quote: Original post by Landfish

Better be a short/small game or a friggan massive team. If niether, you''ll have a crapload of work to do.

I expected the idea to be ripped apart a bit more

That either means that the idea has some potential, or Landfish doesn''t have the time due to the duties of moteration.

Maybe because I''m horribly ignorant when it comes to AI, I''m a fan of faking it. Rather than a massive list, if I knew NPCs were pretty much tied to towns I''d implement this as a chance to know you. Cheap, kludged, and effective. (Anyone want to see a sample of the code I write )

This chance would rise as you committed deeds in town. You could toss in some other vars to this soup, too: How well traveled the NPC is (better chance to know your rep if you''re famous or infamous). The remoteness of the town. How isolationist the NPC or culture is.

Screw that 50 man team & hack it, I say!

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Just waiting for the mothership...

My only problems are on a practical level, Naz. I''d love to see it happen, but how can you assure me it would be any fun? Even then, how do you plan to make it work, being solid fun in the same guarunteeable way as a semi-linear?

You haven''t convinced me that I could put money into it safely (not that I have money...). For your own good I suggest you convince me; if I believe you, a publisher will.

quote: Original post by Wavinator

Maybe because I'm horribly ignorant when it comes to AI, I'm a fan of faking it. Rather than a massive list, if I knew NPCs were pretty much tied to towns I'd implement this as a chance to know you. Cheap, kludged, and effective. (Anyone want to see a sample of the code I write )

This chance would rise as you committed deeds in town. You could toss in some other vars to this soup, too: How well traveled the NPC is (better chance to know your rep if you're famous or infamous). The remoteness of the town. How isolationist the NPC or culture is.

Screw that 50 man team & hack it, I say!

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Just waiting for the mothership...

AI in games is really about faking it I've always thought. That's where the artificial part comes in

I don't think the AI would be too rough really. The harder thing is what LF is talking about. I've got to be sure diverging the story will work well.

I've still got much to think about in that department. I think this may be a nicer possibility than what I've thought about before which was having a lot of loose quests here and there. At least this way there would be a main story that would provide conclusion plus that main story would not have to be extremely linear either.

Landfish, you're right. I haven't a complete concept here at all. I just wondered how this sounded so far. This is by no means at all a cohesive thought. I think that it solves some of the problems of my previous thoughts of having a bunch of events floating around. I'll keep working on it though. Although, I think we would both question how much solid fun most RPGs are today...semi-linear or linear


Edited by - Nazrix on September 18, 2000 12:33:30 AM

quote: Original post by Landfish

My only problems are on a practical level, Naz. I'd love to see it happen, but how can you assure me it would be any fun? Even then, how do you plan to make it work, being solid fun in the same guarunteeable way as a semi-linear?

Whoa. LF, if you've got *ANY* method of guaranteeing that a design is fun before it's in QA, contact a publisher *RIGHT NOW!*

Non-linear, semi-linear, fully-linear, half-duplex-linear... whatever, nobody in the industry (or outside the industry) knows what's fun. I'll agree that the more linear something is, the _easier_ it is to plan, test, and tweak. But no one knows what's fun until it's built! (Unless you've got some Ancient Developer Secret you'd like to share )






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Just waiting for the mothership...

Edited by - Wavinator on September 19, 2000 2:45:15 PM

quote: Original post by Nazrix

I don''t think the AI would be too rough really. The harder thing is what LF is talking about. I''ve got to be sure diverging the story will work well.

I''ve still got much to think about in that department. I think this may be a nicer possibility than what I''ve thought about before which was having a lot of loose quests here and there. At least this way there would be a main story that would provide conclusion plus that main story would not have to be extremely linear either.

I''m not sure of the quality of story you''ll get with this method. As the posts I''ve made before indicate, I''m starting to think story happens outside of gameplay (while you''re playing, you''re not thinking story).

What you''re talking about to me looks like a strategy game whose gameplay vocabulary (things you can do) is that of a story, rather than war. So rather than units, you have characters. Rather than strategic manuevering, you have story actions.

You know, it''d be really useful to propose some kind of example plot that we can work with. Maybe then we could get some more concrete examples (maybe we should use something like Star Wars or some other story that most people know).


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Just waiting for the mothership...

How about using a pathfinding algorithm for reputations?

In other words, you do a good deed in one town, and the "story" of that deed flows out from the town to other towns (nodes), changing your rep as it goes. You could make some paths more expensive because the towns are farther apart, relatively isolated, etc. If you wanted to be really complex, instead of using towns as nodes, you could use people.

In fact, why not make rumors work like this too? A town is burned down by a band of orcs, and the story has to actually MAKE ITS WAY to wherever you are.

I''m only a very novice programmer, but seems to me that pathfinding algorithms would be a relatively simple an effective way to do that sort of thing.

- gollumgollum

PS - And then you could write a way to add "noise" (false data) to rumors as they spread farther out....

Too many ideas, too little knowledge. Ah well.

Gollum:
Nice ideas there...I'll have to think about that a bit


Wav,

Well, I may lose some quality of story, but what I'd gain is replayability. There would be one main story that was basically the same as far as the events of the story, but how the player interacts with that story would be different. Depending on how the player is viewed by the society and who the player interacts with, the player will be on different sides of the story. That's the basic premise anyway.

I would still like the story to be somewhat flexible according to what the player does in the story, but many of the main events would be the same. What would be different is how the player interacted with the story. So, to the player, it would be a different experience when many of the events in the story would be the same. What sides of the story the player plays will depend upon how the player's viewed by the people around him and who he knows.

Although, there would be some events that may change in the main story depending upon how the player handles certain situations, but many of the events would be the same each time the game is played which would provide control over the flow of the story.


Edited by - Nazrix on September 19, 2000 4:51:19 PM

Ah, but Naz, a large part of replayability comes from qualifying pathways. People won''t play a game over and over again if it changes every time no matter what. Part of replayability is knowing what you''ve missed, and in the format you suggest, you cannot play through every concievable COA.

People will play such a game once. Maybe twice, to appreciate the interactivity of it. But all in all, there''s no driving psychology behing what you''re missing...

quote: Original post by Landfish

Ah, but Naz, a large part of replayability comes from qualifying pathways. People won''t play a game over and over again if it changes every time no matter what. Part of replayability is knowing what you''ve missed, and in the format you suggest, you cannot play through every concievable COA.

People will play such a game once. Maybe twice, to appreciate the interactivity of it. But all in all, there''s no driving psychology behing what you''re missing...

* URK!!! Wavinator chokes on his coffee! *

Huhn?!?! Are you saying that people will not play a game whose situations and outcomes vary greatly? If so, I very much disagree with you. If you look at highly replayable games like Unreal Tournament, Tetris, or Alpha Centauri / Civilization, "variety of encounter" is a key ingredient in the magical formula. You get new situations to respond to each time: the location of enemies and behaviors (UT); the position, type and speed of the blocks (Tetris); the lay of the land, starting civilization types, and subsequent chain of interactions (AC / Civ). In fact, many seem to move on only when they know they''ve experienced everything.

If you were to come up with a basic vocabulary of story / strategy / gameplay actions, and a changing web of evolving relationships, I think you''d have this variety of encounter. If it were in a story format, I''d think it''d be an RPG gamer''s dream come true.

(Or did I misunderstand you again, LF?)


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Just waiting for the mothership...