I was thinking about what game I would love to mess around on in light of the sandbox Dead Rising zombie fun day. And I thought what about a revolution? A sandbox game with advanced crowd AI and the entire purpose being to start a revolution. Do it how you want - violence, diplomacy or sabotage. It could be like Republic but much more user friendly. With all the overly advanced factors going on without the player even knowing. Base it in an east european fictional place and add vodka... GTA + Revolution + Vodka = FUN [Edited by - Midas on August 31, 2006 1:18:58 PM]

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Original post by Midas It could be like Republic but not shit

Fixed your typo for you ;)

Oopps.. Sorry about that one.

By "revolutionary," did you mean that it "keeps coming around and around"? [smile]

If that's how you want to play it... Heh heh

The idea isn't feasible, and about 2²⁰ (that’s a little over a million, and most likely an underestimation) have thought about it before you. If the game was to be as freeform as you suggest, then all NPCs would have to form an opinion about you and your actions, this means they won’t vote for you if you starts killing innocent little kittens (some group AI could be used for optimization, but you would still face major challenges still unsolved in realtime). They would need quite an advanced AI to figure this stuff out, also their memory would have to be updated all the time, taking way more computation time than we have at our disposal. Of course there are other problems, for example, how would you implement diplomacy? The NPCs would have to understand at least one natural language, and be able to analyze what you actually mean and what is going to happen. Also every single element would have to be dynamic, for instance you need the ability to knock on peoples’ doors and inform them that you should be elected. If we were to consider actually making this, we would have to remove much of the freeform aspects of the game, and just make a branched story line, which is partially dependent on certain aspects of your game play. But of course if you have some brilliant, revolutionary idea to solve this, please enlighten us.

I would like to start by enlightening you about the ways of the world first - No idea is origonal thats the way things are, live with it. The idea of an npc forming an opinion of the player has been done before, mostly in Lionhead games. The problem of over working the processor could be solved by having the peoples different opinions set aside and giving the player an 'aura' baised on his actions. This preception of the player would of course be based on what was actualy known about his or her actions - therefore allowing for full GTA violence if that is what the player wanted, just keep it behinded the scenes for the people. As far as knocking on there doors and asking for them to vote for you, well that would just be silly. A revolution doesn't have to involve an election and almost always happens on the streets.

I would sudjest just giving each faction of people an overriding set of prefferences and then certain individual preferences. As for there memory being updated all the time, that is far from necicary. There would be something along the lines of a newspaper that tracked your 'known' actions and it's current status would be used to determin reactions on the spot baised on the afformentioned faction disposition and personal preferences.

On to dipplomacy well just look at Bioware's RPGs, they have been doing perfect stem based conversations for years. Sure so this limits the flexability and how many could be in the game but it is still perfectly possible. Hell look at what they are doing with the Mass Effect conversation system and tell me it's not possible. Of course there would be a branching story but that does little to nothing to restrict a player if he or she just takes time between story driven events.

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Original post by Midas No idea is origonal thats the way things are, live with it.

Ok, I just thought that when you said "A revolutionary idea" you meant that the actual idea was quite original, many people believe they have designed the perfect game, but just have some unusable ideas, you seem to be able to actually look at this realistically though.

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The idea of an npc forming an opinion of the player has been done before, mostly in Lionhead games.

You will deal with a much bigger number of NPCs though, and AFAIK every NPC in B&W (that's the game you're refering to, right?) had the same opinion about you. In the game you plan, you would need to split the whole population into groups with different opinions (scientists and teachers might like your ideas, but the police officers might not). Also in my experience, the AI for making an opinion of you in B&W was way too simple for a game were diplomacy could be a major game play element. You basically got some points added/subtracted to/from some stats when you did something good/bad. For instance if you beat down a person on the street and need to somehow explain this to the population, the people would require quite advanced AI. Of course there is certain shortcuts you could use, for example you could have predefined things to say for instance you could be shown some options:
> Admit it, but say you are sorry
> Admit it, and say you are proud
> Tell that it wasn't you
This could in some cases not be suifficient though.

I guess would I'm not quite understanding is how you'll implement the diplomacy part, it would be very hard to incorporate into the freeform gameplay between "missions", but if you put them into the missions it would be much easier. Violence is quite easy to make an AI respond to, they have a certain negative attitude towards is and is affected by how much violence you commit and the targets of the violence, but diplomacy isn't as simple as just beating up someone.

The 'revolutionary' part was just a play on words to catch the eye - it oviously worked since were here, sorry for the confusion. But yes, it is true that there are constant claims to the perfect game idea, I've yet to see it. B&W was one of the games I was reffering to, but mostly I ment Fable. I tend to idolize Fable as a dimoned in the ruff.

Though it is deffinatly true that you would be dealing with large amounts of NPCs I'm slightly banking on the power of the next generation of consoles to tip the scales somewhat, and that's also why I would go the factions route. I was thiking that personal prefferences could be put on a scale of -3 to +3 for different things. The player beating a revolutionary opponent in the back alleys of the slums for instance, when seen by a gang member who has a +3 disposition toward violence will have a positive effect to the whole gangs ideas of the player though not necicarily on the individual level.

I think the game would feature missions as a faster more scripted way of gaining a following, though not necicarily a compolsery method. Much of the diplomacy would take place in the missions. But prehapse you could set a type of thing to be saying to the people and then walk around, this would effect you current 'aura' and the language could be done in a sort of russian-like gibberish like the Sim's approch to language.

Not to derail the topic, but Midas, your presentation herein is a bit rude. It's usual to avoid thread titles that are flame-bait, and it's usual to avoid saying things like "enlighten you as to the way the world works".

No offense intended, just hoping this helps raise the level of discourse a little.