KingPinz, I''m not sure about allowing the user to choose which era to begin in. Picture this:
By default you start as Adam and procreate with Eve to populate the world. Well, some people won''t like that beginning so they decide to start in the year 520BC. You will have had to implement the state of the world for that year. What about 520AD? What if the player wanted to play in the future, say 3012AD? Once again we run into litterally infinate possibilities. This is unfortunately just not possible. Your best bet would be to pick one setting to start in and just let that be that. If you want your player to start as Adam (or Eve for female players) in the Garden of Eden, then make it just that. If the player is dedicated enough to the game maybe one day he''ll make it to the middle ages.

Just Smile and Nod...

Why not just create your own world instead of basing it exactly off this one? You''d have more freedom, you can model a smaller world if you wish, so it doesn''t take 1,000,000 years to see everything, and you don''t have divine intervention as a problem.

I''m, seeing the same problems ah_bk88 mentioned on the sheer number of possibilities. The writing and scripting (scripting is a must for this) is going to be huge if you plan to accomodate all of history. It would be better if the story shipped with the game was much smaller and you simply leave the framework there for other people to mod the rest of history. Also I''m wondering how you intended to transition from Adam and Eve to World War 2 there''s a large gap in there. If we''re talking about history from the first man & woman top present day your talking about writing (roughly) 6000 years of history with unlimited branches. There must be something you left out of the explaination of how the game is going to be written. Also how fast is time going to progress in the game? What I mean is how far will history progress for a player playing straight through history for 1 month (or 1 year, or 10 years)? Because you have to speed game time up really really really fast to get through 6k years.

Let''s look at the size of the game:

OS --> 50 MB (drivers included)
Levels --> 100 MB (start of world, if not randomized)
Textures ed --> 1 GB (all materials must be included in the game, all plastics ed)
Sound/Music --> 10 GB (you''re going to need all styles and a music generator, who can create music of a certain style)
Game itself --> 10 GB (all subroutines to render and calculate the world. Laws of physics ed included)

Well, as you can see, this is not the smallest project to start on.

Just thought of it: because you will need to program you''re own file-access, you''ll have to be able to read FAT-files. Now there''s a problem: there are more than one formats: FAT16, FAT32, NTFS... If every user needs to make a separate partition on his/her HD, I guess not everybody will be happy about it.

Alrightie then, well, I''ll just say something positive this time. IF you get this done, and I say IF, I will applaud you and be a great fan of you. It would be an amazing feat, and an amazing step forward in the games industry.

However, you do need to drop a lot of things. While having windows run on the background may not be the most positive thing to have, it is still more realistic and much better than coding your own OS, and thus doing everything in ASM(And with a game of this size(especially with your dyslexia, I know that a lot of things can be caught out by compilers and such, but one small error not caught can be desastrous), it would be incredibly tedious, hard and insane to code).

So at the very least, I would suggest to drop the OS thing. Not only that, I would also suggest dropping graphics and sound for a while, graphics and sound are currently something of very little importance, since they are both useless without the rest of the code(such as AI, generating a world and such). I would also like to suggest to take everything one at a time and slowly, if you don''t, you will undoubtedly get stuck somewhere.

Also, be sure to have a FULL understanding of what you are about to do AND the language you are programming in(as a Delphi Head, I would like to suggest Delphi, but that''s just me). It is of the utmost importance to KNOW what you are doing, and to know HOW to improve speed and memory handling.

Once you get all of that done, you should start graphics and such. But please be aware of the fact that the more intensive the graphics and sound are, the higher the system requirements would be. Even higher than they already would be.

In any case,m best of luck....

One more thing, a story is NOT what you need. Don''t let everyone push you into creating a story, because by creating story you take AWAY the freedom you want. To give a player absolute freedom, he doesn''t need a story, he only needs a guideline. You let him start somewhere and from there on he just wanders around manipulating the world around him. Randomly generate quests, and he can choose to do them. Let him influence the world around you, and he''ll have a good time. Especially if you give him the opportunity to become a leader of a country and have every responsibility and opportunity involvin that.

Obscure

quote:

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It must be a big bridge you live under to accomodate such a large troll.

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Absoulutely spot on mate. I have to admit, I was suckered in by this chap very early on in the thread but that shit about 'time periods' and Rome is just a little too far. This guy is taking everyone for a ride and I'm guessing he's loving it.

Having said that, most people seem to be enjoying their own little conversations in this post, ignoring his suggestions. In a strange case of irony this post is developing into it's own little world simulation. A miniature cosmos evolving before our very eyes. Factions rising and falling as opinions run riot.


I love this thread.

[edited by - m_wherrett on May 27, 2003 4:23:03 AM]

DanielPharos:

>OS --> 50 MB (drivers included)
The linux kernel with all drivers needed(built in) is about 700Kb on my other computer.
>Levels --> 100 MB (start of world, if not randomized)
Yeah, maybe.
>Textures ed --> 1 GB (all materials must be included in the game, all plastics ed)
No space at all(almost) - Fractal textures
>Sound/Music --> 10 GB (you''re going to need all styles and a music generator, who can create music of a certain style)
AI music
>Game itself --> 10 GB (all subroutines to render and calculate the world. Laws of physics ed included)
:/ 10Gb... no, a lot, yes.

FS:
No you will not partition your computer, you will buy a new computer just for this game.

ShadowCore:
>and thus doing everything in ASM

Not really, C can be used for the most of it.

>Randomly generate quests

I don''t like the word random, there should be no quests in the classical way, you should simply talk to someone, get the latest information, etc. From there you figure out what you need to do.
And of course there will be situations that will need instant help all the time, like: I broke my leg, and I haven''t got any eggs! GO buy some for me young lad!@
And what happens if you are not there? Yes, the NPC will starve, unless some other NPC finishes the ''quest''.

About the OS... OK, maybe to much, but to make it stable and insert good IO and to create error messages, network etc, it will take a lot of space.