Indeed Warren Spector wanted Deus Ex to try and avoid ultimate evil and ultimate good, instead using shades of grey. The player should keep wondering which side is good / evil while playing Deus Ex.

You should have the ability to swap teams ... At least IMHO


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

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Re the split personality.

You should make the player change appearances when they change personalities, so that the NPCs don;t recognize the character during ''waking'' hours.

Imagine the player ''dreams'' of a masked/deformed villain that laughs at him and transports him to this ''city of goblins'' where the slaughter starts.

Imagine the player reaction when they find the same mask under the sink - the one with a mirror over it.

Just some thoughts

Nah, it is the player in the split form... Because they are playing it has to be the same person that they control, just in a dream state . That just means that everything around them becomes abstract and unrecognisable... It is the town, from a different angle, with the inhabitants looking like goblins

Because there is a curfew (due to the evil) there should only be a couple of people in town. Naturally, the guards would not attack the hero due to the fact that he is supposed to be saving them (and they respect him for it). Then, when other guards find the bodies (when the dead guard doesn''t report in) they remove the body, and nobody is the wiser. People who die in the streets simply just vanish (because the mayor or the cheif or whoever is in charge does not want a panic).

This should be able to stop the player from figuring out what is going on... well, long enough to become totally deranged... I like the added part that the more they kill, the more they find it hard to tell each creature appart... This would be really fun, who is human and who is not? If the player then just stands there, they can see what happens. To provoke the player in the dream state (because their mind is making them see crazy funky stuff ) you could have the "apparent goblins" cast some kind of fire around the player, but one that doesn''t harm them. As soon as they see a fireball, or a flame wall-ish kind of spell, they will charge that being and slaughter it .

Hmmm... I have managed to increase the insanity of the game now... I was discussing with a friend that the general "insanity makes you a baddie" story is not a game. I have come to the conclusion that he is right, at least not in itself. It is the beginning of a much larger game . It could be used to test the alignment of the character before they even get to the main game. Who would really believe that your Paladin from Diablo II after everything he had been through, all the blood that flowed, all the pain that he felt, and the countless dead bodies lying at his feet, who can believe that he could not have been truly disturbed by this? I know I would!

Background on your hero in the LE: You are a hero who comes to the town (at the start) seeking refuge from the nightmares that are alive in your dreams. You have killed so many with little thought that your mind is now twisted. You just wish to live out your life without having to kill any more. Your dreams are threatening to take over your mind, so you must combat this insanity from one front -> your dreams. You are now being confronted by the foul creatures of your dreams during daylight. They dare not come near town, so you must seek them out in the wilderness .

Goodbye woodcutters... you are too far from town, so you are now a goblin... *splat* . Then the wolves come and dispose of the body, and nobody is any the wiser .

I think I ramble now, so is there anything else that I could explain?

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
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made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

I was thinking about this good/evil thing and something just popped into my head. Use stats. I know there was some big discussion about how stats are lame and all, and in some ways i agree. I think it''s lame as hell that you can change your stats yourself in most rpgs (hmm i just killed a bunch of guys now im going to give myself more charisma so the ladies like me more!) But I think stats are a good representation of a character. I think they should just be hidden from the player. Thus you could decided to be good or evil yourself, and your actions would simply affect your stats, which would in turn affect how NPCs treat you.

Something else which I think would be cool would be, using very smart NPCs, to implement a "news" system. See, in most RPGs, if you kill a guard, everyone in the town immediatly hates you. That''s unrealistic, how do they know so fast? If you did it stealthily, they might never even know it was you! So there should be smart NPCs who see you kill the guard, hide, wait till you''re gone, go tell other guards, who in turn put up wanted posters. The town locals would see the posters, talk to each other (and spread the word about you) and thus NOW you''re hated, probably a day or two after the kill, not a second or two.

Just some thoughts. And damn this dream idea is really really cool i must say!!!

OK all these ideas blow. Maybe interesting for a movie BUT THIS IS ABOUT GAMES, IDIOTS

quote:

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Original post by Nevar

OK all these ideas blow. Maybe interesting for a movie BUT THIS IS ABOUT GAMES, IDIOTS

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Wow, what ettiquette. Posts like this are just a shot in your own foot, really. Nobody''s going to take you seriously now. If you can''t accept other people''s opinions, no matter what you think of them, then it just shows you to be closed minded.

I may not agree with everything that is posted on the internet, but if you stop listening to other ideas, you stifle your own creativity.

Good luck.


Pax

quote:

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Original post by Funkymunky

I was thinking about this good/evil thing and something just popped into my head. Use stats. I know there was some big discussion about how stats are lame and all, and in some ways i agree. I think it''s lame as hell that you can change your stats yourself in most rpgs (hmm i just killed a bunch of guys now im going to give myself more charisma so the ladies like me more!) But I think stats are a good representation of a character. I think they should just be hidden from the player. Thus you could decided to be good or evil yourself, and your actions would simply affect your stats, which would in turn affect how NPCs treat you.

Something else which I think would be cool would be, using very smart NPCs, to implement a "news" system. See, in most RPGs, if you kill a guard, everyone in the town immediatly hates you. That''s unrealistic, how do they know so fast? If you did it stealthily, they might never even know it was you! So there should be smart NPCs who see you kill the guard, hide, wait till you''re gone, go tell other guards, who in turn put up wanted posters. The town locals would see the posters, talk to each other (and spread the word about you) and thus NOW you''re hated, probably a day or two after the kill, not a second or two.

Just some thoughts. And damn this dream idea is really really cool i must say!!!

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This sounds like a great idea (which I might introduce to NPCAI somewhere down the line). I think we are all going to agree to ignore the rude poster, so I have to say that this kind of thing would really make the game more interesting. That is, you may want to find any witnesses and dispose of them before they inform the rest of the town. Adds a whole new element into gameplay, and a lot more about timing and planning into killing as well. Hehe... No spur of the moment or else you are gonna be in trouble

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

Hi all,

I''m majorly bucking net etiquette by not lurking for a while before posting (I found this site just a couple of minutes ago!) but I''ve just read this thread and I think it''s really interesting, so I couldn''t resist jumping in feet first, even though I have no experience in game design, just game playing!

On the subject of good and evil, there are two games I''ve played recently that have been really refreshing in this respect: Baldur''s Gate and Planescape Torment.

In both these games, and especially Torment, as well as journeying through the game world, you''re finding out about who you are, where you came from, and your own personal history. It''s your choice what you do with this knowledge, and how you treat the people that you meet in the world, and your alignment adjusts accordingly. I loved this freedom, and the fact that there were repercussions to one''s actions, and though you might have come from an evil origin, or have done evil things in the past, it''s up to you whether you succumb to your own personal "Dark Side" or not.

And an off-topic point: another really cool thing that I liked was how, whereas in Baldur''s Gate the narrative was event-driven, in Torment the narrative involved a lot more to do with emotions, facial expressions, gestures... a much more immersive experience - a definitive step forwards, I think.

Expressions and emotions are what grab people and make them EXPERIENCE the game, not just play it. I would definitely like to see more of this. Pity I am on no budget for my game and therefore cannot do better than poor 2D graphics . Owell

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)