Hi people, Another purely theoretical design thread from me . Okay, so wouldn''t it be cool to have games that felt as though they came with their own "alternate dimension", ie. that the worlds they give feel as though they are ''living and breathing''. What simple methods can we use to give the illusion of such a thing (as opposed to designing a ridiculously overthetop game with ultra-ultra advanced AI for characters etc)?

The world would have to be a little simulation that runs independently of the players prescence. Somehow, you''d have to keep the game running even after the computer gets turned off.

The player would have to play as some sort of outsider to this alternate world, perhaps as a god.

For instance, if the player was a god, then over time he would be able to see all the little people in the world grow, eat, live, build things and reproduce. After a while, you''d notice a lot of changes in the world which were not made by you, but rather made by all the little NPCs.

Even if you turned off your computer, went to sleep and came back the next day, you would still see the world has changed. Perhaps if you don''t load the game for a long timee, the newer born generations of NPCs would start to doubt your existence, and thus when you actually do return, it will be an incredible event.

I imagine the NPCs would form little groups that would eventually grow into villages, nations and countries, and perhaps they would even wage war on each other and research new technologies and learn more about the physics of their world, etc.it would also be kind of cool if the NPCs could leave their original program. For instance, a file might appear on your desktop one day, and when you open it you find that it is actually a new little colony of NPCs that has escaped their program universe with some sort of machine. Of course, if that gets annoying you would probably have to go inside the program and destroy whatever it was that they used to escape.

Ambient motion is key. Too many games have static environments. In the average FPS, I can stand still and wait for a pixel to shift, and then I know that there''s an enemy there. Ghost Recon was the first game I played that had trees and bushes moving around and ruining the statis of the world. Rustling branches, tumblin'' tumbleweeds, scampering squirrels, moving clouds, fluttering leaves, and general animation throughout the world make for a far more immersive experience.

A living, breathing world does not require the perspective of a diety.

I am not a God (yes I am, but that is a topic for another day ), but I know that the real world is living and breathing. Take the upcoming game BC, from Intrepid, for instance. There is an ecosystem that is entirely independent of the player. Dinosaurs eat other dinosaurs, and a lack of vegetation forces herbivores to leave in search of food. A lack of water drives away wildlife. Take away a species'' source of food and they will die. Animals reproduce and they must be kept in regulation. Overpopulation is a possibility, as is extinction.

The world functions independently of the player. The best way to give the player the sense of independent-functionality....is to make the world....ironically, function independently.

It would require much more work to believably appear functional than to make it actually function.

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Original post by dgaf
There is an ecosystem that is entirely independent of the player. Dinosaurs eat other dinosaurs

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Ah, an ecosystem. Of course you could probably fake such a thing with a variety of content generation tables (combined with a little randomness etc). So just like a Dungeon Master you could provide tables for the behaviour, location and activities of different animals throughout the seasons. Ie.

Coastal regions: lots of crabs, which eat ... lots in summer, few in winter, ... special occurence: Breeding 15th July.

bears Seasonal influence: initially drowsy in hibernation period... etc. blah.

I believe Animal Crossing actually changes from when you turn off the machine to when you start it up again. Not sure how though.

Take a look at this article:

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/thief-deadly-shadows/508760p1.html?fromint=1

Someone can make that a link right?

Anyway, ambient sound (like movement) is soo important. How many games have background chatter in a populated area, or the wind blowing, etc. As the article about Thief points out, creating lifelike worlds is not easy stuff.

The PC games are getting a new shadowing technique that looks awesome, its just a matter of time till it really feels like your within the world.

Imagine: High Def games with ultra realistic light and shadows on a 50" plasma. Sound that echoes realistically in 5.1 surround. Characters that respond to your questions through voice recognition, and responds to movements you make (without the old gloves). Drool.

Dynamic weather and seasons is a nice way to get a feeling of a real world.

Also a dynamic landscape where trees grow up and then die (eventhough you would have to accelerate this since a tree can get very old)

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Original post by stevelat
I believe Animal Crossing actually changes from when you turn off the machine to when you start it up again. Not sure how though.

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It stores the current date & time when you save and switch off and compares it to the current time when you switch it back on again. Realistically it doesn''t change much, the characters simply say things like ''i havn''t seen you in a long time'' and most events are triggered on specific days or relative to another event (like receiving mail a couple of days after you send something).

Hmm, Grand Theft Auto 3 had pedestrians, but they were quite flat because they just kept on repeating the same few catchphrases everynow and then.

The difference there would be to have the pedestrians actually be headed someplace. I mean, maybe one guy is a business man headed to work in the morning, so he walks for awhile, then disappears into a specific building. After several hours, he emerges from the building and walks another specific direction, heading home. At the same time the next morning the cycle repeats.

To make things even more interesting, mix up the cycle periods. Say for instance a hot dog vendor makes his rounds from early afternoon to mid-evening, but he has a 10 or 20 different randomized locations he frequents. Every so often he ends up at a location between the business man''s work and his home, and there''s a 75% chance the business man will stop and buy a hot dog. All this happens (or appears to happen -- maybe it is based on an internal clock!) regardless of the player''s location.

The same principles could be applied to pretty much any game. Imagine if in Thief the guards had duty cycles that changed semi-randomly, walking their planned routes with a wandering drift, and their patrol patterns were auto-generated based on supicious events. "What was that? I thought I heard something over there!" The guard alters his search pattern to also cover the area where he heard the noise, and drifts now and then away from his original pattern, or eventually back to it.

Maybe tree branches are deformable, and can be snapped and bent to form better cover. Maybe small animals forage near water, but usually not when larger animals are around. Maybe birds randomly fly over head, but they flee if a hawk randomly shows up, or if a shot is fired in the air, or if the sky turns cloudy and it starts to rain. Maybe the sun comes out, dries up the little streams, and most of the animals all migrate to another area looking for water.

All are tiny little things, though potentially difficult to build. But they can provide a huge boost to the atmosphere and immersion of the game.