides of war. Battles may be won or lost according to the player''s actions, and this will cause the CPU agents to rethink their own high-level strategies — which, in turn, affects the lower level mechanics, eventually spilling down into the player''s field. Such a system could easily be run on a modern computer, if it could be developed. The most important aspect is developing very, very good agents for your high-level AI. The rest of the game is basically your run-of-the-mill RPG, with whatever features you see fit for a game of its class. In the beginning, it would probably look identical to any other CRPG. After a few dozen hours of play, however, the player should start to notice that his actions are having a direct affect on the world — and this is what every gamer wants to see. I have been analyzing the mechanics required for such a game, but I have a lot of work yet to do. I may post more on this later. In the meantime, I''d like to hear other people''s ideas. Corellaries: Multiplayer is, of course, the next step. Theoretically, it should be possible for the player to acquire a level of power equivalent to the highest CPU agents — the Dictator, if you will. In practice, I would disallow such a thing in a multiplayer setting, but for single-player I think it would be that extra milestone a player needs to keep going for another 10 or 20 hours. Regardless of how masterfully the agents are executed, the basic game itself has to be good. A strategy theme must be apparent early in the game so the player knows what''s going on and why the game is better than others of its kind, but most importantly the gameplay has to be rock-solid at the lowest level. This is entirely subjective and will not be discussed in this post. (Personally, I''m akin to open-ended games like Daggerfall and Fallout.)

eyup.

I had the same idea about two years ago, but didn`t have the desire or the coding skills to carry it through.

~V''lion

eyup.

I had the same idea about two years ago, but didn`t have the desire or the coding skills to carry it through.

~V''lion